I’m often asked about LinkedIn’s premium subscription and whether it is worth the investment or not. Since everything I’ve taught on LinkedIn has been with the free service, I’ve never recommended upgrading. But a recent experience has opened my eyes to the advantages of using the paid service.

I’m a huge Jimmy Buffett fan and I’ve always said I think he’s the Buffett people should be talking about when it comes to wealth and success, not Warren! They are both wealthy beyond imagination, but wouldn’t you rather your office be the deck of a sailboat instead of an office in Omaha?

So my book proposal is titled ‘The Other Buffett’s Way’ and the chapters would consist of Parrothead Principles based on Jimmy’s song titles.

After the proposal was created, I had to get it in Jimmy’s hands of course! So I did what any nerdy Parrothead would do, I went to LinkedIn. Now I knew I wouldn’t find Jimmy there, but I thought maybe I could get to some of the decision makers in his organization. And it didn’t take long before I found the President and COO of Margaritaville, the Vice President of Human Resources and the VP of Sales and Marketing. Not bad! With these great contacts, I wanted to give myself the best shot at getting my email opened, so I wanted to use LinkedIn’s InMail service where they guarantee a response. I hadn’t used it before, but I thought it was worth a shot.

In order to use the InMail service, you have to be a premium subscriber so, after many years of using the free service, I became a premium subscriber.

I was given three InMail emails for each month and I used all three on the folks I mentioned above. It’s been two weeks and I’ve heard back from two out of three.

The Chief Operating Officer of Margaritaville Holdings responded to my email, read my proposal and gave me some feedback. His response wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear, but LinkedIn doesn’t guarantee you’ll get a positive response, just a response. 🙂 But he was very nice and he simply wasn’t in the right side of the company to be a champion for this book.

The point to this story is that I think there are some real advantages to the premium side of LinkedIn IF you are ready to use it. Up until this point, I didn’t really have a need for it, but when I wanted to ‘cold-call’ a major decision maker, I felt this was my best shot at getting an answer.

Have you upgraded? Why or why not?

If you have, please comment with other features that you like on the premium side.

I recently did a Webinar for our Dale Carnegie clients where I went over each feature of LinkedIn’s Premium service and then, based off my experience, offered my recommendation if it’s worth the investment.

Although these Webinars are typically for clients only, I wanted to share this one with our entire audience.

I hope it helps you determine if LinkedIn Premium is right for you and your business.

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