LinkedIn Premium for Small Business: What to Use Each Week

What did LinkedIn launch for small businesses on 12 May 2026?

LinkedIn's 12 May 2026 newsroom post, LinkedIn Tools to Help Small Businesses Scale Up, added or expanded five things for small businesses:

• Advice Sessions. Paid 1-on-1 consultations offered from your profile, with bookings, payments and video calls in one place. In May, LinkedIn said it would roll out to Premium Business subscribers in the U.S. that month. On 15 October 2026 it said the feature is now available to Business Premium subscribers in the U.S., with more markets coming soon.
• Competitor Analytics. LinkedIn said Premium subscribers can track up to nine companies to compare follower growth and content engagement; its help page ties that limit to Premium Company Page.
• Top prospect posts in Premium All-in-One. Alongside daily prospect suggestions, LinkedIn said it would surface prospects' top posts so you can join conversations your target audience is already part of.
• Boosting posts from mobile. Listed under Premium All-in-One and described as rolling out.
• A chat experience in Hiring Pro for refining job qualifications and sharing feedback in plain language.

The same post says LinkedIn's own data shows founder growth in the U.S. up about 70% year on year. Competitor Analytics and the prospect posts feed help most with warm engagement, which here means being seen by and talking with the right people before you ever pitch them. The rest of this post covers which plan includes each tool, what it does, and a weekly routine that uses them by hand.

Which LinkedIn Premium plan includes which tool?

Each tool sits in a different plan, and one plan is still on limited release. This table uses LinkedIn's own plan pages, checked on 20 October 2026; the monthly equivalents in brackets are our arithmetic on the annual prices.

Sources: Premium Business, Premium All-in-One, Premium Company Page, Competitor analytics help page and Personalize invitations to connect. LinkedIn's pricing pages say prices are estimates that may exclude tax, list different prices by currency, and were last updated on 20 April 2026. The All-in-One page also says its boost and hiring credits may differ by region and local currency.

One more change matters for warm engagement. On 15 October 2026, LinkedIn said Premium subscribers can now add private notes to profiles to remember that they met someone, what they discussed and when to reconnect, and that this is available globally.

How does LinkedIn Competitor Analytics work?

It compares your Company Page with competitors' Pages on followers and organic posts, and shows their trending posts. LinkedIn's help page, shown as last updated about six months ago, lists three views:

• Follower metrics: all-time followers and new followers gained in the date range you choose.
• Organic content metrics: metrics for posts created in that range. LinkedIn notes you may not see all posts, depending on their targeting settings.
• Trending competitor posts: the top trending original posts your competitors created in the past 30 days, refreshed daily.

A free Page gets the aggregated table for 1 competitor and trending posts for 1 competitor. A Premium Company Page gets the table for up to 9 competitors (you can add 8 beyond the first) and trending posts for up to 3.

To open it, LinkedIn's steps are: go to your Page admin view, click Analytics in the left menu, then click Competitors. Add the Pages you want to compare. Even on Premium, trending posts cover up to three competitors, so the other six give you numbers rather than posts to read.

LinkedIn's view stops at LinkedIn. If you also want to know what competitors launched, priced or hired for elsewhere, Siela's Competitor Watch sends a briefing every Monday morning with links and one line on what each change means for you.

What do daily prospect suggestions and prospect posts do?

They put a daily list of likely buyers, and a feed of what your top prospects are posting, in front of you. Both are part of Premium All-in-One, which LinkedIn introduced on 12 February 2026 and still describes as available to a limited group.

• Daily prospect suggestions: 15 suggestions a day for prospective clients, based on your target criteria and activity. LinkedIn says you can change the criteria at any time, save suggestions and message people when you are ready.
• Trending posts from prospects: a curated feed of trending posts from your top prospects, so you can join the conversations they are already in.
• Prospect insights: details such as recent company changes and mutual connections, to make your message specific.
• InMail: 30 credits a month, which the plan comparison page says roll over for 3 months.
• Follower invites: LinkedIn automatically invites prospects who engage with your content to follow you, even if you are not connected.

LinkedIn also makes its own claim for the plan: it says All-in-One subscribers are 60% more likely to get replies from suggested prospects (LinkedIn data, December 2025). LinkedIn does not say what that is compared with, so treat it as a vendor claim.

