How to get more LinkedIn connections for free: four ways, and how each one shapes your reach
Connections are the first audience of every post you publish. There are four ways to get them: let your posts bring requests to you, connect with people you already know, buy them, or use a pod. The last section is the most controversial and, done right, the most practical. Here is how each works and what it does to your reach.
Table of contents
The four ways to get connections, side by side
Connections come from four places. Skip to the end if you only read one section: the fourth way, pods, is the most controversial. LinkedIn officially opposes pods, and the internet repeats it; in practice LinkedIn goes after automation, and a pod of the right people grows your network twice, once through its members and once through the posts it lifts. Content is the most effective way and the hardest: becoming someone people want to connect with can take years. A pod is the best balance of effort and result.
| Way | What you get | How the feed reacts | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Posts that bring requests | Inbound requests from people in your field | New connections who react widen the first audience of every later post | The most effective and the hardest: it can take years to become worth connecting with |
| 2. Your real-life circle | Connections with people who know you | People You May Know learns your network from them and suggests you to the right people | The fastest real start |
| 3. Buying | Dormant accounts in your first-degree network | Your posts start with an audience that never reacts | The weakest; skip it |
| 4. A pod done right | Members from your field, plus requests from people who see the posts it lifts | More relevant first-degree readers, and posts that travel into their networks | The best balance of effort and result |
Way 1: Let your posts bring connection requests to you
The best connection requests are the ones you receive: someone read a post, liked how you think and wants you in their network. That only happens if they can find you, and if accepting you looks obviously worth it.
How to get inbound connection requests, step by step
- Fill in what People You May Know uses. Companies, positions, schools and industry. Without them LinkedIn may show no suggestions at all (LinkedIn Help), and the same data decides to whom you are suggested.
- Keep Connect as the main button. LinkedIn lets you make Follow the primary button (LinkedIn Help); if connections are your goal, leave Connect in front.
- Write a headline that says who you help. People decide to connect from the headline they see next to a comment or a post.
- Post for the people you want to connect with. Two or three times a week on one topic (Right Angle), so a reader can tell in one visit what you are about.
- Comment before you connect. Leave real comments under posts by people you would like to know. LinkedIn's creator account said commenting once a week can triple profile views (Lindsey Gamble), and profile views come before requests.
- Leave a door open. End a post now and then with "If you work on X, I'm happy to connect." It is an invitation, not a request for engagement.
- Accept fast and say hello. Accept requests from people in your field the same day and send one line that is not a pitch.
- Clean up what you sent. Withdraw requests that have sat unanswered for weeks. After withdrawing, you cannot invite the same person again for up to three weeks (LinkedIn Help), so do it on purpose.
How the algorithm reacts to new connections
- Connections are the first audience. LinkedIn's feed explainer: "We start with your connections" (LinkedIn News, 2019); its help page lists whether a post comes from someone you are connected to among the ranking signals (LinkedIn Help). Every relevant connection widens the first audience of your next post.
- Connecting means following both ways. Each connection automatically follows you and you follow them (LinkedIn Help), so your connections also reshape your own feed.
- People You May Know built most of the network. LinkedIn says PYMK created more than half of its professional graph; it is a classifier predicting whether two people know each other, from signals such as friends of friends and shared schools or employers (LinkedIn Engineering). Every real connection in your field makes you a likelier suggestion to the rest of that field.
- PYMK spreads attention on purpose. It down-weights people who already get many invites (the example threshold is more than ten in a week); the change lifted invites by 5.44% and connections by 4.8% for less active members (LinkedIn Engineering). Smaller and newer accounts get suggested more than people expect.
- Comments are how strangers find you. Posts you comment on can show up in your network's feeds (Fortune), and van der Blom's 2025 data links each comment you leave to 80% more visibility for your own next post (relay).
- Connections are finite. The cap is 30,000; at the cap Follow becomes the default on your profile and followers stay unlimited (LinkedIn Help). Spend connections on people in your field and let everyone else follow.
Best practices for inbound connections
- Connect with people in your field, and let people outside it follow you.
- Comment under someone's posts for a week or two before you send a request.
- Say hello after accepting, and leave the pitch for later, if ever.
- Use the Social Selling Index as a rough self-check: a 0 to 100 score across brand, finding the right people, engaging with insights and building relationships. LinkedIn itself says a high score does not always mean results (LinkedIn).
