LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with over 660 million users worldwide. As a professional looking to advance your career, having an updated LinkedIn profile is crucial for networking, finding new job opportunities, promoting your personal brand, and more. But with all the options for customizing your profile, it can be overwhelming to know how best to optimize your LinkedIn presence. Should you pay to promote your profile and expand your reach? Here’s what you need to know about LinkedIn profile promotion and whether it’s worth investing in.
What is LinkedIn profile promotion?
LinkedIn offers several options for promoting your profile to expand your network and increase engagement. The main ways to promote your LinkedIn profile include:
- LinkedIn OpenProfile – This free service randomly displays your profile to other LinkedIn members outside of your network. You can enable OpenProfile in your account settings.
- LinkedIn recruiter profile promotion – With LinkedIn Recruiter, you can pay to have your profile promoted to recruiters searching for candidates. This targets your profile to relevant hiring managers and recruiters.
- LinkedIn Elevate service – LinkedIn Elevate is a paid service that promotes your posts and profile to a wider audience on LinkedIn. You can choose to promote your profile separately from your posts.
- LinkedIn job seeker premium subscription – LinkedIn Premium for job seekers includes some profile promotion features like expanded reach for your profile and boosted sharing capabilities.
- Sponsored LinkedIn Content – You can pay to promote specific LinkedIn posts to a wider audience.
The main goal of LinkedIn profile promotion is to get your profile in front of more targeted, relevant audiences like recruiters, hiring managers, and professionals in your industry. This can lead to more profile views, connections, and engagement on your content.
Should you promote your LinkedIn profile?
Here are some pros and cons to consider on whether investing in LinkedIn profile promotion is worthwhile:
Pros of promoting your LinkedIn profile:
- Increased exposure and reach for your profile
- Appear higher in LinkedIn search results
- Boosted credibility and authority from widened audience
- More opportunities for networking, recruitment, and partnerships
- Higher engagement on your profile and content
- Valuable self-promotion tool as part of broader career strategy
Promoting your profile can dramatically expand your audience and allow you to showcase your brand to relevant professionals and companies. Even a small boost in engagement and views can lead to new connections and opportunities.
Cons of promoting your LinkedIn profile:
- Costs money depending on promotion type used
- Too much self-promotion can seem inauthentic or excessive
- More profile views doesn’t guarantee increased engagement
- Requires staying active on LinkedIn to capitalize on expanded reach
- You may attract irrelevant audiences if targeting is too broad
While promoting your profile can boost visibility, simply throwing money at promotion won’t necessarily guarantee results. You need high-quality content and an optimized profile to fully benefit. Promotion also requires consistency and participation to engage your new audiences.
Best practices for LinkedIn profile promotion
Here are some top tips to get the most out of promoting your LinkedIn profile:
- Choose targeted promotion options – Focus on promotion features that will reach your desired audience like recruiters or professionals in your industry. Broad random promotion tends to be less effective.
- Highlight key skills and achievements – Emphasize details most relevant to your goals and what you want to be known for professionally.
- Include media – Videos, slides, portfolios and other media can boost engagement when added to your profile.
- Refresh content frequently – Give viewers a reason to keep coming back by updating your profile with new accomplishments, content and media.
- Engage your new followers – Don’t just accumulate followers – like and comment on their content to build connections.
- Monitor analytics – Use LinkedIn’s analytics to see which sections and content get the most profile views.
- Follow up on opportunities – If you get profile views from relevant companies or figures, reach out to request informational interviews, casual conversations, or discuss potential opportunities.
Promoting thoughtfully and strategically will deliver far better results than blind self-promotion. Focus on quality over quantity in your audience growth.
Types of LinkedIn profile promotion options
Here is an overview of some of the main types of LinkedIn profile promotion available and who they are best suited for:
OpenProfile
- Overview: Free profile promotion through random exposure to LinkedIn members outside your network.
- Ideal for: Anyone looking for a free and easy boost in profile visibility.
- Cost: Free
LinkedIn Recruiter Profile Promotion
- Overview: Paid promotion specifically targeting your profile to recruiters searching LinkedIn.
- Ideal for: Job seekers wanting to get their profile seen by relevant hiring managers and recruiters.
- Cost: Price depends on amount of impressions purchased. Typically $50-$100 per 1000 impressions.
LinkedIn Elevate
- Overview: Focused paid promotion for both your profile and LinkedIn posts.
- Ideal for: Thought leaders, executives, consultants establishing professional brand and credibility.
- Cost: Elevate Profile Push starts at $55/month for 5,000 profile impressions monthly. Elevate Post Sponsorship is $25 per sponsored update.