In our view, the useful part for a small team is the feed of prospects' posts. A comment on a post someone wrote this week is a warmer first touch than a cold InMail, and it costs nothing but your time.

A weekly warm engagement routine using LinkedIn's own tools

Set aside about 90 minutes a week, split over five short sessions. Every step happens by hand inside LinkedIn, using the tools above. The times are our estimates, and the plan names say which tool each step needs.

1. Monday: read the competitor view

   Open Analytics, then Competitors. Note the two or three trending competitor posts with the most engagement and what they were about. Click through to see who commented: people who comment on a competitor's post about your problem are worth a look.

   15 minutes; any Page admin, best on Premium Company Page

2. Tuesday: sort the prospect suggestions

   Go through the day's 15 suggestions. Save the ones that fit your customer profile and skip the rest. If most miss, change your target criteria now instead of scrolling past them every day.

   15 minutes; Premium All-in-One

3. Wednesday: comment on five prospect posts

   From the trending prospect posts, pick five where you can add a fact, a number or a short story. Write two or three sentences, and do not pitch. Our LinkedIn comment templates give you 30 starting points.

   20 minutes; Premium All-in-One, or a saved list on free

4. Thursday: post once on what is trending

   Write one post on the theme you saw doing well on Monday, from your own experience. If you have All-in-One boost credits, boost it to your target audience.

   25 minutes; any plan

5. Friday: connect, message, record

   Send connection requests, with a note, to people who replied to your comments or engaged with your post. Use InMail for the two or three warmest people who are not connected. On Premium, add a private profile note on each: where you met, what you discussed, when to follow up.

   15 minutes; profile notes and InMail need Premium

Keep a simple tally each Friday: comments posted, replies received, connection requests accepted and conversations started. After four weeks you will know which day's work brings conversations and which you can drop.

Is LinkedIn Premium worth it for a small business?

It depends on whether you will use what you pay for each week. One way to compare: if InMail is the only feature you use, Premium Business works out to about US$4.67 per credit (US$69.99 for 15) and All-in-One to about US$3.00 (US$89.99 for 30), at the monthly prices above. Prospect suggestions, the prospect feed and boost credits only pay off if you open them most weeks.

A free account can still run a smaller version of the routine:

• Competitors: a free Page gets competitor analytics for 1 competitor, so pick the one you lose deals to most.
• Prospects: build your own list of 20 to 30 people who fit your customer profile, follow them, and check their activity on Tuesdays and Wednesdays instead of using suggestions.
• Notes: LinkedIn's help page on personalising invitations, shown as updated about six months ago, says free accounts can add a personal note to up to three connection requests a month, up to 200 characters each. Premium members can add notes to all of them, though LinkedIn says connection request limits may still apply. Save your three notes for people you have already spoken with in comments.
• Context: without Premium profile notes, keep a one-line record of each conversation in a spreadsheet or your CRM.

Start free for a month, track the four numbers from Friday, and upgrade only when one missing tool is clearly the bottleneck. If you post as a founder, our guide to LinkedIn personal branding for founders covers the posting half of this routine in more depth.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. LinkedIn newsroom: LinkedIn Tools to Help Small Businesses Scale Up (published 12 May 2026)
2. LinkedIn newsroom: New Ways to Build Meaningful Connections, Grow Your Side Hustle, and Earn on LinkedIn (published 15 Oct 2026)
3. LinkedIn newsroom: LinkedIn Introduces Premium All-in-One Offering for Small Businesses (published 12 Feb 2026)
4. LinkedIn Premium: Premium All-in-One (pricing last updated 20 Apr 2026; checked 20 Oct 2026)
5. LinkedIn Premium: Premium Business (pricing last updated 20 Apr 2026; checked 20 Oct 2026)
6. LinkedIn Premium: Premium Company Page (pricing last updated 20 Apr 2026; checked 20 Oct 2026)
7. LinkedIn Premium: Small business plans and pricing (compare plans) (checked 20 Oct 2026)
8. LinkedIn Help: Competitor analytics for your LinkedIn Page (checked 20 Oct 2026)
9. LinkedIn Help: Access your LinkedIn Page analytics (checked 20 Oct 2026)
10. LinkedIn Help: Personalize invitations to connect (checked 20 Oct 2026)