What to avoid with connection requests
- Requests to strangers with no context. Invitations are split into Focused and Other by LinkedIn's confidence in the sender, and LinkedIn may not even notify people about invites in Other (LinkedIn Help).
- Leaving hundreds of requests pending.
- A sales message straight after someone accepts.
- Switching the main button to Follow when what you want is connections.
Typical connection mistakes
- Connecting with everyone who asks. Your posts then start with people outside your topic; that is our reading of how the first audience works, not a published rule.
- Chasing the 500+ badge instead of the right 500.
- Ignoring inbound requests from people in your field for weeks.
- Treating a connection as the end, not the start, of a relationship.
Way 2: Connect with the people you already know
Your real-life circle is the fastest way to a network that works: colleagues and former colleagues, classmates, clients, people you met at events. LinkedIn's own advice is to invite people you know and who know you (LinkedIn Help), and its suggestions are built on exactly that.
How to connect with your circle, step by step
- Start from your contacts. People You May Know uses imported contacts among its inputs (LinkedIn Help). Go through the suggestions it gives you after that, one by one.
- Work through your past. Each former employer and school has a People tab. Former colleagues are the most likely to accept and the most likely to engage.
- Write a note only where it is needed. Free accounts can add a personal note to five invitations a month; Premium is unlimited (LinkedIn Help). Spend notes on people who may not remember you; close colleagues need none.
- Say how you know each other. "We met at the Lisbon fintech meetup, you asked about pricing pages." One concrete detail is enough.
- Connect the same day you meet someone. After a call, a meetup or a conference, while they still remember you.
- Ask for introductions. A colleague who introduces you to someone in their network is worth more than ten cold requests.
- Bring the circle to your posts. Your connections see your posts first; a few real comments from them in the first hour is the start every post needs.
The golden hour: why a post that takes off brings a wave of requests
Back to the agency scene, seen from the founder's inbox. The agency publishes the founder's post at 9:00 and, within the first hour, gets comments from everyone it can reach: the founder's colleagues, the agency team, two partners. By lunch the founder has a dozen connection requests from people they have never met, and by the end of the week several dozen.
Here is the chain. Early feedback is what the feed weighs most (LinkedIn Engineering, 2018), and the first people to interact are an early signal of virality (LinkedIn Engineering, 2023). Each comment can put the post into the commenter's network feed (Fortune); LinkedIn's own explainer says a post reaches you because a connection commented on it (LinkedIn News, 2019). People two steps away read the post, open the founder's profile and press Connect. That is why the requests come in waves on the days a post takes off, and why the connections that bring them are the ones whose comments travel: real people in the field, with networks of their own.
It also works the other way round. The founder's connections are where every post starts ("We start with your connections", LinkedIn News, 2019). A network full of people who comment gives every later post a strong first hour; a network full of people who never react gives it a weak one.
Practitioners call the first hour the golden hour (Social Media Today, Mercer MacKay). LinkedIn has never published a time window, so treat it as observed practice.
How the algorithm reacts to connecting with your circle
- PYMK is built to find people you actually know. It predicts "whether two people know each other" (LinkedIn Engineering); real connections with former colleagues and classmates are its strongest input, and each one makes you a suggestion for their colleagues.
- Requests from people you know land in the right place. Invitations are sorted into Focused and Other by LinkedIn's confidence in the sender (LinkedIn Help).
- Cold requests mostly fail, with or without a note. Belkins' 2025 data on 11.5M outreach requests: about 26% acceptance overall, 25.3% with a note and 27.6% without, but replies were 8.2% with a note against 5.3% without (Belkins). A 9,000-lead test by La Growth Machine found 31% with no message, 29% with an honest one and 32% with a vague one (La Growth Machine). These are cold-outreach numbers; requests to people who know you are a different game.
- A connected circle gives every post its start. Connections are where the feed starts (LinkedIn News, 2019), so a circle that reads and comments makes the first hour of every post stronger.
Best practices for connecting with your circle
- A note for people who may not remember you, none for those who will.
- One concrete shared detail in every note.
- Connect within a day of meeting someone.
- Ask two or three people a month for one introduction each.
What to avoid with your circle
- The default "I'd like to add you to my professional network" when the person may not remember you.
- Inviting the whole imported address book without picking.
- Withdrawing and re-sending the same request; you are locked out of re-inviting that person for up to three weeks (LinkedIn Help).
- Pitching your circle the moment they accept.
Typical mistakes with your circle
- Notes to people who know you well, and none to people who do not.
