The Disadvantages and Advantages of LinkedIn for Business

April 23, 2019

“The Disadvantages and Advantages of LinkedIn for Business” written by Mike Marko.

If you’re here to read about the disadvantages and advantages of LinkedIn for business, you probably aren’t on it yet.

That’s a shame, because it can do so much for your business.

For instance, you can use this platform effectively for lead generation, brand promotion, and even content distribution.

And that’s still just the tip of the iceberg.

In fact, I’ll reveal the main advantages of LinkedIn for business in this article. Along with the ones I’ve already mentioned, you’ll learn about the many reasons you need to put your company on LinkedIn right now.

But in addition to those, I’ll show you the disadvantages of the platform too. That way, you’ll be prepared for even the challenges of LinkedIn marketing.

The Pros and Cons of LinkedIn for Brands

A fair number of brands are already on LinkedIn. In fact, around 30 million companies already have a profile page on the platform.

There are myriad reasons your company should join them. But then again, there are also a few reasons some people would say it shouldn’t.

Let’s take a look at the advantages of LinkedIn for business first. Afterwards, I’ll show you the disadvantages so you can weigh them against each other.

Advantages of LinkedIn

As I said before, there are many advantages of LinkedIn for business. We’ll only talk about the most important ones for your business here, though.

Something that needs to be mentioned is that a few of the advantages of LinkedIn I mention here seem a little obvious at first.

But here’s the thing — a lot of people don’t actually make use of them.

Take the content marketing advantages of LinkedIn, for instance. A fair number of people know the platform can be used to distribute content.

Yet the number of users who actually distribute content on it is astonishingly low. In fact, only 3 million of its 500 million users even share content weekly on the platform.

That’s only 0.6% of all users! So there’s more than enough space for other content distributors on the platform.

In any case, let’s get started with the advantages of LinkedIn so you can start making plans for them as early as possible.

1) It Facilitates Networking

LinkedIn is a social network, so this is probably one of the advantages of LinkedIn that will surprise no one. Still, professional networking is remarkably easy on LinkedIn.

It may have to do with the character of LinkedIn’s users. Most of the people on LinkedIn are either professionals or business owners like you.

That means many of them are not only open to business networking but are actively performing it themselves.

Another of the advantages of LinkedIn for professional networking comes from its features. Many of them make networking simpler.

For example, with LinkedIn, you can even see the degree of separation between you and a potential new contact.

That makes networking easier than ever. After all, it shows you mutual connections you can use to establish new relationships.

It’s also worth noting that many of the people on LinkedIn are also decision-makers in their businesses.

That gives you access to the people you need to build fruitful new partnerships. In most cases, you won’t even have to go through their gatekeepers.

If you’ve ever had to go through a prickly gatekeeper to access a decision-maker, you’ll realize this is one of the best advantages of LinkedIn.

2) It Can Boost Brand Credibility

This is among the most important LinkedIn advantages.

Credibility and legitimacy are two things every brand needs to establish as soon as possible, after all. Without them, consumers are unlikely to try out a brand’s offerings.

Now, having a properly-made company page on the platform already helps. It gives potential clients a place to touch base when trying to find out more about you online.

Furthermore, a company page gives employees something to connect to in their personal profiles’ “Experience” data. Again, that boosts your brand’s credibility.

But yet another of the advantages of LinkedIn for brands seeking to build credibility is the “recommendation”.

This is a testimonial from a customer or client. You can actually request one from customers or clients via the network.

To boost credibility using the platform, simply request recommendations from others on it. You should ask only those with whom you’ve worked before, of course.

If they provide a recommendation that you can publish, that’s one more public testimonial to your credibility.

3) It Can Help Your SEO

Search engines index content and company pages from this platform. That’s one of the LinkedIn advantages.

Why, you ask?

First, it means that your LinkedIn company page can help your brand rank high in things like Google search.

Just keep in mind that you need an optimized LinkedIn company page for best results, though.

That means making sure the following are true:

It’s fully filled-out.
It has links to your company website and blog.
It uses the appropriate keywords.

Another outcome of this entry in my list of the advantages of LinkedIn is that a strong content strategy on LinkedIn can be of benefit.

Again, that’s because content on it is indexed by search engines.

So putting out content on LinkedIn can boost your brand’s visibility online.

Just make sure that your content is both high-quality and equipped with links to your website or blog. This can help direct traffic to your site as well.

4) It’s Great for B2B

While LinkedIn can be of use to B2C (business to consumer) companies as well, it’s even better for B2B (business to business) ones.

Again, this has to do with the professional makeup of its user base. That makes many of the advantages of LinkedIn particularly potent for B2B.

I’ve mentioned time and time before that LinkedIn is the top content distribution channel for B2B marketers.

That’s no surprise, given that 91% of executives also consider it their top source for content.

It may also be the top social media network for launching B2B products. As much as 81% of B2B marketers use it for that purpose.

So if your business has a B2B element to it at all — or if you need certain partnerships to take your company to the next level — don’t skip this network.

The LinkedIn advantages for B2B are too good to pass up.

