The Marketing Mentress: Li Tip #100 - What are the Limitations of the FREE Platform?

Are you still using the FREE version of the LinkedIn platform?

Do you wonder if you should make the jump to a paid platform?

For the first few years I was using LinkedIn, I determined to use only the FREE version of the platform. What I discovered was that I kept running into roadblocks while using it.

When I first started with LinkedIn, you could do so much with it that you really didn't need a paid platform. You could send up to 300 or 400 InMail to members of groups you were in. It was terrific!

Then over the years LinkedIn has started "pulling in the reins".

Here are some of the limitations I began experiencing, and many of my connections using the FREE platform are still experiencing.

1. You can only view 5-10 people who have viewed your profile. On a paid platform you can view many more, depending on the platform you are using.

2. You can only scroll down to a few of the messages you have received in your InMail box. You cannot scroll down forever to view all your InMail. However, to get around this, you can do a search by name and find the InMail you are looking for.

3. When you do searches, you can only view a few results from your search. On a paid platform, you can view up to 500 or more.

4. When viewing company pages, you cannot see all the staff that work for the companies on their LinkedIn Company Pages. You are cut off at about 10-20 people.

5. Everyone on a FREE platform gets 15 FREE InMail they can use to message people without being connected to them. The caveat is that you can only use these in the groups. Hence the secrets of the groups is one of the main things I teach my clients.

6. The Advanced search has less options for the search criteria on the FREE platform.

There are work-a-rounds for the FREE platform, but I found that I was spending inordinate amounts of time "working around" the limitations that I opted to get on a paid platform. The paid platforms make life so much easier.

Besides, we are all in business really to help as many people as we can, aren't we. The way I see it, I can help way more people on the paid platform than I can on the FREE one.

Let me know if you have found more limitations for LinkedIn usage. I will blog about them to let everyone know what to expect.

To catch one of my "LinkedIn Secrets" webinars, click here.

I look forward to meeting you on the platform.

Christine Till

The Marketing Mentress