Do You Need LinkedIn Premium To Grow?
What You’ll Learn in this Issue
- Start with the fundamentals: a clear profile, valuable content, meaningful engagement, and genuine relationship-building.
- Consider Premium only when your goals expand into networking, sales, recruiting, or proactive outreach.
- Choose the Premium plan that matches your objective, rather than assuming every executive needs a subscription.
Executives starting to build on LinkedIn often wonder whether a Premium subscription is necessary to amplify their presence. The Premium badge, profile insights, and additional features can make it seem like growth is locked behind a paywall.
But is that really the case?
In this issue of North Star, we explore what LinkedIn Premium offers, where it genuinely helps, and whether you need it for your stage of executive branding.
Basics: With or Without Premium
A lot of what LinkedIn Premium offers only becomes valuable depending on what you're trying to achieve on the platform.
For most executives just starting out, the primary goal is usually building thought leadership and increasing visibility in their industry. And you don't need Premium to do that.
The fundamentals of executive branding can all be accomplished with a free account:
• Having a clear positioning and optimized profile
• Sharing valuable insights consistently
• Engaging with the right people
• Building relationships through comments and DMs
• Creating content that reflects your expertise and personality
These activities are what drive a strong personal brand on LinkedIn long before any subscription benefits come into play.
When Free LinkedIn Stops Being Enough
LinkedIn Premium becomes useful when your goal goes beyond simply posting and building thought leadership.
So if your goals go beyond thought leadership and you want more tangible outcomes, such as networking, sales, recruiting, or outbound relationship-building, LinkedIn Premium starts becoming less of an option and more of a necessary investment.
The Different Types Of LinkedIn Premium
Premium Career
Built for job seekers. It gives you additional profile insights, applicant comparisons, and a few InMail credits. Not particularly useful for executive branding unless you're actively exploring new opportunities.
Premium Business
The most relevant option for executives. It offers extended profile view insights, more search filters, company information, and additional InMail credits to support networking and relationship building.
Sales Navigator
Designed for sales and heavy networking. It includes advanced search filters, lead lists, account tracking, and alerts on prospects and companies. Ideal if LinkedIn is a major business development channel for you.
Recruiter Lite
Built for hiring and talent acquisition. It provides advanced candidate search and outreach capabilities but has limited value if your primary goal is personal branding.
To sum it up, LinkedIn Premium offers many features that support executive branding, making it an ideal addition for certain goals. But it is never the baseline requirement.
LinkedIn is still highly effective and can be a powerful tool for building visibility and elevating your online authority, even without a subscription.
Executive Spotlight
Hareesh Janakiraman has spent nearly four decades in embedded systems, microcontrollers, and engineering education. A Fulbright Specialist, guest lecturer, and mentor, he uses LinkedIn to share technical insights and lessons from years of teaching and mentoring.
What makes his profile stand out is his documenting approach. He consistently shares experiences from the classroom, student interactions, and the industry. In one post, he explains why interview preparation starts on the first day of college, turning a simple question into a lesson on lifelong learning.
His profile is a reminder that even highly technical professions can build a meaningful presence on LinkedIn through thoughtful documentation.
Resource of the Week
If you're someone who constantly comes across good ideas online and then forgets where you found them, Glasp is a good tool to try.
It lets you highlight articles, PDFs, YouTube videos, and Kindle books, save notes, and build a personal library of insights. A simple tool for readers, writers, and curious professionals who want to keep learning without losing great ideas along the way.
Coming Up Next…
LinkedIn has recently introduced a “Seems Like AI” feedback option as part of its broader effort to reduce low-quality, inauthentic, and overly automated content on the platform.
In the next issue of North Star, we’ll explore LinkedIn’s AI crackdown and whether it will make the platform more authentic.
Till then, your presence matters more than your subscription.