- Connecting with the circle and never interacting with them again.
- Only connecting with current colleagues, whose networks overlap with yours.
- Waiting a month after an event, when nobody remembers the conversation.
Way 3: Buy connections (the weakest option)
A connection is the one thing on LinkedIn that is supposed to mean "we know each other". Buying them breaks the only thing that makes them useful. This way is here because people ask about it.
How buying connections is usually done
- Pick a package. Sellers offer a number of connections, usually as a batch of requests for you to accept.
- Accept the batch. The number on your profile jumps.
- Publish your next post. It now starts with a first-degree audience that includes hundreds of accounts that never read anything.
How the algorithm reacts to bought connections
- They sit exactly where every post starts. The feed starts with your connections (LinkedIn News, 2019). Bought connections fill that first audience with accounts that never react, so the start of every post gets weaker.
- Dormant audiences drag the rate down. In AuthoredUp's data, 500 engaged connections outperform 10,000 dormant ones (AuthoredUp).
- They teach People You May Know the wrong things. PYMK learns from who is connected to whom (LinkedIn Engineering); a block of unrelated accounts points it away from your field. That is our reading of how PYMK works, not a published rule.
- The accounts do not last. LinkedIn caught 99.7% of fake accounts before any member reported them in the second half of 2025 (LinkedIn Community Report) and detects 99.6% of AI-generated profile photos (LinkedIn Engineering). When an account goes, the connection goes with it.
- They take real slots. Connections stop at 30,000 (LinkedIn Help); every bought one takes a place a real one could have.
Best practices if you want to spend money anyway
- Pay LinkedIn for better requests: Premium removes the five-notes-a-month limit on personal notes (LinkedIn Help).
- Buy a ticket to the events where your future connections are, and connect the same day.
- Boost a post that already does well, so people in your field find you through it (LinkedIn Help).
What to avoid if you have bought connections
- Buying connections before a job search or a fundraise. People check mutual connections, and random accounts are easy to spot.
- Accepting batches of strangers with empty profiles.
- Mixing bought connections into a network you use for outreach: your posts reach them first.
Typical mistakes with bought connections
- Thinking 500+ on the profile matters more than who the 500 are.
- Expecting bought connections to read and react. They are there to be counted, not to read.
- Judging your posts by reach that now starts from a weaker first audience.
Way 4: Use a pod to grow your network twice (the controversial one)
For connections, a pod works on two levels. The members themselves are connections: people in your field who post about the same things become first-degree readers of every post you publish. And the posts the pod lifts in their first hour travel into the members' networks, where the people who see them send you requests. The usual warning, that pod engagement from outside your field points the feed at the wrong audience (ContentIn), applies doubly here, because the wrong connections stay in your network.
How to grow connections with a pod, step by step
- Choose pod members you would want as connections anyway. Same field, same audience, people whose posts you would read.
- Connect with them first. LinkedIn starts with your connections (LinkedIn News, 2019), so a pod member who is a connection sees your posts before anyone else.
- Run the first hour on every post. Members read, react and comment, as many real actions as the pod can give in the first hour.
- Watch for the second wave. When a post travels through members' networks, requests come from people who saw it there. Accept the ones from your field and say hello.
- Comment on members' posts too. Your comments show your name to their networks, which brings requests from the right people.
- Prune the off-topic. If a pod brought you connections from outside your field, they dilute who sees your posts first.
Where to find the right pod for connections: people, groups and services
Here the pod is also a pool of future connections, so treat every place on this list as a list of people you might connect with.
| Where | What you get here |
|---|---|
| Friends and colleagues in your field | Already connected or should be; the core of the pod |
| Pod groups: LinkedIn Engagement Pod & Group (Telegram), LinkedIn For Breakfast (Skool), r/linkedintips (Reddit); more in our directory of LinkedIn pods | Members are potential connections; connect only with those in your field |
| upvote.club | Real members connecting with you and engaging with your posts, free to start |
| Podawaa | Likes and comments on posts; connections come from the reach |
| Linkboost | Same: engagement on posts, with AI-drafted comments to edit |
| Lempod | Automatic engagement from members' accounts; we would not use it |
How the algorithm reacts to a pod built for connections
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The official line. LinkedIn calls pods coordinated groups that like, comment and share to boost visibility, and says it limits their reach in the feed (LinkedIn News, 2026); its stated goal is to make them "entirely ineffective" (Social Media Today, Nov 2025).
