How do you get more connections on LinkedIn?
Invite people who already have a reason to recognise you, from the places LinkedIn lists, and give everyone else a reason first. LinkedIn's Various ways to connect help page, updated six months before our check on 4 November 2026, says connecting works best when you have a clear professional reason, such as having worked or studied together, meeting at an event, or wanting to continue a conversation.
Here is where those people are, and what LinkedIn's help centre says about each source (all checked 4 November 2026):
| Who | Where to find them | What LinkedIn's help says |
|---|---|---|
| Colleagues, clients and classmates | The search bar, or your school's Alumni page | LinkedIn's Find people you know page lists both, plus importing your email contacts |
| People you may know | The My Network tab | Select Connect below a name, or More and then Connect if Follow is the main option. Invitations sent from People you may know in the mobile app can't be personalised. |
| Your phone contacts | Mobile app: My Network, then Import contacts | LinkedIn says it is making this available gradually and will never contact anyone without your permission (Import your contacts) |
| People you met at an event | Their profile | LinkedIn's connect or follow table says to connect with a note, which reminds them how you met |
| People whose posts you comment on | The post, then their profile | LinkedIn's network-building guide says reacting, commenting and sharing help you build visibility with other members |
| People you don't know yet | Follow them, join a relevant group, or send an InMail | LinkedIn suggests these instead of an invitation (Alternatives to inviting someone to connect) |
Colleagues, phone contacts and event contacts can place your name today; People you may know is LinkedIn's list of suggestions, so check each name before you send. The last two rows are people who can place it after a comment, a group discussion or a message. In our view that difference drives your acceptance rate, and the arithmetic further down turns acceptance rates into weeks.
How do you send a connection request on LinkedIn?
From the person's profile. These steps come from LinkedIn's Personalize invitations to connect page, updated six months before our check, and its page on profiles with a Follow button, updated four years before.
Send it on desktop
Open the member's profile and select Connect in the introduction section. To add a message, click Add a note, type it and select Send invitation. If the main button says Follow, click More in their introduction section and select Connect from the dropdown.
Send it in the app
Open the profile and tap Connect. If the main button is Follow, tap the More icon in the introduction section and tap Connect. To add a message, tap the More icon, choose Personalize invite instead of Connect, type it and tap Send invitation.
Answer the prompt honestly
LinkedIn may ask how you know the person. If you pick We don't know each other, it may ask you to send a message first, which can mean an InMail depending on the recipient's settings. For some members with a Follow button, it may ask for their email address.
Three rules from the same pages. You need a primary email address to send invitations. A free account can add a personal message to up to three requests a month, each up to 200 characters, while Premium members can personalise every request, though LinkedIn adds that connection request limits may still apply. LinkedIn's older Invitation limit reached page, updated a year before our check, still says five a month for Basic and free members. And when you invite someone whose main button is Follow, you start following them straight away while you wait.
Our guide on whether a note is worth one of your three covers what a La Growth Machine test and Expandi's platform data found about notes.
Why am I not getting the Connect option on LinkedIn?
Look under More first: when Follow is a member's main button, Connect moves there. LinkedIn's Missing connect button page, updated two years before our check, lists six cases:
| What LinkedIn lists | What to do |
|---|---|
| You haven't confirmed your primary email, it bounced, or a new email needs confirming | Confirm the email, then try again |
| You're already connected | Send a message instead |
| You already sent them a request | Wait, or withdraw it; our guide to pending LinkedIn invitations has the steps |
| Having over 500 connections, in which case Follow replaces Connect by default | Click More in the introduction card and choose Connect |
| The member chose Follow as their default | The same: More, then Connect |
| You're out of network | The page's note points to InMail for members you aren't connected to, which needs a Premium account |
One more case is on LinkedIn's network size limit page: a member at the 30,000-connection maximum gets Follow as the default and can't accept new invitations until they remove some connections.
Check your own profile too. LinkedIn's follower settings page, updated a month before our check, puts the switch on desktop under the Me icon, Settings & Privacy, Visibility, then Followers in the Visibility of your LinkedIn activity section. In the app it is your profile picture, Settings & Privacy, the Visibility tab, then Followers. Turn off Make follow primary and Connect becomes the main action people see on your profile. LinkedIn says changes can take up to 24 hours.
Should you send requests to people you don't know?
Not cold. LinkedIn's help pages on invitation restrictions and on following and connecting both recommend sending invitations only to people you know and trust.
