LinkedIn Connection Limit: Yes, You Can Go Over It…

LinkedIn might be a gold mine for leads, but it does have its limitations.

You can’t just add everyone right off the bat.

It doesn’t work like that.

In this guide, we take a look at LinkedIn connection limits, how you can grow your number of followers or connections “properly”, and what it really means for your business.

What are LinkedIn’s Connection Limitations?

LinkedIn allows you to have a maximum of 30,000 first-degree connections.

It doesn’t matter if you added the 30,000 people or if they added you, as long as you have a connection on the first degree, LinkedIn will allow it.

Now, this only applies to standard accounts and there is one way to increase the limit.

How Do You Increase the 30,000 Limit?

If you opt to have a “follow” button instead of a connection button on your profile, you can technically have an unlimited number of “followers” that you can influence or market to.

However, note that these people will have to make the conscious to follow you and you can’t click a button – like with “Connect” – to get them to connect with you.

What you want to do is access your settings and navigate to the “Visibility” section, click on “Visibility of your LinkedIn activity” and click on “Change” in the “Followers section.

You should be able to access a switch that will replace your “Connect” button with “Follow”.

So “Follow” or “Connect” Button?

Well, that really depends.

You don’t always need to have the “Follow” button unless you want to be a fully-fledged industry leader or influencer in your niche – yes, it does help with branding yourself as one, but it’s not a necessary requirement.

A lot of the influencers that we work with make do with just the normal “Connect” button.

Personally, I’d rather have the “Follow” button because it allows us to reach out to more people with posts, articles, and the resources that we give out.

What is the Ideal Number of LinkedIn Connections?

A lot of marketers will say “the more, the merrier”, but that shouldn’t always be the case, and here’s why.

Yes, there is a lot of merit to having everyone following you because it really puts you on the map as an influencer, but in most cases even just having a “normal” number of followers, e.g. two or three thousand should be enough.

Many niched-out industries only have a finite number of people who will enjoy or get value from what you’re posting. Once you scrub the list down even further for lead generation, you’ll find that you can only use a fraction of the number of followers that you have to reach out to.

For a lot of normal users, 30,000 should be more than enough.

The bottom line here is that you should know what the purpose of accumulating a lot of followers is and adjust accordingly.

Warming Up Your LinkedIn Account

Now that you know how your LinkedIn connection limits, that doesn’t mean you can start adding everyone in one day.

Not only is that a time-consuming and poorly thought-out strategy, but you also won’t be able to target the people that you actually want to connect with.

What’s worse is this.

LinkedIn might even flag you as a bot and have your account banned for suspicious activities.

What you need to do is a gradual increase in LinkedIn activities before you start adding people en masse.

Start with adding 10 people first in your first week, then move to 20, and then so on until you start growing your connections.

This also gives you time to do proper lead qualification before you add people to your list.

At the same time, you want to start gradually talking to people on LinkedIn messenger and you should be increasing the number of posts you’re putting out in a week – preferably around 5 a week.

These simple steps should give you enough time to warm your account before you start adding more and more people to it.

If you want to read more about warming up your LinkedIn account, you should really check out our intensive guide on it.

How Do You Properly Add Connections on Linkedin?

First of all, don’t just anybody to grow your LinkedIn connections.

You need to be very intentional about how you go about your process.

Step 1. Profile Optimization

It all starts with LinkedIn profile optimization.

It has to be your landing page on the profile allowing people who you connect with or come across your posts to see that you’re worth the follow.

Your prospects or people interested in you will judge you based on the profile that you have. You want to look your best and show that you’re worth transacting with or following.

We have extended guides on the blog on how to fully optimize your profile, from your profile photo to your about summary, we’ve got you covered.

Step 2. Build Your ICP

BAMF highly recommends starting things off with an ideal customer profile. You’ll use this to add people that fit your profile.

Try to determine what type of customers you want coming through.

This goes beyond just their demographic profile and extends to their behaviors, patterns, and how their general history. It will be the basis of you reaching out to people and customizing your messages.

Step 3. Craft Your Messages

After choosing people you want to go after, work on your LinkedIn connection request messages. They have to be written, personalized, and meaningful to the recipient so that you get a response.

Your lead generation would be even sweeter if you add new people while using LinkedIn Sales Navigator to determine who’s a good fit for your products.

Here are our LinkedIn connection request templates for you to use!

Also, monitor how many people reply to your messages

Step 4. Lead Nurture

There are different types of lead nurturing that you can do, but we’ll focus mainly on four things:

a) Posting relevant and valuable information so that your connections will be “gently” guided into your pipeline.

b) Direct messages that check up on them and don’t appear to sales-y.

c) Utilizing your omnichannel by reaching out to them on other platforms.

d) Engaging with their posts and calling them out in comments and other posts.

By doing this you continue reeling in people into your sales funnels and that turns your connections into a base of leads that you can work with to

Step 5. Continue Your LinkedIn Activity

Once you’re done with the four steps, what’s critical is that you keep going at it to make sure you have a steady stream of followers coming through while you build a sales funnel!

Should I Automate Adding Followers?

You don’t want to do this as much as possible because it could run the risk of you ending up with a LinkedIn ban or penalty.

The less personalized the approach to following people, the higher the likelihood of getting your request rejected. When LinkedIn notices that a lot of people are rejecting your request, they’ll find that suspicious and you will be flagged or abusing their platform.

Plus, it also disrupts the segmentation that you have in your follower/connection base.

Takeaways on LinkedIn Connection Limits

Here’s the thing.

There are workarounds with LinkedIn’s connection limits when connecting with people.

But, do you really want to connect with everyone?

What’s important is that your audience still translates into real business for your organization.

That should be your bottomline.