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What LinkedIn actually describes catching. Automated comments from auto-scripts and browser plugins (Social Media Today, Feb 2026) and tools that comment on many posts at once (Social Media Today, Nov 2025). By its own account, pods organized outside the app are hard to combat (Social Media Today, Feb 2026).
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Our reading. Two people in the same field who are connected and comment on each other's posts are what a professional network is for. We see no difference the feed could act on between that and a pod of the right people.
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Who you connect with shapes who you are suggested to. People You May Know predicts who knows whom from your network (LinkedIn Engineering); pod connections from your field make it suggest you to more of the same.
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Connections are every post's starting audience. The feed starts with them (LinkedIn News, 2019), so a pod of relevant connections improves the start of every post, not just the ones you announce.
Best practices for a connections pod
- Connect with members whose audience overlaps with yours.
- Engage in the first hour, then keep commenting on their posts between yours.
- Accept and greet the requests that arrive after a post travels.
- Keep the pod small enough that you actually know the members.
What to avoid in a connections pod
- Automation for requests or engagement; LinkedIn says it restricts accounts that keep using it (Social Media Today, Feb 2026).
- Connect-with-everyone pods across all industries.
- Connecting with members and never engaging with their posts.
Typical connections pod mistakes
- Counting connections instead of looking at who they are.
- Treating the pod as a list to connect with, not a group to engage with.
- Ignoring the requests that come after a post takes off.
Your weekly connections checklist
Tick it off once a week. It joins way 1 and way 2, which is where every connection worth having comes from.
Want more real connections in your field?
upvote.club brings real LinkedIn members who connect with your profile, for free, so your posts start with a bigger first audience.
Where the notes on connections come from
Notes on this page come from three kinds of sources, labelled so you can weigh them.
Measured (datasets):
- Acceptance with and without a note, 11.5M requests: Belkins
- Note A/B test, 9,000 leads: La Growth Machine
- Engaged vs dormant audiences: AuthoredUp
- Comments you leave and your next post: van der Blom 2025 relay
- Posting frequency: Right Angle
Observed by practitioners:
- First hour and first 90 minutes: Social Media Today, Mercer MacKay
- Commenting and profile views: Lindsey Gamble
Published by LinkedIn and its engineers:
- People You May Know: LinkedIn Engineering, PYMK equity, 2021, LinkedIn Help
- Feed starts with connections: LinkedIn News, 2019, LinkedIn Help
- Invitations: Best practices, Focused and Other, Withdrawing, Personal notes
- Connections, following and the cap: Connecting, Follow button, 30,000 cap
- Early feedback and comments in network feeds: 2018, 2023, Fortune, 2023
- Social Selling Index: LinkedIn
- Fake accounts: Community Report, AI profile photos
On pods:
- LinkedIn's stated position on pods: Social Media Today, Nov 2025, LinkedIn News, Mar 2026
- What LinkedIn describes detecting: Social Media Today, Feb 2026
- The usual "pods are dead" argument: ContentIn
- Pod groups and services: Telegram pod, Skool community, Reddit, Podawaa, Linkboost, Lempod
LinkedIn does not publish how much a connection adds to reach. Where a point is our own reading of the mechanism, the text says so.
Frequently asked questions
Do LinkedIn pods help you get more connections?
Yes, it works, but it has to be done right. Only upvote.club does it right — nobody else on the market has this technology.
What do LinkedIn connections give me?
It grows the account, but you need the right tool.
Should I add a note to a LinkedIn connection request?
For people who may not remember you, yes. In cold outreach a note barely changes acceptance (about 25% with one, 28% without in Belkins' 2025 data), but it raises replies from 5.3% to 8.2%.
How many personalised notes can I send on a free LinkedIn account?
Five a month. Premium accounts can add a note to every invitation.
Why don't people see my LinkedIn connection requests?
Invitations are sorted into Focused and Other by LinkedIn's confidence in the sender, and LinkedIn may not notify people about invitations in Other. Requests to people who know you, with a shared detail, land better.
Connections or followers: which matter more on LinkedIn?
LinkedIn has not published numbers comparing the two. It has said the feed starts with your connections, and connecting makes both people follow each other, so a connection gives you everything a follower does and more. Followers take over once you are near the 30,000 connection cap.
Read next
Grow on LinkedIn
Written by
The Upvote.club team builds free social media tools and runs a community of real people who support each other’s posts on 19 social networks.