Its Professional Community Policies are blunter: "Do not use our invitation feature to send promotional messages to people you don't know or to otherwise spam people."
Advice to connect with as many people as possible skips three mechanics LinkedIn documents:
- Recipients can flag you. After clicking Ignore, a member can choose I don't know this person. LinkedIn's invitations help says this stops that member receiving further invitations from you and gives LinkedIn feedback on whether it may need to restrict the sender's account.
- Unanswered requests count. The restrictions page lists many of your invitations being ignored, left pending or marked as spam as a reason an account may be temporarily restricted from sending invitations. If you are restricted for having too many outstanding invitations, it says to wait up to one month before sending another.
- Some requests land in Other. LinkedIn's Invitations on LinkedIn page, updated three months before our check, says received invitations are sorted into Focused and Other using signals that include authenticity signals, and that LinkedIn may not send notifications for invitations in Other.
The page doesn't list those signals. What the restrictions page does say is to make sure recipients can recognise you by keeping your profile up to date, and that a profile photo adds credibility. Our LinkedIn profile checklist for founders covers that part. For people you haven't met, LinkedIn suggests following them and interacting with their posts, joining a relevant group or sending an InMail.
How many requests does it take to reach 500+ connections?
From a start of 150, somewhere between about 500 and 1,232 requests, depending on how warm the list is. LinkedIn's connection count page says a profile shows 500+ once a member has more than 500 connections, and LinkedIn doesn't display the exact number after that. So a founder starting at 150 needs 351 more accepted requests to show 500+.
How many requests that takes depends on the acceptance rate. For a baseline we use vendor data: Expandi, which sells LinkedIn automation, reports 28.5% average acceptance across 13.2 million requests sent through 13,302 accounts on its platform from May 2025 to April 2026, measured as accepted connections divided by all requests sent (LinkedIn Outreach Benchmarks 2026, published 19 May 2026). The other two rates below are our illustrative assumptions, not measurements.
| Who you invite | Acceptance rate | Requests needed | Not accepted | Weeks at 50 a week |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Outreach list, at Expandi's platform average | 28.5% | 351 ÷ 0.285 = 1,232 | 1,232 − 351 = 881 | 1,232 ÷ 50 = about 25 |
| Warm list (our assumption) | 50% | 351 ÷ 0.50 = 702 | 702 − 351 = 351 | 702 ÷ 50 = about 14 |
| People who engaged with you (our assumption) | 70% | 351 ÷ 0.70 = 502 | 502 − 351 = 151 | 502 ÷ 50 = about 10 |
The third column is the cost people notice. The fourth matters more: 881 requests nobody accepted is the kind of backlog LinkedIn names as a reason for invitation restrictions, and the warmest list leaves 151. Cleaning up afterwards has limits too. LinkedIn's Invitation limit reached page says withdrawing pending invitations won't remove a restriction once you have one.
We used 50 a week because it is the low end of the pace in our LinkedIn connection request limit guide; the LinkedIn help pages we checked give no weekly number. Expandi's figure comes from its own users, and the report itself says to benchmark against your industry's row rather than the 28.5% platform average, so treat it as a rough baseline and replace it with your own rate after a month.
What do r/linkedin threads say works?
Replies in two of the three 2026 threads we read through the Reddit archive on 4 November 2026 said to engage before you connect, and some in the first said not to chase the number; the third split on whether to accept strangers at all. They are individual reports, not proof, and the comment counts are the archive's.
- In a July 2026 thread with 31 comments, asking how to reach 500 connections without sounding like a bot, replies said to build from jobs and events over time, check for mutual connections and fit before sending, and engage first. One commenter's view: "Engage with people's content 1 or 2 weeks before you send them a connection request". Another said they had just deleted about 600 contacts.
- In a September 2026 thread with 23 comments, asking whether posting or connecting helped more, one reply said commenting and talking to people made more difference than posting consistently, because comments put you in front of other people's existing audiences.
- In an October 2026 thread with 33 comments, asking whether people know their connections in real life, answers split. The top reply guessed most people don't personally know at least 80% of their connections, while several commenters said they turn down requests from people they don't know. One suggested filter: would this person's posts be useful in your feed?
In our reading, that split is the practical point. Some of the people you invite accept anyone and some accept nobody they haven't met, so a reason they recognise is what moves the people in between.
A 20-minute weekly routine for a small B2B team
This is our suggestion, built from the LinkedIn rules above. It suits a founder, or a team of two to five where each person runs their own profile.