5) It Helps You Recruit New Talent

The ease of recruiting new talent on the platform has long been one of the great advantages of LinkedIn.

After all, it’s full of professionals. It focuses on their work history too in their pages’ bios/public data.

This makes finding and researching prospective employees simple.

In fact, more than 30,000 US companies are already using this one of the advantages of LinkedIn. Furthermore, over 3 million jobs are posted on it (in the US) every month.

6) It Can Generate Leads

One of the advantages of LinkedIn is that you can use it to generate leads in various ways.

You can link to your site on your content or posts, as I mentioned earlier.

You can also link to your site on your company page. This can encourage visitors to your profile to check out your website and offerings.

You can even tag posts on which your company’s been mentioned so that people check out your company profile — which, again, has the link to your website.

LinkedIn’s lead-generating powers tend to be more obvious for B2B, of course. In fact, a full 80% of B2B leads from social media come from LinkedIn.

So this is definitely one of the advantages of LinkedIn that B2B companies can’t afford to pass up.

7) It Lets You Use Showcase Pages

Showcase Pages are among the unique advantages of LinkedIn for businesses.

These are basically extension pages off a company page. They let you show off specific products or services that you want to promote.

There are several things that makes these pages particularly valuable.

First, they give you an easy way to target different markets or buyer personas.

Each Showcase Page can be aimed at a different set of consumers.

Yet all Showcase Pages are ultimately tied to your company page, so there’s no confusion over the brand offering the product or service.

Furthermore, a user can follow a Showcase Page without following a company’s main page.

This is among the advantages of LinkedIn because it makes it easier for consumers to follow you. It takes the pressure off for consumers interested in just one of your products or services.

The Disadvantages of LinkedIn Marketing

Now as with everything else, there are two sides to the LinkedIn marketing coin. Thus far we’ve looked at the pretty side or the advantages of LinkedIn for business.

Now it’s time to check out the opposite — the disadvantages.

Comparatively speaking, I still think there are more advantages of LinkedIn than disadvantages.

That said, it never hurts to be prepared for the issues you’ll encounter.

So let’s start our list of LinkedIn disadvantages with one of the most obvious cons of the platform for marketers.

1) It’s Not Ideal for Reaching Younger Consumers

LinkedIn’s nature as a career-focused social network makes its lower age range still higher than most other platforms’.

If a significant part of your audience is made up of adolescents who don’t have careers yet, this is not the place for reaching out to them.

2) Moderation Doesn’t Always Catch Spam

Spamming is rampant on all social networks, of course. That has to be said.

Still, there have been some cases of obvious spam that I think LinkedIn moderators should have caught before approval.

For instance, I’ve actually seen Sponsored InMail that was more than a little dubious.

A spammy message, I understand. They’re common enough and no one audits them.

But a spammy Sponsored InMail that looks like a phishing scam? Surely a moderator should’ve caught that.

3) Premium Accounts Aren’t Cheap

They’re not uber-expensive either… but still.

At present, a premium account will cost you $600 sans taxes.

Worse, it can cost over a hundred dollars more if you pay for it on a monthly basis.

My advice? If you’re getting a premium account, pay it in one lump (annual) sum. It’s much cheaper in the long run.

4) Posting Rules Are Sometimes a Mystery

LinkedIn’s moderators sometimes take down posts without telling you too much about why they were taken down.

It’s not a common occurrence. But when it does happen, it’s enormously irritating.

After all, if you don’t know why they took down a post, you won’t know what to change in it. You’ll just have to keep tweaking it and reposting until it gets through them again.

Final Thoughts on the Disadvantages and Advantages of LinkedIn

That wraps it up for my list of the disadvantages and advantages of LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is one of the most important social networking sites for businesses today. This is not just because it’s one of the biggest of these networks.

It’s also because it has unique characteristics that make it especially useful for businesses in certain ways.

I showed you those ways in my list of the top 7 advantages of LinkedIn. To recap, here are the advantages of LinkedIn that I went over:

It facilitates professional networking.
It can help you boost the credibility of your brand in several ways.
It can help your SEO thanks to search engines indexing pages and content on it.
It’s great for B2B content distribution, networking, and product/service launches.
It can help you recruit new talent.
It’s great for lead generation.
It has Showcase Pages you can use to reach different markets and promote different products.

But in addition to those, I also showed you the disadvantages of the social network. Here they are again:

It’s not ideal for reaching younger consumers.
Moderation doesn’t always catch spam.
Premium accounts aren’t cheap.
Posting Rules are sometimes a mystery.

If you need more help realizing these advantages of LinkedIn or have questions about the disadvantages, leave me a message in the comments below. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

Be sure to check out my Starter’s Guide to LinkedIn Marketing. You can also check out this LinkedIn Marketing 101 Guide for Business.

If you need help with your LinkedIn account, planning your services and/or products, running marketing campaigns like Facebook ads, or creating capture pages or lead magnets, then feel free to contact me and we can talk about the different consulting options we offer. Or use the link below to apply for your “results in advance” free consultation and let’s get started right away:

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Author: Mike Marko
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The Disadvantages and Advantages of LinkedIn for Business