Founded in 2002, LinkedIn became the prime junction for the job-seekers and employers for a professional interaction. By 2005, the platform escalated in terms of the services, launching jobs and providing subscription fee options that rapidly increased the active users by 3.3 million approximate in the beginning of the year itself.
However, there are varied statements in the point of view of LinkedIn amass the professional community today. Is LinkedIn in fact a better approach for professional gathering, or is it just overhyped? Let’s discover!
Table of Contents
Cons of LinkedIn
Here are few cons of LinkedIn prevailing in the professional world today:
Bulk of Spam Connections or messages:
Not every message that LinkedIn provides are helpful. Prior mass of professionals go through the common steps and strategies in order to increase their visibility in terms of their business or on an individual basis. Due to this, a ton of spam connections or messages are encountered that convinces users to delete their important messages unknowingly, while prioritizing them as regular spams.
Expensive Pricing for Premium accounts:
If you wish to use a premium account on LinkedIn, it charges you at an approximate of $600 per annum. Although, if you wish to purchase a premium plan on a monthly basis, the subscription fee is $60, an extra $120 of fee every year.
Expensive Pricing for Advertising:
LinkedIn has an expensive advertising plans to showcase the business and market them in the very platform. With a pay-per-click (PPC) of $9 per click approximate, the cost is comparatively higher than that of other social platforms. Despite of having a community of high-valued-audience, the platform charges a significant amount of money for advertising any Ads within the platform.
Privacy Exploitation:
The user has to compromise a lot of personal information like date of birth, contact information, employment history, email address and more in order to register in the platform. Hence, if the security premise of the platform is breached in any case, the confidential and personal information get hacked.
Non-real-time connections:
Alike of the social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, the response rate of LinkedIn is not swift or quick. Hence, establishing business connections might take a longer time than expected, even some weeks or months as the business professionals might not be active in the platform.
Unverified Expertise or claims:
This platform proffers opportunities to professionals to get endorsed by experts as per their skill sets and talents. Hence, the user who has just signed up in the platform may not consist of a lot of endorsements to view. Therefore, there isn’t any guarantee that the person who claims to possess any expertise in any fields or sectors, may not possess the expertise as they claimed.
Unspoken Laws of Posting:
Sometimes, the platform takes down the posts without any notice or rules or withdrawals to the user. As of the fact, the user is unaware of why the post was deleted or taken down, what were the causes that led the post to be deleted, leading oneself to a confusion. Hence, reposting or tweaking the post again is not the solution, until and unless the posting rules are known, which the platform doesn’t publicize.
Searches can track Personal data:
LinkedIn has a high domain authority, i.e., the platform’s website ranking on Google is based upon the domain’s overall quality. Hence, the website is usually ranked at the top while the searches are made on Google too. Therefore, if any user searches about your business on Google, the portfolio of your business at LinkedIn might be displayed that may exhibit the negative perspective of your business, if any negative comments or feedbacks are provided in LinkedIn regarding your business, ultimately providing a negative impression for your business in the eyes of the users.
Pros of LinkedIn
However, there are some key merits of the platform too. Here are the pros of LinkedIn as listed beneath:
Enhanced SEO Profile of Business:
LinkedIn provides an improved SEO profile of any business, as the professionals are aided to produce contents, in turn allowing them to share the contents in the platform itself. Moreover, the contents can be shared on other social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more. Consequently, the business get more exposure and are listed on the higher lists, ultimately improving the business’s SEO profile.
Networking Scopes:
LinkedIn provides diverse networking scopes for professionals who are looking for merging their business with potential customers or clients, in turn providing secure possibilities to escalate their business scope with an extensive research accessibility for business posts and establishing credibility with opportunities.
Regular updates of Latest Business Trends:
Once you’re subscribed to LinkedIn News updates, the platform assists you in providing the latest trends of the business that’s impacting the market vigorously. Also, the platform enables you to associate your accounts and blogs to prioritize your business prospect, allowing you to share experiences and gain insights regarding your business perspective significantly.
Intensified Visibility:
As the platform allows the business professionals to produce contents, share them in diverse social media platforms, gaining visibility in the online world is fairly easier than before. Although the platform enables its users to alter their privacy settings ensuring their data aren’t mined, the visibility of the employer and employees is quite high followed by the business tie-up or connectivity, all thanks to LinkedIn.
Professional Ambience:
Unalike diverse social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and more, LinkedIn maintains a professional environment dedicating the whole platform for the professional usage and connection only. Except professional contents, the platform doesn’t allow the users to share unprofessional contents such as their personal videos, images or audios, amongst many.
Swift Credibility:
LinkedIn provides the users to gain credibility way faster than other social media platforms. As the platform allows business owners and clientele to provide testimonial and feedback that in turn provides a good posture of the business, a fair engagement and a greater response to the profitability of the business, proffering a greater scope of the business on the long run.
Streamlined Profiles:
In LinkedIn, you can search for potential employers and employees based on the target demographic. For instance, if a company has vacancies for IT professionals, the post shall be viewed by the needful employees only, i.e., the IT professionals who are keen to get hired on an IT company. Another instance, if an art enthusiast is looking for a better job in Art field, he/she can view