Monday: clear incoming invitations
On desktop, go to My Network, select Show all beside Invitations and check both Focused and Other, since LinkedIn may not notify you about Other. In the app, tap My Network, then Invitations. Select View profile before accepting anyone you can't place.
Tuesday to Thursday: comment before you connect
Leave one useful comment a day on a post by someone you would like to know: a fact, an example or a question. By Thursday, three people may have seen your name next to something useful.
Thursday: invite the warm ones
Send requests to people who commented on your posts, people you met this week and anyone whose posts you have commented on twice. Spend free notes on the ones who matter most.
Friday: prune and count
Withdraw requests that have sat for three weeks or more and that you are ready to drop. LinkedIn's withdrawal page says you can't invite the same person again for up to three weeks. Write down requests sent and accepted.
When someone accepts, the next message decides whether the connection becomes a conversation, and our guide on what to say after someone accepts your request covers it. If the commenting step is the one that slips, Siela's LinkedIn Presence agent can like and comment on relevant posts from your account, and you choose whether it shows you each comment first.
Frequently asked questions
What is the 95-5 rule on LinkedIn?
It comes from B2B marketing research. Peter Weinberg and Jon Lombardo, then heads of research and development at LinkedIn's B2B Institute, wrote in Marketing Week in September 2021 that, according to Professor John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, only 5% of B2B buyers are in market to buy right now. Applied to networking, it is a case for connecting with buyers long before they need you.
Can someone tell if I look them up on LinkedIn?
Yes, if you browse with your name and headline showing. LinkedIn's help says that in private mode you appear in their Who's viewed your profile list only as a LinkedIn Member viewing in private mode, while semi-private mode shows traits such as your job title and industry. Change it under Me, Settings & Privacy, Visibility, then Visibility when viewing other profiles. On a free account, browsing privately means you can't see who viewed your profile.
Should I accept LinkedIn connection requests from people I don't know?
LinkedIn strongly recommends accepting only people you know, because 1st-degree connections are given access to any information you've displayed on your profile. Open the invitation and select View profile before deciding. Ignoring is silent, since the sender isn't notified. If you don't know them, choose I don't know this person after Ignore, which stops that member sending you further invitations.
Is there a limit to how many connections you can have on LinkedIn?
Yes: 30,000 1st-degree connections, according to LinkedIn's network size limit page. The number of people who can follow you, and whom you can follow, is unlimited. Once you reach 30,000, Follow becomes the default option on your profile and you can't send or accept new invitations until you remove connections. LinkedIn's suggestion is to connect with people you know personally and follow anyone whose posts you want to keep up with.
Is it better to follow or connect on LinkedIn?
Connect when you know the person or have just met them, and follow when you only want their posts. That is the split in LinkedIn's own connect or follow table, which adds a note for people you met at an event. Following doesn't create a 1st-degree connection or let you message them. If you invite someone whose main button is Follow and they decline, you keep following them unless you unfollow.
Sources
- LinkedIn Help: Various ways to connect with people on LinkedIn (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: Find people you know on LinkedIn (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: Import your contacts (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: Follow and connect on LinkedIn (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: Build your professional network (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: Alternatives to inviting someone to connect (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: Personalize invitations to connect (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: Connect with people using a Follow button on their profile (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: Missing connect button on profile (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: Network size limit (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: Manage who can follow you settings (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: Types of restrictions for sending invitations (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- LinkedIn Professional Community Policies (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: Accept, ignore, or report invitations as spam (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: Invitations on LinkedIn (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: Differences in connection counts on a LinkedIn profile (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: Invitation limit reached (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: Withdraw an invitation (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: Browse profiles in private and semi-private mode (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- Expandi: LinkedIn Outreach Benchmarks 2026 (published 19 May 2026)
- Marketing Week: The 95:5 rule is the new 60:40 rule (Peter Weinberg and Jon Lombardo) (published 2 Sep 2021)
- r/linkedin: How does one land the 500+ connections without sounding like a bot (31 comments in the archive) (13 Jul 2026, read via archive 4 Nov 2026)
- r/linkedin: What actually helped you grow on LinkedIn: posting content or building connections? (23 comments in the archive) (14 Sep 2026, read via archive 4 Nov 2026)
- r/linkedin: Linkedin, do you know most of your connections IRL? (33 comments in the archive) (23 Oct 2026, read via archive 4 Nov 2026)