Growth is a race.
And, before any race you’ve got to warmup.
Sometimes we just want to rush in, hitting the ground running so you don’t waste any time.
But, we know things can go bad when you forget to warmup.
Warming up is the first step in winning.
LinkedIn also follows the same principles, there are instances where you have to first warmup your account before you can start bringing in wins.
In this guide, I’ll go through when you should be warming up your account and how you can go through the process.
When Should I Consider Warming Up a LinkedIn Account?
The aim of warming up a LinkedIn account is to ensure that it is not marked as spammy or managed by a both.
You see, the LinkedIn algorithm is easily alarmed.
A sudden spike in your activity can get your LinkedIn account banned.
You need to take it easy.
Here’s are a couple of instances where you should consider warming up your account.
New Accounts
Warming up a LinkedIn account is critical if it’s newly made because you want to prove to the LinkedIn algorithm that you are a real person who’s on the platform to act “normally.”
Spamming on social media using fake accounts or bots isn’t anything new, so one of the ways these sites are policed is by examining the activity that a new user has.
New users won’t want to spend six hours on the platform engaging with every post with a specific hashtag nor will they try to add 300 connections right off the bat.
These actions are suspicious because they aren’t normal.
If you just started a new LinkedIn account and you can’t wait to growth hack, we strongly advise that you warm it up before you do yourself any damage.
If Your Account Was Recently Restricted
Account restrictions suck.
They throw a wrench in your outreach campaigns and getting your account back can take a considerable amount of time.
If your LinkedIn account was recently restricted or if you want to prevent a restriction in the future, check out our ultimate guide to LinkedIn restrictions here.
This makes a warmup critical to continuing your usage on LinkedIn.
Previously restricted accounts have to be treated like they’re brand-new.
The normal procedure would be to stop all your current campaigns, including the use of tools.
Some growth hackers will even suggest cancelling all connection and message requests if possible, so that you can have a fresh start after a ban.
Once, you’re done with that, you can start the warmup procedures.
If You Decide to Ramp Up Your Efforts on LinkedIn
Accounts without a lot of activity will be marked suspicious if engagements and interactions starts ramping up too quickly.
This could get your account flagged for spam or, worse, restricted.
Ramping up your efforts on LinkedIn involves a little warming up to show LinkedIn that you’re not doing anything spammy, and you just want to increase your activity on the site.
LinkedIn Connection Requests
The first area that you should be warming up is LinkedIn connection requests.
It’s easy to get carried away with sending requests right away.
After all, LinkedIn is a social network and if you want to build your network, you’ve got to make those connections.
However, LinkedIn makes sending connection requests so easy that even a bot could do it.
(And, we assure you, bots have and will continue to do it.)
It might be really tempting to just start connecting with a hundred people a day, but that’s not an organic way to warm up your account.
What helps is to slowly build before you hit a good number – say fifty a day.
Why just 50?
Think about it.
Is it natural for someone to send out one hundred connections a day?
Daily Number of Connection Requests
Now here’s the maximum recommended number of connection requests that you should be sending out on a daily basis.
- On your first to fifth days – around 10 connection requests a day are perfectly alright.
- From day 5 to day 15 – you can double that number and send out 20 connection requests, LinkedIn will have acknowledged that you are an active user.
- From day 15 to day 20 – add another 10 connections to bring the total to 30 daily connections. We don’t want to double the number here because it won’t seem organic to do that.
- From day 20 to day 25 – you can bring your total daily connection requests to 50.
Maximum Daily Number of Connection Requests
As you progress, you can start adding a little more to the number that you send out.
Here’s what.
Don’t send more than 250 connections a day regardless of what people tell you.
It’s just way too much.
You want to make sure that the maximum number of connections that you’re sending out is from 3-5% of your total connections on LinkedIn.
Personally, I would stick to around 50 a day. 50 multiplied by the average number of working days in a month (22) is 1,100 connections a month.
It’s a much safer alternative.
Growth hackers should strike the right balance between making enough connections and accidentally getting their accounts restricted. Getting enough connections just takes time, but having a restricted account could kill your campaign altogether.
That’s enough to kickstart any campaign, and you have the peace of mind knowing that your account is safe.
Type of LinkedIn Accounts
If you have a premium LinkedIn account through LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you can get away with more connection requests.
We’re looking at daily rates of 70-90 requests a day.
The rates are higher because LinkedIn already expects you to do prospecting with a Sales Navigator account so they’ll let you get away with it.
(Plus, it’s paid.)
So, to recap, a maximum of 50 for regular accounts, and 70-90 for premium ones.
Direct Messages
Warming up your direct messages are as important as warming up the number of connections you can make.
Most of your outreach is going to be based off of direct messages, so it’s one aspect of your warmup that you can’t leave to chance.
Here’s our recommendation:
- 80 messages a day if you’re still warming up your account for the first two weeks.
- 100-150 messages a day after you feel like it’s warmed up enough
- 250-300 (or more) messages a day if you have a premium account. However, this can get dangerous so we advise that you only do it if you’re absolutely sure your movement is seen as organic.
If you look at it, these limits on direct messages are not so bad especially if you’re running a highly targeted campaign with heavy segmentation – which you should be doing in the first place.
Here’s what.
We like these limits because it allows you time to customize each message that you send out, and we all know that the more fine-tuned the messaging, the more it can resonate with your prospects.
Maximum Searches a Month
Another aspect of warming up a LinkedIn account that you should pay close attention to is the number of searches you’re making on the platform.
Here are our numbers:
- If you have a new account or if you’ve just recently had your account back after a restriction, then you should aim for up to 30 searches in a month.
- For accounts, that have been warmed – say for two months – you could bring that number up to 300 if you wanted to.
- Sales Navigator still remains king with an unlimited number of searches because you’re essentially paying for an advanced search tool.
Search and scrape is a popular tactic that a lot of bots do on the platform, and having these limitations help prevent instances of this being employed.
As long as you keep within the limitations of LinkedIn, there’s nothing that you should be awfully worried about.
Key Takeaways
Warming a LinkedIn account is more than just preventing yourself from getting banned.
It also sets your pace and momentum for the campaigns that you want to do.
If growth is a race, setting your pace is critical to winning.
Use the warmup time to reevaluate your strategy, tweak your material, and personalize your campaigns even further.
This is how every growth hacker, influencer and digital marketer started their journey on LinkedIn.
That’s how you should, too.
Happy hacking.
