What is LinkedIn? Everything about networking, careers and Social Selling

LinkedIn is a social network for professional life. You create a profile showing your career history, connect with colleagues, customers and people in your industry, and read or write posts about your field. People use LinkedIn mainly for job searches, recruiting, professional exchange and B2B sales. The basic account is free.

The difference from Instagram or Facebook is its purpose: on LinkedIn, you show what you can do professionally, and others see you in that role. This article explains how large the network is, how the interface is organised, which terms you should know and how to create a useful profile in ten minutes.

LinkedIn by the numbers

All figures come from LinkedIn’s press site, “About us” page (news.linkedin.com/about-us), accessed on 3 October 2026. As of October 2026.

LinkedIn does not publish a current figure for Germany, Austria and Switzerland alone on that page. That is why there is no figure here. Member counts also refer to accounts, not people who are active every week.

What LinkedIn looks like

When you open LinkedIn for the first time, you land in one of four areas: sign-in, feed, personal profile or company page.

Home page without signing in

Without an account, you see the sign-in page with options to log in or register. Profiles, jobs and posts are only partly visible to people who are not signed in.

Feed: the home page after logging in

After logging in, you land on “Home”. The feed in the centre shows posts from your connections and the pages you follow. At the top, you can use “Start a post” to write a post or an article. The top bar takes you to “My Network”, “Jobs”, “Messaging” and “Notifications”.

Personal profile

Your profile is your digital CV: photo, cover image, headline below your name, location and number of connections, plus sections for About, Experience, Education and Skills. The headline is what others read first—in search results, below your comments and in connection requests.

Company page

Companies have their own pages with a logo, industry, location, employee count and tabs for posts, jobs and people. A company page does not replace a personal profile: it gathers followers, while the people behind the company make connections. The differences between the two are covered in the article on difference between a LinkedIn company page and profile page.

How LinkedIn works

LinkedIn is a digital CV, industry directory, referral network and sales channel in one. People look at your profile before they reply, buy or invite you to a meeting. Three mechanisms make it work.

Profiles instead of websites

Every person and every company has a profile. In a few seconds, it determines whether someone sees you as relevant or moves on. A good profile clearly states who you help, what you help them with and what result you deliver.

Connect instead of cold outreach

Connections start with connection requests. A request is not a sales pitch but an invitation to join your professional network. The clearer your positioning, the more likely people are to accept and the easier it is to start a conversation afterwards.

Visibility through content

Posts put you in your connections’ feeds without you having to send messages all the time. Good posts address a specific problem, draw on your own work and avoid jargon. You can see how many people viewed a post in the LinkedIn impressions.

Many people think LinkedIn only works if you post every day or have thousands of connections. In practice, what matters is a clear profile, a carefully chosen target audience and a consistent routine of connecting, following up and posting occasionally.

LinkedIn terms explained

Five terms come up constantly on LinkedIn. Once you know them, you can understand most settings and prompts straight away.

• Connection degree: First-degree connections are directly connected to you. Second-degree connections are connected to one of your connections, and third-degree connections are connected to them. The degree determines whom you can message directly. Learn more in LinkedIn connection degrees: following or connecting.
• InMail: a message to someone you are not connected with. InMails are available with paid accounts. To find out what they offer and how many you get, see LinkedIn InMail.
• SSI: the Social Selling Index, a score LinkedIn uses to measure your activity across your profile, network and posts. How it is calculated is explained in LinkedIn SSI.
• Premium: the paid tiers for career and business use. You can find current prices in LinkedIn Premium costs.
• Sales Navigator: LinkedIn’s own product for sales, with advanced search filters and lead lists. To get started, see the Sales Navigator guide.

LinkedIn or XING?

Both are professional networks, but they serve different purposes. LinkedIn is international and covers job searches, content, sales and recruiting. XING describes itself as a jobs network for German-speaking countries. These descriptions come from the providers themselves and were accessed on 3 October 2026.

Sources: news.linkedin.com/about-us it and enter it new-work.se/de/unternehmen. You can find a detailed comparison of reach, messaging limits, costs, and target audiences inLinkedIn or XING.

Who LinkedIn is worth it for

LinkedIn doesn’t deliver the same results for everyone. In our experience, these groups get the most out of it:

• Job seekers and people looking to change jobs:Recruiters search using profile details. A complete profile is half the application. You’ll find instructions inThe Perfect LinkedIn Profile in 6 Steps.
• B2B sales and consulting: Decision-makers can be found and contacted directly based on their role, industry and company size.
• Freelancers, coaches and agencies:Regular posts for a clearly defined target audience bring in inquiries without you having to make cold calls. Agencies managing LinkedIn outreach for multiple clients run each campaign with its own target audience and sequence; seeLinkedIn automation for agencies.
• Recruiting and employer branding:Companies reach candidates who aren’t actively looking for a job but are open to being contacted.

LinkedIn makes less sense if your customers are exclusively private individuals who buy only locally. In that case, search engines or Instagram usually deliver better results. If you just create a profile and never use it, you won’t get much out of it either.

Sales, recruiting, and job hunting all use the same approach on LinkedIn, but for different goals: sales teams contact decision-makers, recruiters contact candidates, and job seekers write to hiring managers and recruiters. Each time, you need to find the right profiles and start a conversation without generic opening lines. CompLeadly handles the repetitive work. The desktop app runs on your own computer. It builds a target audience from a LinkedIn people search, Sales Navigator, or Recruiter Lite if you have a separate licence. It visits profiles, sends a connection request and an initial message, then follows up if no one replies. The free version includes 2 connection requests per day (basic feature with a daily limit). Learn more:CompLeadly for recruiters,CompLeadly for sales teams it and enter it Mistakes when searching for jobs on LinkedIn.

Free or Premium?

The free account is enough to get started. Creating a profile, connecting with people, messaging contacts, publishing posts and searching for jobs cost nothing. The paid plans mainly expand your search options, let you contact people outside your network via InMail and provide more statistics. Whether they’re worth it for you depends on how often you reach out to people you don’t know. The plans, prices and date of the information are listed inLinkedIn Premium costs.

Ready in 10 minutes: your checklist

Follow these steps in order, and you’ll have a profile people take seriously after one short session. You can fine-tune it later.

1. Upload profile photo:A recent photo with your face clearly visible and a plain background.
2. Write a headline:not just your job title, but who you help and how. The free version offers ideas for this.LinkedIn Headline Generator, examples can be found inLinkedIn profile tagline.
3. Fill in the info section:Three to five sentences about your experience, your area of focus, and what people can contact you about. A draft is generated by theLinkedIn Summary Generator.
4. Enter your current position:Employer, role, time period, two sentences about the responsibilities.
5. Invite your first contacts:Colleagues, former colleagues, customers, fellow students. People who know you are more likely to accept your connection request.
6. Five pages follow:your employer, two companies in your industry, and two people whose posts you want to read. That way, your feed fills up with relevant content.
7. Write a comment:A thoughtful comment on a post from your industry. It’s the easiest way to start getting noticed.