What is LinkedIn jail and how to avoid it — here is our 2023 guide.
- Connection request limits 2023
- What is Social Selling Index
- How to improve SSI
- LinkedIn Jail: how to keep your account safe
LinkedIn is a platform designed to help professionals to connect.
It’s very important that you have your LinkedIn profile properly optimized and show your activity through building connections, engaging in posts and building your name in the community of professionals.
LinkedIn encourages social selling but doesn’t like it when you cross the line into being “sales-y.”
The platform has policies in place to stop behavior that other people may find abusive.
If you start being intrusive or use any unreliable automation tools, the platform may apply restrictions to your account.
Most sales reps just take LinkedIn for granted and create lots of campaigns without warming up their accounts first. It doesn’t work like this in social sales. Until you establish a name in your industry, the line between selling and pitching remains thin.
There are many reasons that cause LinkedIn ban. The most common would be sending too many invitations to people you don’t know — especially in a short period of time from a newly created account.
LinkedIn connection request limits 2023
The number of connection requests you’re allowed to send is calculated based on your Social Selling Index score, but here’s a general rule:
| LinkedIn invitation limits = max 100 invites per week |
If your Social Selling Index score is higher than 80, then you might be able to send more than 100 connection requests. However, we do not recommend exceeding this limit.
Tips:
- Don’t send too many requests in a row — if you send too many requests in a short period of time, your account may get banned even if you stay within the 100-per-week limit
- Introduce yourself in a connection message and explain why you’d want to connect
- Add a signature with your name
- Cancel long-pending invitations
- Personalize your outreach smartly (Learn how to do it with Closely)
Send 10-15 connection requests per day
If you’re just getting started, your goal is to avoid attracting the platform’s attention with unusual activity.
By launching automated campaigns with Closely, you can be sure you won’t go over the limit.
Closely sends from ANY account during a warm-up period per day:
- 10 connection requests & messages in first 1-5 days
- Up to 20 connection requests & messages (5-15 days)
- Up to 30 connection requests & messages (15-25 days)
- Up to 50 connection requests & messages (after 25 days)
The tool won’t send too many requests in a row because it uses a warm-up period and completely mimics human behavior in order to divert suspicion.
Social Selling Index
What is a Social Selling Index?
Social Selling Index is a score given by LinkedIn that defines how well you establish your professional brand, build connections and communicate.
The point of it is to empower salespeople with the knowledge of how good they are at social selling and inspire them to become better.
In simple words, LinkedIn allows certain people to be more active on the platform, while restricting others from any sales activity. SSI is a decisive point here.
- People with high SSI are less likely to get banned.
- If your SSI score is higher than 80, you can sometimes send more than 100 requests per week.
Where to check my SSI?
You can check your score in Sales Navigator.
Four pillars of LinkedIn SSI
Surely, LinkedIn doesn’t exactly outline the criteria they use to assess your profile and decide whether it “deserves” to get a higher SSI.
However, it’s generally accepted that the following things affect SSI score:
– Established professional brand
Because you’re in sales, often you reach out to cold audiences.
You don’t want to show them that you’re selling something. What you want them to learn from your account is how successfully you have helped other companies to solve similar problems.
Tips
- Complete your LinkedIn profile with your ideal client in mind
- Fill out personal information, add skills, education
- Tailor your profile to indicate how your product/service can solve the problem of target audience
- Write a distinctive & memorable profile headline
- Create a custom profile URL
- Add rich media to the featured section of your profile
- Become a trusted advisor: post about three times more educational materials than product or company information.
Compelling profiles with a lot of useful and appealing content boost engagement from people and increase your SSI.
– Finding right people
Having a clear understanding of your buyer persona or Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is a must-have if you’re serious about prospecting on LinkedIn.
Closely includes robust search tools to help you find your ideal client and build better connections.
By applying filters that match your ICP, you reach a more narrow audience and have better chances to generate SQL (sales-qualified-leads) as opposed to knocking on the doors of people who don’t need your solution at the moment.
– Engage with insights
Once you have connected through LinkedIn, it’s time to engage in conversations, share ideas, join groups and acquaint with your contacts.
The aim is to look like a person who stays in the know on timely content.
Tips
- Leverage industry data
- Find groups that are relevant to your market
- Share insights and provide helpful advice in comments
– Build relationships
Building relationships is all about offering advice and expertise without pitching.
Tips
- Think long-term and don’t sell from first, second and third message
- Try to leave a positive impression after any kind of conversation
- Engage in discussions and provide your advice
- Identify measurable results from your social selling efforts and adjust your outreach strategy if necessary
Real-time data and insights are increasingly crucial in sales today. Closely allows you to instantly see how well your campaigns perform so you can take quick actions.
By improving your outreach strategy with helpful insights at your disposal, you decrease chances of being treated as intrusive. You’re getting closer to boosting your SSI and reply rates.
LinkedIn Jail
If your account got banned, here are common reasons why it could have happened.
- You send too many connection requests.
- You reply rate is too low
- You used some automation tools (primarily extensions) and got flagged for suspicious activity
The last point is the most common reason people get banned. LinkedIn has an extremely strained relationship with Chrome extensions: in fact, they are all detected very quickly and lead to account ban in 90% of cases.
Closely is a cloud-based automation platform that allows you to run campaigns in the background. It’s not an extensions, so you can be sure that, unless you’re doing outreach at the same time manually, you’re in the safe zone. Closely supports you with useful and timely content, taking into consideration LinkedIn’s updates, and is always on the lookout for outreach hacks and tips.
What to do if you got banned?
Depending on the type of restriction, you might be able to appeal against it. Usually, LinkedIn warns you prior to sending your account to jail.
For instance, If you used an extension, LinkedIn will first send a warning message and ask you to stop using it.
If you ignore it, your account is likely to end up in LinkedIn jail.
Steps to take to get your account out of jail:
- Try to verify your account with your cell phone number
- Create a ticket with LinkedIn support and ask them to help you out
- If nothing helps, simply wait until your access is restored
Establishing relationships and a professional brand, solidifying yourself as a trusted expert advisor is a bullet-proof way for you to influence B2B decision-makers and stand out from competition. It helps to maintain a high SSI score of your profile and increase reply rates.
LinkedIn Network Management
Knowing how to manage your LinkedIn connections is crucial. It is very important, because when you have your workflow organized, you can create way more effective campaigns. You know who you already texted, you can easily find SQLs, leads with pozitive dynamics in communication. It helps you to win more deals easily, communicate effectively and avoid LinkedIn ban.
As we say, B2B world is chaotic and knowing how to tackle the chaos is a very valuable skill.
Imagine that now you can not only manage your LinkedIn network as CRM in Closely, but doing it with ease. Turn your sales processes into an enjoyable process that lets you sell with less efforts but more joy.
Assign tags to contacts, add notes, filter your contacts to access the needed group of people quickly. Use any custom tags!
Add notes to keep all needed details about a prospect and access it in seconds. No need to keep all information in your head or in a bunch of files.
Turn your Inbox into CRM
Level up your LinkedIn lead generation by taking use of our embedded Inbox with CRM features! Apply tags and filter our conversations in seconds. Store important data and access your prospects’ contact details — all within one place. No switching forth and back. Forget about Google Spreadsheet files or Excel for good.
Add notes to your conversations — to see what’s important to remember or bring up during your conversations.
Easily filter out your conversations and turn the chaotic routine into a manageable and enjoyable process. Spare so much time for yourself and get your hands on other creative tasks. Benefit from integrating LinkedIn sales intelligence and see that deals can be produced with ease and joy.
