How to warm up LinkedIn? (without getting banned)

Hey folks, Botdog creator here. Met a lot of people recently who want to go "all-in" on LinkedIn on Jan 1st but are worried their account will get banned from too much activity.

Whether you've made a fresh LI account or are trying to start selling from an old/inactive account, you have to be sooo careful not to trigger LinkedIn's detection systems in your first 30 days.

Here's a quick warm up guide to help you scale without restrictions... (full guide here).

1/ Know your limits.

LinkedIn's limits are generally ~50 requests/week for free accounts and 150-200/week for Premium/Sales Navigator, but these limits are adjusted based on your account health.

This means that if you make a new account or try to revive an inactive one, your actual safe limit is way lower than the official number. Don't try to send 50 requests in your first week.

2/ Focus on acceptance %.

Acceptance rate is the #1 signal for LinkedIn's detection systems, so instead of going all-in with cold prospecting, start by sending requests to people who are more likely to accept. I'm talking:

• People who just booked a discovery call with you
• New customers/trial signups
• People who replied positively to your emails
• Referrals from mutual connections

Once LinkedIn sees that your requests tend to be accepted, they'll realize you're a legitimate person rather than a spam account.

3/ Use Sales Nav wisely.

If you're a Sales Nav user, another easy way to increase your acceptance rate is to only send requests to people who have posted on LinkedIn in the last 30 days. There's a filter for this!

4/ Follow this 30-day timeline.

Weeks 1 & 2: focus on sending requests to "warm" people - existing customers and people who book discovery calls. Set yourself a limit of 5 requests per day and aim for a 75%+ acceptance rate.

Week 3: add referrals to your workflow. Set yourself a limit of 10-15 requests per day and aim for a 70%+ acceptance rate.

Week 4: keep sending 60% of your requests to "warm" people, but send the other 40% to carefully-targeted cold prospects (2nd degree connections, prospects who have posted in the last 30 days). Set yourself a limit of 15-20 requests per day and aim for a 60%+ acceptance rate.

If, after Week 4, you see your acceptance rate start to slip below 50%, increase the % of warm requests and decrease the % of cold requests.

5/ Be patient.

I know it can be tempting to go from 0-100kph, but patience on LinkedIn is extremely valuable. It's not worth skipping the warm up and risking your account being restricted or banned.

If you want to start prospecting in 2026, I would honestly recommend warming up your account now. Then, by the 1st or 2nd week of January, you'll be ready to scale.

Anyone else planning to go all-in on LinkedIn on Jan 1st? Let me know if you'd like any more tips and tricks!!