Premium Subscriptions
- Overview: Various paid LinkedIn subscription packages with profile promotion features.
- Ideal for: Active LinkedIn users wanting to maximize profile views, post reach and premium features.
- Cost: Premium subscriptions start at $29.99/month with discounted annual memberships available.
Sponsored Content and InMail
- Overview: Paid promotion for specific LinkedIn posts and InMail messages.
- Ideal for: Businesses and organizations wanting to boost content, offers or ads.
- Cost: Content promotion starts at $10 per 1,000 impressions. InMail credits for targeted messages cost $10-50 per InMail.
LinkedIn Profile Promotion Return on Investment
Determining if the costs of LinkedIn profile promotion provide a positive return depends greatly on individual circumstances and goals. Here are a few factors to consider in weighing potential LinkedIn promotion ROI:
- Current level of LinkedIn activity – Are you already actively engaging your audience with regular posting? If so, promotion can help capitalize on this momentum. But it may not help much if your profile is sparse or inactive.
- Quality of your profile – Does your profile effectively represent your capabilities and “personal brand”? A barebones or incomplete profile won’t benefit much from simple promotion.
- Targeting of promotion efforts – Broad random promotion tends to provide minimal ROI compared to targeted efforts aligned with professional goals.
- Business model – Promotion can generate increased leads, partners, or sales for businesses and consultants.
- Job seeking needs – For most job seekers, a Premium subscription with full profile access provides the best promotion capabilities and ROI.
Weighing these factors honestly will determine if investing in even minimal LinkedIn promotion like OpenProfile is worthwhile. Consistent posting and participating in LinkedIn should precede any major promotion efforts.
LinkedIn Profile Promotion ROI Case Study:
Here is a hypothetical example of how profile promotion could generate ROI for a marketing consultant:
| Profile Promotion Approach | Monthly Cost | Monthly New Clients | Average Project Value | Monthly ROI |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No paid promotion | $0 | 2 | $5,000 | $10,000 |
| OpenProfile enabled | $0 | 3 | $5,000 | $15,000 |
| Premium subscription | $29.99 | 4 | $5,000 | $19,970.01 |
| Focused Elevate campaign | $100 | 6 | $5,000 | $29,900 |
In this example, the consultant sees increased new clients and ROI from improved LinkedIn visibility. A targeted Elevate campaign provides the highest return relative to its cost.
Should you pay for LinkedIn Premium?
Many professionals find a LinkedIn Premium subscription worth the monthly cost. Here are key perks that come with Premium plans:
- See full profiles of everyone who viewed you
- Advanced profile filtering and targeting
- Expanded InMail messaging capabilities
- Learn skills assessments and badges
- Additional profile promotion options
- Unlimited profile customization tools
For active job seekers and business professionals, the expanded visibility and outreach capabilities of Premium often provide strong ROI. Some key benefits like seeing full viewer profiles can really aid networking and prospecting.
The various Premium package options allow choosing a plan aligned with your needs and budget. But even the lowest tier “Premium Career” plan unlocks the core profile promotion tools for $29.99 per month, often recouping the cost through additional opportunities.
LinkedIn Premium alternatives
If the ongoing costs don’t pencil out, here are a few ways to get some Premium features without a paid plan:
- OpenProfile – Gain additional profile views for free through random exposure to non-connections.
- Google search tricks – Use Google search operators to find and view some LinkedIn profiles that are not fully public.
- Saving InMails – Free members get a limited number of InMails per month. Use them sparingly for targeted outreach.
- Browser extensions – Some Chrome and Firefox extensions will display non-Premium profile views and other info.
But for the full suite of profile promotion and visibility benefits, most committed LinkedIn users will find Premium packages quickly pay for themselves through additional opportunities and connections. A free one month trial is also offered to experience Premium before paying.
Conclusion
Promoting your LinkedIn profile can provide extremely valuable visibility. But passive promotion without active, strategic networking and posting yields minimal results.
Focus first on developing rich, engaging profiles and posting content to establish credibility and thought leadership organically. Then deploy targeted promotion like OpenProfile and LinkedIn Elevate to expand your reach.
Used correctly, profile promotion delivers growth in quality followers and high-value opportunities. But used incorrectly, it amounts to throwing money away. Prioritize selective, strategic promotion aligned with specific professional goals.
The investment required is usually modest, especially considering LinkedIn’s unparalleled access to global professional networks and opportunities. For serious career and business professionals, promoting your LinkedIn profile is one of the smartest investments you can make.
