What is 'warming up' your LinkedIn Account?
‘Warming Up’ your LinkedIn profile refers to strengthening your LinkedIn profile’s Social Selling Index (which you can find here) with automation, so that you can conduct more activity on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn profiles with a higher Social Selling Index can conduct more actions on LinkedIn, without having their accounts restricted or suspended. By allowing you to do more activity on LinkedIn, you are increasing your recruitment efficiency and more likely make placements, faster.
How LinkedIn suspends accounts - Understanding "User Limitations" VS "Bot Activity"
In order to avoid mass Spam & Low Content/Actions on their platform, LinkedIn has 2 tiers of defense;
- User Limitations: These are limits on specific repetitive actions that a LinkedIn in User can do per day, week or month. Most limitations depend your Social Selling Index & the type of LinkedIn account you have (premium vs non-premium). An example of a limitation on a premium account is 2,000 profiles view per day vs 500 for a free user.
- Bot Detection: LinkedIn’s T&Cs explicitly forbit the use of bots on their platform. To stop bots from operating on LinkedIn, their technical teams have a number of Anti-Bot trackers, which are designed to pick up on remote logins, suspicious browser cookies & unnaturally fast repetitive actions.
Fortunately, Head Hunters employs a Playwright based Automation system, that is directly driven by your Windows operating device. This means that when our automation software is working, the action is indistinguishable from a human operating a real life mouse or keyboard. Unlike our competitors who use remote logins with cheap proxies, or armature browser based automation cookies, you don’t have to worry about Bot Detection.
For this reason, we only need to focus on User Limitations & increasing your Social Selling Index.
How to warm up your LinkedIn Account
Below is a guide for warming up your LinkedIn account. The best way to increase your social selling index is by growing your network, so we will rely heavily on connection requests to validate your profile’s strength.
Be sure to do the following, in addition to the instructions below:
- Don’t login to your LinkedIn account through a seperate browser, while the Head Hunter’s software is running in it’s own Chromium browser. The double activity will be flagged as suspicious if it continues over extended periods of time
- Try and do some natural actions on LinkedIn at least 2-3 times a week. This may include looking at the Jobs section, interacting (replies, likes, resharing etc) in your feed, replying to direct messages, or even playing LinkedIn games.
- Try to run your automation from the same device and location as much as possible.
For newly created LinkedIn profiles:
Week 1
- Do not actually use the Head Hunter’s automation software for the first week
- Focus on just manually adding your known colleagues, particularly those that are likely to accept
- Request no more than 100 connection requests in your first week, ideally trying to spread this activity out throughout the week (if possible)
Week 2
- Continue manually adding colleagues (no more than 100 per week) until you get 50 connections.
- If you have at least 50 accepted friend requests, you can begin using the Head Hunter’s automation tool for Outbound connection requests. Ensure you select ‘slow typing’ and set your minimum delay time to 25 and maximum to 59
- Limit yourself to no more than 20 friend requests per day.
Week 3
- Continue the same actions in week 2, until you hit 100 connection requests.
- Now we highly recommend upgrading to a premium account. We recommend initially starting with a Sales Navigator Core Account.
Week 4
- Once you upgrade to a premium account, keep an eye on your Social Selling Index (for Sales Nav users) or ensure at least 1/3rd of your connection requests are being accepted.
- If the above checks out, up your connection requests by 5 per week, for each week there are after, until you hit a maximum for 40 per day.
For existing LinkedIn Accounts, 30 days or older with 100 + connections:
(If you already have a LinkedIn Account with 100 connections, we recommend signing up for a premium account, such as Sales Navigator core, and doing the following)
Week 1
- Use the Head Hunter’s automation outbound feature, to send 20 connection requests per day. Ensure you select ‘slow typing’ and set your minimum delay time to 25 and maximum to 59
- Try and focus on either colleagues, or profiles that are likely to accept. Profiles that are likely to accept are either sales people who think they can sell you something, or a recruiter who recruits in your industry.
- Try and use the note function if you have a LinkedIn premium account, for some basic personalization, to increase your response rate.
Week 2
- Check your social selling index if you have a sales Nav account. If your score is in the top 50% or greater, increase your outbound connections to 25 per day
- If you are under 50%, focus on 20 connections for the remainder of the week
- For those that don’t have a Sales Nav account, but another preimum account, only increase your connections to 25 per day if you think at 1/3 of your connection invitations are accepted
Week 3
- Lower your minimum delay to 12 and maximum delay to 25
- If your a Sales Nav user & you continue to be in the top 50%, up your connection requests to 30 per day
- If don’t have Sales Nav, but another premium account, only increase to 30 if you suspect at 1/3rd of your invites are accepted
Week 4
- Up your connection requests to 40 per day, if your Social Selling Score is remains strong or if you are getting at 1/3rd of your connections accepted.
- Turn off slow typing
And that’s it! If you can get to 40 connection requests per day with the software by the end of the week 4, you’re basically able to do the following actions, without having to worry about any limitations:
- 2,000 profile views
- 250 connections requests per week
- Up to 50 InMails per day
- Up to 150 Direct Messages per day
Happy recruiting!
