How to Warm Up a LinkedIn Account Before You Start Prospecting

A brand new LinkedIn account that starts sending outreach on day one looks like spam, to prospects and to LinkedIn. Josh covers how to warm an account up first, whether you plan to prospect manually or with automation.

Key takeaways

• Aim for 500 connections. Past 500 your profile shows "500+," which looks established. You can start prospecting at around 200 to 300.
• Respect the weekly limit. LinkedIn allows about 100 connection requests per week, and without Sales Navigator it is safer to stay under 80. If you see the limit warning often, slow down and take a couple of days off.
• Target second degree connections. They have the highest acceptance rate, followed by third degree.
• Do a little every day. Accepting pending invites and sending 10 to 20 requests a day from "My Network," even from your phone, adds up.
• Use the easy sources. Past clients, co-workers, classmates, people who viewed your profile and members of relevant groups all tend to accept.
• Optimize before you reach out. A complete, optimized profile is what prospects check after they accept.

Apply it to your business

If you or your team plan to prospect on LinkedIn, give new or quiet accounts a few weeks of steady connection building before any outreach starts. Fill the profile out completely, connect with people you already know, then build toward your target market. An account that gets restricted early costs more time than the warm up does.