If you’re trying to figure out how to get more connections on LinkedIn, you’re not alone.
Who to connect with on LinkedIn in order to build a network is a question I often get asked. Every time someone sends me a connection request, I always send out a reply thanking them and also asking them to contact me should they ever need any help with LinkedIn. Well, not everyone asks me a question, but by far the question that I get the most is:
How to get more connections on LinkedIn?
As I have seen my network grow over time to the maximum 30,000 connections that LinkedIn allows you to have, I believe I have the experience to be able to help you effectively grow your network to meet whatever objective and target audience you might have. That being said, there are many ways to achieve this and you will need to be the judge as to which methods you use.
So, what are some specific ways in how to get more connections on LinkedIn?
First of all, I think it is necessary to understand why a large network on LinkedIn is important. I believe that the main purpose in using this social networking for professionals is TO FIND AND BE FOUND.
In order to do this, you need to use LinkedIn’s search filters, which surface results based on whatever search terms you enter from within your network. Your LinkedIn network, for those of you newer to the platform, is defined as your direct connections (1st degree), your 1st degree connections’ connections (2nd degree), and your 2nd degree connections’ connections (3rd degree).
When you first joined LinkedIn, your searches may have returned only a handful of results, but as you grow your network, you will realize why some people pay to get more results and access more search filters that LinkedIn Premium provides.
A good example is way back when I was looking for people in the Staffing and Recruiting industry (headhunters, etc.) who might be working in my field of specialty at the time (IPTV). I would enter the keyword IPTV and select the Staffing and Recruiting industry and voila! I would get 70+ people that popped up. One month later, after increasing the number of LinkedIn connections I had, the number increased to 90+.
This is a simple case study to illustrate the fact that the larger your LinkedIn network, the more you will find and be found. A side point is that your search results will always change as your network grows, so make sure you do regular searches for finding people that are important to you and do not get frustrated if nothing shows up on your first search.
Key Takeaways
✅ The larger your LinkedIn network, the more you find and are found, since search results draw from your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd degree connections.
✅ Grow actively by inviting colleagues, classmates, email contacts, and group members, and passively by completing your profile so others find you.
✅ Complete every job and school in your profile, including high school and study abroad, because each entry is another way to be discovered.
✅ Only invite strangers when you share context like a group or mutual connections; too many ignored or reported invitations can restrict your account.
✅ LinkedIn limits how many invitations you can send, so spend them on people who are actually on the platform and add value to your network.
Now that we know why it is important to grow our network, let’s look at some of the common ways of how to get more connections on LinkedIn. There are two types of ways to achieve this:
- an active way, using one’s invitations, and
- a passive way, hoping that people will find you and invite you to their network.
Let’s start with the active ways of inviting others:
1. Invite Co-Workers from Past and Present Companies
This sounds very simple and indeed is. LinkedIn offers ways for you to easily find people from your past companies that are LinkedIn members. You can then connect up without knowing their email address. This is really the reason why most people are on LinkedIn and how LinkedIn began to develop, to help you find old colleagues.
However, you can only find people if your profile is up-to-date. That means the more companies that you say that you worked for in your profile, the more colleagues you will find. Make sure you complete your profile for every job you have held since you started working for optimum results. This may sound elementary, but responding to the question of how to build my network on LinkedIn always begins here.
2. Invite Classmates from Present and Past Schools
You can find old classmates on LinkedIn just as you can find old colleagues. In order to do so, though, you need to have your profile updated for every school that you have attended…but maybe not every school.
About 99% of the profiles I see only go back as far as their college. I have added my high school to my profile, but I have only been able to find other classmates not through this feature but by doing a keyword search for my high school name.
During and after college I spent time doing foreign language study at colleges in China, Taiwan, and Japan, and I have added these to my profile. Through this I was able to reconnect with a classmate from my 1988-89 foreign student class in Beijing for the first time since!
Anyways, I would recommend putting every school you attended starting from high school as well as summer and study abroad programs to maximize the benefits here.
3. Invite Business and Personal Contacts from Your Email Database
This is the way that new people generally get invited in to the LinkedIn network.
LinkedIn will conveniently check your digital address books and allow you to see who from your database is on LinkedIn and then automatically generate an invitation with one easy push of the button.
I caution you here not to just invite anyone and everyone that shows up on these lists, and if your network already includes connections who no longer fit, it is worth knowing how to remove a LinkedIn contact.
You may have emailed a bunch of companies asking for a quote on some home improvement project, for instance, and these people will show up here…do you really want to invite the guy who’s business you turned down?
You could have an Outlook contact of someone who is now working at your competition…do you want him to be part of your network?
You really need to go through the results here carefully and only keep the checks on those people that:
- are on LinkedIn (they should be displaying in a different color with more information), and
- you feel will add value to your network.
One final note here is that I recommend you DO NOT invite anyone who is not currently a member of LinkedIn. We all find out the hard way, but LinkedIn limits the number of invitations you can send, and today it enforces that limit on a weekly basis. Those invitations go quickly as you navigate through the members of this more than 1.3 billion strong community and build your network, so every invitation you spend on someone who never signs up is an invitation wasted.
4. Invite LinkedIn Group Members from Groups That You Belong to
There are many Groups that you can easily search for and join on LinkedIn. Although I was initially intimidated to join a group, it is a very easy process and I don’t think I have been refused entry to a group so far, although there are some that will ask you to register on their websites or provide them your email address.
Joining a group is easy and benefits you in that you can now filter your searches by group and see people that may not already be part of your extended network.
As for inviting people from within a group, make sure that you check their profile, and if they say nothing about being open to connecting, make sure that you have a minimal number of mutual connections with them. I would start with a minimum number of 5 mutual connections but raise that as you increase your number of connections and thus potential mutual connections with others you don’t know.
