LinkedIn has capped the weekly limit for connection requests to about 100 invitations per week. So, if you’ve been slapped with the message limit warning on LinkedIn you probably think you’re grounded. Here is what you can do when you’ve touched your weekly invitation limit. Before you think about how to bypass, let's see understand what that means; and our recommendation - DO NOT.

At Linkdra, we have always been on the responsible side of things and it made sense to see this hard limit from LinkedIn's viewpoint. LinkedIn being a network of people has been getting a lot of attention in recent times with all that social distancing and no contact scenario. This obviously attracted mindless automation tools and the resulting situation is a mess where volumes of invitations were sent on LinkedIn with the same canned message.

Sadly, this means that no one can undo this change. If you abuse you shall pay ;-).

Predictably, several providers have come up with claims to have found workarounds to allow us to go beyond that limit. They say that it is possible to send more than 100 invitations per week. We see several problems with those approaches.

How worthy is the "personal email" solution? Right after LinkedIn's update, a workaround started doing the rounds, claiming that you can sidestep the limit by using users' emails. Essentially upload them as contacts, something LinkedIn has supported for ages. This works if you have access to their emails with high degree to confidence i.e. you know them already. From LinkedIn's perspective that makes total sense. The trouble is you don't have the emails and the whole idea is to connect first to access their email.

This brings us to the second part. What if a provider is selling or lets say handing over the emails? Ah! there is a compliance issue if you are running a clean business. Sure there are providers with a claim that they harvest emails from publicy available information but sadly that still does not give us the right to use. GDPR compliance is very clear about explicit permission. Some of the providers who are harvesting data from other users on their platform definitely have an issue when it comes to compliance i.e sharing on user's data with another without permission.

The line is thin when it comes to what is publicly available v/s can I use or abuse it. We think it is not. Besides, is that the start of a quality business relationship? Trust is key.

So what can we do within the limits? Lots if you work strategically.

Search Right

A big part of LinkedIn out reach it to have high pricision unlike email marketing which is largely spray and pray. You have so much more information about the user to pre-qualify and see if they meet your best customer persona. Check out our post on how you can search effectively with some very simple technquies that most users don't use. Searching out LinkedIn has another advantage that may not be obvious. LinkedIn shows the same search results for the same criteria to anyone around the globe. Of course it has to be that way.

Sadly that means the people who figure at the top of list get reached out heavily to a point that they just shut off.

Searching outside to a great extend insulates you from that situation and thats like green grass.

Create Content When you can’t connect the alternative is to share inspiring content that makes them reach out to you. LinkedIn is in some ways a bit sad on content producers side with estimated about 1% users contributing. It is crying for quality content. It is not unusual for people to reach influencer status in just a few months on LinkedIn. Start with posts that have some research and data backed that provide insights. Run occassional polls. Polls with catchy title do very well to get you in front to target connections. Use the righ hashtags, about 2-3.

Comment Generously

Start by commenting back to every comment you receive on your posts. LinkedIn feed algorythms favor the count of comments. Invite your friends, coworkers to comment. It is not hard to reach 2k-3k organicaly on LinkedIn within a day of posting.

Comment on interesting posts from leaders, influencers. Visibility matters. Take care not to hijack the conversation and push your agenda. The trick is to be seen as someone who brings in real value than someone wearing the sales hat all the time. As they say "Give" before you "Ask".

Join Events

These are great ways to identify and meet the right people. Join and use the networking menu to see others who are attending. You can filter by geography, domain or industry etc and that's a crisp list. You know who they are and now you know what is their current interest. If you are using Linkdra you can easily import that as a list and create a campaign.

Groups Work

Much like events you can join groups and explore members. The search options are limited in groups, besides most groups are not that active on LinkedIn but still it is a better start and context when reaching out.

Consider creating a few groups of your own and invite people to join. Name them with some vanity factor such as "CXO club Atlanta" and you can see how welcoming it sounds to people when you reach out to them to join in. A bit of adulation does not hurt. I have the contact emails. How to use them? Ok, so if you do have the list and ready to roll here is what you can do to go beyond those weekly limits. All you need to do is go to your “My Network” section and on the left-hand side you will see “Your contact import is ready”. Click the “More options” tab and on the right, you will see the option to upload a file. Upload your file (CSV, TXT) and select who you want to connect with.

The idea of limiting connection requests per week is great and for Linkdra users that's an advantage because you know how to run precise searches, pre-qualify, filter much better and so there isn't much of a need to cross the limit anyways. If you need help with your lead pipeline building, let's connect.