Episode 34: What LinkedIn account do you need to grow your HR consultancy?
Hey! James here and welcome to this week’s podcast episode.
In this week's Main Event, I'm going to talk you through the different LinkedIn accounts, what features you need and what account is best to help you grow your consultancy.
And in today's thought of the week, I've got a lovely story about a rubber duck I want to tell you about and why it's a timely reminder to give yourself a break.
So let's jump straight in.
Transcription below:
Main event:
What kind of LinkedIn account should you have?
Should you just stick with the free version? Do you need Premium Business? Or is Sales Navigator worth the price?
I get asked these questions time by HR consultants by confused HR consultants.
And that's why, in today's main event, I’m going to break down:
- The different types of LinkedIn accounts
- What features you get with each
- And most importantly, what’s actually useful if you’re an independent HR consultant using LinkedIn to grow your business.
Okay, so you probably know me by now, before I dive into anything I like to do a big step back and look at the bigger picture.
So to that end, let's get started by looking at how - as an independent HR consultant - you actually need to use LinkedIn to grow your business.
And I've broken this down into 6 tasks for you:
Task one - you need to set up and optimise your LinkedIn profile.
Task Two - you'll need to post content on a regular basis.
Task Three - you need to engage with your connections on LinkedIn.
Task Four - search for leads
Task Five - connect with leads
Task Six - contact leads
These tasks are your use cases.
We can now look at what features are available in each LinkedIn plan.
As to determine, what plan is best for each use case.
***
Okay so now, let's look at the different LinkedIn account options and deep-dive into each one to see what features are available.
So there are three main LinkedIn account options that you can choose from.
You have the free account.
Premium business account which is roughly $59 a month
And then Sales Navigator core - which I pay £79 a month for.
If you try to google Linkedin's pricing, it can all get a bit mysterious so I think it's better to just check out what they're quoting you for within your own profile.
You also have annual plans which provide you with a saving.
***
With the free account...
- You can fully build out your profile.
- You can post content with no restrictions.
- You can engaged with people's posts without restrictions.
- You get basic people search.
- You can send about 100 connection requests per week.
- You hit a commercial search limit after a while.
- And you can only see the last few people who viewed your profile.
Now on top of all of this, you can upgrade to the premium account which allows you to:
- Personalise your profile further by adding a CTA button to your profile.
- You get unlimited people search with no monthly cap.
- You can view all profiles, including 3rd-degree connections.
- You get 15 InMail credits per month to message people you're not connected with.
- You also get access to business insights on company pages.
- You also see who’s viewed your profile over the last 90 days.
- 50+ advanced search filters to really pinpoint your ideal clients.
- You can save leads and create lead lists.
- You get 50 InMails per month.
- You get alerts when your saved leads post content, change jobs, or appear in the news.
***
Okay so now you've had an overview of each LinkedIn account, let's deep dive into each use case to see what features and plan is best for each one.
Starting with task 1 and that's profile set up and optimisation.
So with the free account, you can basically do everything you need.
The only benefit of the premium account is that you can add a CTA button to your profile which is very useful and you can add service pages to your profile too which is meant to be good for search, although I'm not sure how that really translates.
Task 2 is posting content which you can do with the free account and there aren't any additional features of benefits available if you upgrade.
Task 3 is to engage with your connections posts - you can do this with your free account by just scrolling the newsfeed.
There aren't any benefits to the premium account here.
But with Sales Navigator, there is a feed of your connections most recent posts which you can work through on a daily basis.
However, I have noticed that this feed doesn't include everyone's posts, which kind of defeats the whole point of having one centralised feed which is annoying.
Task 4 is to search for leads.
Now, with a free account you can use your filters and search for leads easy enough. But they limit the amount of searches you can make.
So if you are able to find your target market using the filters available, but you just need to make more searches, then it would be a good idea to upgrade to premium.
However, if you need to use more filters to find your target market, then this is when sales navigator might be helpful.
However, I will say this. The success of finding leads on LinkedIn boils down to your strategy and how clear your target market is to begin with.
Task 5 is to connect with leads.
So technically you're capped to connecting with 100 people a week anyway, regardless of what LinkedIn account you're on.
And task 6 is to contact leads.
So with your free account, you can happily DM you connections.
With premium and sales navigator you get inmail credits, so this is when you can send someone a DM without being connected with them.
But I'm not really a big fan of these.
My philosophy on this is If they don't accept your connection request, they're probably unlikely to reply to an inmail.
If you do have a sales navigator account, you can message people using sales navigator or your personal profile - but, annoyingly, they don't merge into one thread which makes keeping up track of conversations incredibly difficult too.
That's one feature I really wish LinkedIn would fix.
***
Okay so if you said to me, Hey James, what LinkedIn account should I have?
Here's what I'd say:
If you’re just getting started and mostly posting content and growing your network slowly, the free plan is fine.
If you want to be more proactive - as in see who's checking out your profile and have more searches available then go for Premium Business.
And if you're really serious about using LinkedIn to find your ideal client profile, which may require advanced search filters, then Sales Navigator is right for you.
Just be mindful of how you're having conversations with people as to keep a record of those conversations in one place.
Remember, you can usually get a 1-month free trial of Premium or Sales Nav—so if you do want to test it out you can and if it's not right for you then you can cancel without getting charged.
***
Okay so that brings us to the end of this week's main event and I hope that I have clarified how you should be using LinkedIn to grow your consultancy, the different features that are available and what plan is right for you.
If you do need any other help and advice using LinkedIn to generate leads for your consultancy then I'm here to help.
Just get in touch and let's book in a call.
Thought of the week:
You may hear in my voice that I'm not 100% right this week and feel a bit run down.
And do you know why that is?
Because I've been a very naughty boy and not followed my own advice.
I've been working super hard.
Putting loads of pressure on myself.
I've not been prioritising balance or rest.
I've not been sleeping great.
And I've now crashed.
Which has provided me with the opportunity to look at life.
Realise that I didn't have any balance (which is mental because I'm living here in Bali, you'd think that I'd be living at the beach)
I'm trying to launch WAY too many things at once.
And I just need to just take a minute, slow down and pace myself.
Otherwise, I'm just going to stay stuck on this treadmill of stress and that's not how I want to live life, or how I want my experience here in Bali to go down.
You may relate to this in some way.
***
Thinking about this reminded me of a talk I went to last year.
It was a typical business-type conference thing and they had various speakers throughout the day.
A guy walked on stage.
It was like he had walked out of a London gangster film.
Thick cockney accent. Geezer personality. Del boy vibe.
The type of charisma that was likeable, yet incredibly grating at the same time.
His talk wasn't that great to be fair - it was just a collection of inspiring business quotes really.
BUT, he did something at the end that has always stuck with me.
He handed out a little rubber duck to everyone.
And he said that as business owners, we're a bit like a duck.
Okay random I know, but stay with me here.
Above water, we try to appear calm and collected.
But above water, we're frantically flapping away and we're scared to stop in case we sink.
But like a duck, if you stop flapping for a while, you won't sink, you'll just float.
And I was amazed.
What a brilliant way to end a mediocre talk.
And what a brilliant analogy to put things into perspective when you've been flapping away like mad for ages and made yourself crash as a result.
So, when I realised I burnt the wick at both ends, I reminded myself of my little rubber ducky story.
And hopefully, this story has given you the same relief it did me at the time.
If you've been working super hard recently, give yourself a break.
You won't sink.
You'll just float for a few days until you've got the energy to start flapping away again, at hopefully a sustainable speed.