If the above conditions aren’t met, do not risk yourself by inviting them. I made the mistake early on of inviting someone just because they were a member of the same group. BIG MISTAKE. One reported invitation later I came to the conclusion that just because you think that someone in your group would welcome an invite from their fellow group member doesn’t mean that they think the same.
5. Invite Other People in Your Network to Connect After Finding Them via Search
This is the most popular method of how to get more connections on LinkedIn when you want to scale your network growth quickly. It is also the way that most LinkedIn automation tools work.
The value of LinkedIn is that there is no other site for professionals where you can absolutely pinpoint and contact a person in a certain industry with a certain company and title.
If you are in sales (or are a recruiter), LinkedIn is like a heaven-sent gift.
That being said, you will get kicked out of LinkedIn if you do not respect the wishes of others that do not want to be bothered by invites, which they will report back as spam, the most damaging signal your account can accumulate.
Many CEOs that I have met have commented that they saw LinkedIn as merely a way of getting back in touch with old colleagues. However, the people you find in your concentrated search that you absolutely would like to contact but are not part of any common group or show any preference to open networking and have few if any mutual connections are the most difficult yet sometimes the most valuable people to be in contact with.
Before inviting these people, I suggest that you send them an InMail, or if they have an email address listed somewhere in their profile, first send them an email indicating why you would like to connect with them. If they have a paid LinkedIn account with an Open Profile, you might be able to send them a free InMail through their LinkedIn profile.
On the other hand, if you become a paid member, you do have an opportunity to send out InMails as part of your subscription. One rule of thumb that I have used is if they have their email address in their profile they are open to being contacted, but remember to first always read their profile before attempting a connection.
Now let’s look at the passive ways in which we can attract inbound LinkedIn invitations to get more connections.
6. Completely Fill Out Your Work Profile
This goes hand-in-hand with actively finding people as LinkedIn is about finding and being found. I recommend including every job that you would put on your resume, including early positions you held just after graduating from school. The content is not as important as just putting the company name and years you worked there. That is enough to be found.
7. Completely Fill Out Your Education Profile
This is the exact same concept as completely filling out your work profile. I would put every school attended since and including high school in your profile. If you studied overseas during or after college, or you got an Executive MBA or other degree of higher education, be sure to put those in your profile as well so that you can be found by past classmates.
8. State That You Accept Invites in Your Profile
If people read your profile and you indicate in your About section or headline that you accept invites, it will become easy for you to receive more invitations because open networkers will not be afraid of having their invitation ignored or reported by you.
There is no fixed way of doing this, but simply search LinkedIn for “accept invites” or something similar as the keyword and see how other people do it.
9. Join Groups in Whatever You are Interested in or Groups That Meet Your Objective
While there are “open networking groups” that you might be tempted to join, today I stick to the approach of only joining those groups that meet my objective and that I can bring value to. If you do so, you will be more likely to receive invites from serious group members that aren’t necessarily open networkers.
10. Promote Your LinkedIn Profile Everywhere
How to get more connections on LinkedIn by promoting your profile everywhere? From email signatures to printing your LinkedIn profile URL on your business cards, there are plenty of opportunities to promote and build your LinkedIn network by following these LinkedIn best practices.
Frequently Asked Questions About Growing Your LinkedIn Network
LinkedIn caps direct first-degree connections at 30,000 per account. You can have unlimited followers beyond that, which is why many large accounts encourage following instead of connecting once they approach the cap. For most professionals the practical question is not the ceiling but how many relevant connections they can build.
LinkedIn search results draw heavily from your first, second, and third degree network. The larger your network, the more people you surface when searching for prospects, recruiters, or collaborators, and the more often you appear in their searches. A bigger relevant network directly expands who you can find and who can find you.
Selectively. Cold invitations work best when you share real context, such as a common group, several mutual connections, or a clear reason stated in a note. Recipients can ignore or report invitations from people they don’t know, and accumulating too many of those signals can get your invitation privileges restricted.
Yes. LinkedIn limits how many connection invitations you can send each week to discourage spam. If you hit the limit, you simply have to wait. Spend invitations on people who are active on LinkedIn and likely to accept, and periodically withdraw old pending invitations so your sent list stays clean.
Complete every section of your profile so you appear in more searches, signal openness to connecting in your headline or About section, join groups aligned with your goals, and promote your LinkedIn URL in email signatures and on business cards. Inbound invitations grow in proportion to your network’s reach and activity.
Grow Your Network with Intention
If you’re trying to build your LinkedIn network too fast, a word of warning: LinkedIn has many safeguards in place to prevent that from happening. Therefore, you should not expect to start getting tens or hundreds of invites a day passively. In my own personal experience, when I had about 3,000 connections I noticed that I would start getting a regular daily batch of about 10 invites. So if you are not getting enough invites passively, do not worry. They will come in proportion to how large the reach of your network is, as well as doing the other things that I recommend above. As your network grows, make sure it feeds a larger LinkedIn marketing strategy, and if you want my complete system for turning connections into business, download a free preview of Maximizing LinkedIn for Business Growth.
will linked in can be used to promote my repairing business center in Dubai.
It can be used for ANYTHING my friend!
Neal your recommendation of finding LinkedIn Open Networkers is extremely useful way to expand your network or find ideal prospects in adjacent networks. Identifying authority and leaders in the space and connecting with them will lend online creditability when you request connections with people who you would have not been been easy to connect since they were 3rd degree connections or outside your network.
Thanks for the comment Brian. In all honesty, that post was written several years ago, and since then my feelings towards the Open Networking movement have changed as I believe the movement has been “hijacked.” You can read about my opinion here: http://maximizesocialbusiness.com/why-not-linkedin-lion-4674/