LinkedIn Features and Licenses

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a professional platform for professional people as well as career-oriented people. With LinkedIn, you can connect professionals globally. There are many things you can do with LinkedIn that we can discuss, but before that let's know what is required for a LinkedIn Account and access.

Three things are required for a LinkedIn account and Access -

Email and Phone Number

You must have a verified email address to make a user account on LinkedIn, as well as an active phone number to verify your LinkedIn account. With an email account, you can sign up for a new LinkedIn account.

Internet Connection

Without an internet connection, you can't create and access your LinkedIn Account. So you must have a better internet connection for that, I know it's a very basic thing for any online access, but I need to mention this to let you know it's 100% a cloud-based platform.

Desktop or Mobile App

You can make and use a LinkedIn account via Desktop or LinkedIn Mobile App, with the desktop you can directly insert the URL of LinkedIn in any browser, and via LinkedIn Mobile App, you just need to install the LinkedIn Mobile App and log in. 

Picture ID (Exceptional)

LinkedIn is a very safe platform Powered by Microsoft, so LinkedIn Team is very confidential about their violence policy, hence in case LinkedIn takes you suspiciously, they can stop your account, to restart your LinkedIn account, you must have ID proof with a picture.

LinkedIn Features -

LinkedIn is a broad thing to explore, let's discuss some important features that you can explore easily, after a successful sign-up you can explore -

Profile: After login into your LinkedIn Account you can monetize your profile, you can showcase your skills, education, certificates, experiences, headline, profile picture, background picture (timeline), contact information, etc. so that people can find you and connect with you.

Connections: With a new LinkedIn connection you can add your friends, colleagues, and others to make your connection, you can send a connection request with or without a message, and you can maximum send 100 connections weekly.

Subscription and Follow: With the Subscription and Follow feature you can follow anyone as well as you can subscribe to any page of LinkedIn to get time-to-time updates.

Post: You can post on LinkedIn via Images, GIFs, Videos, Public polls, Articles, Jobs, etc. If something is required or coming to your mind or any content Images, GIFs, Videos, Public polls, Articles, etc., which doesn't harm LinkedIn Policy. It can help you to make a nig network.

Like/Comment/Share/Other: You can make responses to any post via various options from LinkedIn, and can Like, Share, Comment, or make other responses.

 

Messaging: With the LinkedIn Messaging feature, you can start communication with your connections or group members, this is a very quick and instant messaging feature of LinkedIn.

Video Calling/Calling: You can make a call or a video call via LinkedIn, this feature is also amazing, you must explore this feature as well.

Go Live: You can go live and talk to your followers via a LinkedIn Live session, this feature can be very useful for Marketing People or Bloggers.

InMails: InMail is an amazing feature of LinkedIn, You can directly send emails or messages via LinkedIn to any LinkedIn account, LinkedIn calls it InMail, with this feature you can reach out to people who aren't in your connection list, they can be 2nd or 3rd+ connections.

Open Profile: Profiles that allow you to do free InMail without any credit, these are open profiles, you need to find such profiles, and it is easy to contact people via open profiles.

Group: You can create and join multiple numbers of groups of any community, and you don't need to add them to your LinkedIn connection, they can request you to join the group or you can ask them to join the group, this is a very impactful feature of LinkedIn. [LinkedIn Group_Help]

Pages: As you can create or join a group on LinkedIn, you can create and follow/like any LinkedIn Page, this can help you to make an online presence, as well as can keep updating you about a particular account.

Search: You can search any Post, Profile, Job, Company, etc. on LinkedIn directly with filters, LinkedIn offers you a maximum of 2500 search results at a unique search, and you can set an alert to receive time to time new results or updates on your previous searches, LinkedIn allows you for the Alert feature to make you searches and plan easy.

Paid Ads: LinkedIn allows Marketers to run paid ad campaigns or sponsor campaigns with analytics and budget to target a specific audience from LinkedIn, for your services and products.

Learning and Certifications: LinkedIn allows you to learn new things and get certificates on those learning, LinkedIn provides you certificates, as well as other certificates that also can be covered.

Skills Endorsement: LinkedIn allows you to showcase your skills and there is one more beauty, your connections can endorse and appreciate your skills according to their experience or collaboration with you, this feature of LinkedIn helps to make a Market value for your profile in your sector.

Open to: You can set your profile to be open for "services" if you are providing any services, or "job" if you are looking for a job opportunity, or "hiring" if you are hiring in your organization, or for any contractual position

Writing: If you have writing skills, LinkedIn didn't fall behind for this feature as well, you can write Articles and simple posts via LinkedIn to be engaged with your connections or audience.

Events: With LinkedIn, you can create Live Events, as well as webinars, and you can directly connect and interact with your connections, it can help you to get more business or leads.

Quiz: You can play the quiz on your LinkedIn profile based on your knowledge area, it can highlight your skills if you publish the quiz results, but don't publish any bad or average results.

Analytics: This feature of LinkedIn helps you to know about your progress via LinkedIn, like who viewed your profiles, who clicked, your presence, etc. you can get many insights from this feature of LinkedIn.

LinkedIn Premium Licenses: LinkedIn Basic Plan has most of the features, but you can choose the plan according to your requirement and expertise. You can explore any plan on LinkedIn because it allows the user (first-time) a minimum of 1 month of the free trial. Later in you like the premium version of LinkedIn, you can continue with it by paying monthly or annually. In case you don't like the plan or it's not for you, so you can switch or cancel the subscription. The beauty of a trial version, you can cancel anytime, and you would have all access to the premium version.

Let's see which plan best suits you -

Best LinkedIn Plan For You

Let's just have a quick review, what is the best plan for you according to your need, and where you can be the best fit -

Lead Generation

If you are planning to get leads or business from LinkedIn then you can work with the basic and free plan which is all in one but with limited features, but in case you want to explore LinkedIn with amazing sales or business leads features then you must try LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

It allows you to Advanced Filtration (Next Level), Persona, and InMail Credits, for your targeted leads, and you can save and follow your target audience too. And if you are making Account Based Search, then a sales navigator can help you a lot.

You can pay monthly and annually for this plan with at least 1 month of free trial to explore it.

If you are an individual. then I will recommend you LinkedIn Sales Navigator Core

There are different versions of Sales Navigator, you can choose any one, depending on your usage and scale. [How to generate leads using LinkedIn Sales Navigator]

Online Presence

If you are planning to make your presence and online business and great network via LinkedIn then there is a LinkedIn Premium Business License, there are varieties of licenses, mostly marketing departments or business development departments use this license. 

Learning and Certifications

If you are passionate about new learnings and get the certifications over those learning then get unlimited learning access via LinkedIn Learning License, via this license you can get online classes and exams for your learnings and certificates, which can help you for your career growth, the beauty of this license, is you can watch your classes, and you can attempt your exam according to your availability.

Career or Job 

If you are planning to make a career via LinkedIn, and you are tired of other Job Portals, then no worries, you can get the job easily, contact directly to recruiters according to your profile, and get all your insights via LinkedIn Premium Career License.

Talent Acquisition

If you are a recruiter, or you are working for a recruitment company then don't get confused between LinkedIn Sales Navigator and LinkedIn Recruiter, This license is designed for recruiters only with specific and advanced features and filtrations. You can pay on a monthly or annual basis, there are various types of LinkedIn Recruiter Licenses, but if you are a small organization or an individual, then I will recommend you for the LinkedIn Recruiter Lite otherwise you can explore other licenses too. You can get a free trial version of the recruiter license too.