While there are a number of different types of paid LinkedIn accounts you can choose from (LinkedIn Premium, For Recruiters, For Job Seekers, For Sales Professionals), LinkedIn Premium is the most balanced paid account type that will generally suit most business owners and professionals.

The LinkedIn Premium account has four different levels of membership that you can choose from depending on your budget and needs:

• Free
• Business Plus
• Executive
• Pro

Here are three of the benefits that may have you wanting to switch from a free account to a LinkedIn Premium account.

#1: Narrow Your Target With Advanced Search

The left section of the Advanced Search is available to all LinkedIn members and includes several fields such as keywords, location and company. In the right-hand section of the Advanced Search are several Premium fields that are valuable because of their ability to help you greatly narrow down and target your searches.

Both paid and free members can use the Relationship, Groups, Location, Current Company, Industry, Past Company, School and Language fields in the Advanced Search.

While several fields (Industries, Groups, Relationship and Current Company) are available to all members, there are eight fields that are available to the different levels of paying members only (all eight fields are available only to the Executive and Pro Premium level members). Premium Members with the Business or Business Plus level membership have access to the following four fields:

• Company Size—This can be beneficial; for example, for businesses that target small businesses and freelancers (select the 1-10 option), members looking for very large businesses (select the 10,000+ option) or any size in between.
  

  You can limit your search by company size.

• Seniority Level—Narrow your search by seniority levels such as VP, manager, senior, owner and partner.
  

  Only search for the seniority level or positions that are useful to you.

• Interested In—Choose from options such as Industry Experts, Entrepreneurs, Potential Employees or Consultants/Contractors to look for specific groups of people.
  

  Quickly search for people like industry experts and entrepreneurs with the Interested In field.

• Fortune 1000—Search strictly for employees at Fortune 1000 companies. There are a number of options that allow you to select the Fortune 50, Fortune 501-1000 and several choices in between.
  

  Narrow your search to Fortune 1000 companies.

For example, you may want to search for facilitators within your local area whom you may not already be connected with but you share a group with. To do this, you would simply type “facilitator” into the Keyword field, select the country, enter your ZIP code or postal code and select within 50 mi (80 km) and finally select Group Members under Relationship.

Finding the people in whom you are most interested using multiple search fields.

Search results are more relevant using Advanced Search.

Another example would be if you were looking to connect with the Communications VPs of Fortune 50 companies whom you share a connection or group with. For this search, you would type “communications” into the keyword field, select Location Anywhere and then check 2nd Connections and Group Members from Relationship, VP from Seniority Level and Fortune 50 under the Fortune 1000 section.

Save time prospecting by searching for LinkedIn members who meet your search requirements.

Get the best search results using Advanced Search.

Finally, Advanced Search allows you to save your searches. Not only will this feature remember your search, it will also send you weekly or monthly notices of any new member profiles that become a part of your network. You can also scan these new profiles from the Saved Search Tab by clicking on the number under New.

As a free member, you can save three searches, while Premium members have the ability to save up to 7 with the additional bonus of 500 profiles showing up in the search results rather than the standard 100 that comes with free membership.

3 Business Reasons to Upgrade to LinkedIn Premium | Social Media Examiner.