Warm up your profile before you post

Imagine you run LinkedIn for a day and must choose which post to push to the top of the feed. Do you favour the member who chats, comments and shows up daily, or the one who drops a scheduled post after months of silence? LinkedIn makes the same choice every second, and it always rewards activity.

When you spend a week warming your profile, the algorithm tags you as an engaged user. Your very next post launches with higher reach, collects reactions sooner and pulls real conversations into your inbox.

This article lays out the four steps I am taking to reboot my own profile in 2025. Follow them step-by-step and your first post will meet an audience already primed to respond.

Having an active chat is one of the strongest signals LinkedIn uses to decide whose posts appear in a feed. If you and I swap messages, the platform assumes we value each other’s content and shows our future updates more often. We can lean on that rule by talking first, posting later.

Why I don't peek on people's profiles as a tactic

The fastest way to tell LinkedIn you’re an active, valuable member is to talk, ​not lurk. Skip the passive tactic of silently viewing profiles and jump straight into real chats with people who already know you. When messages bounce back and forth, the platform sees live engagement and starts nudging your future posts higher in the feed.

Talk to the people who always answer

Start with a list of ten friends, colleagues, or clients you already chat with on WhatsApp or Slack. Send each of them a quick, sincere note on LinkedIn. No links, no pitch, just a line that invites a reply:

“How did the product launch go last month? Still catching your breath?”

Aim for an actual back-and-forth, because a single unanswered “Hi” counts as silence.

Keep the pace steady

Reach out to ten new contacts a day. After a week you will have revived about fifty conversations, enough to convince the algorithm you belong at the top of several feeds. As your posts roll out, incoming replies will replace cold opens and the cycle sustains itself.

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I track all open threads in Kanbox so nothing slips through the cracks. It sits inside LinkedIn and marks messages as tasks until I answer. Try it Kanbox for free.

Why this works

A busy inbox tells LinkedIn you are worth listening to, and it tells your network you bothered to check in before sharing your next big idea. When the first post goes live, it lands in a warmed-up feed instead of an empty room.

Scrolling past a post and tapping the like button takes half a second and leaves barely a ripple. A comment, on the other hand, drops a stone into the feed: the author sees your name, their followers see your perspective, and LinkedIn records a strong signal that you add value. A single helpful reply can pull more profile views than an entire week of passive scrolling.

Start by picking posts that overlap with the audience you want to reach. A marketing-ops guide will not help if your goal is to sell payroll software, but a thread on finance automation is a perfect stage. Read the post, open the comments, and look for gaps you can fill: an overlooked metric, a first-hand example, a concise counter-argument. Treat the comment box like a mini-blog: lead with one clear idea, support it with a short example, and invite others to build on it.

Length matters less than substance. Two tight sentences that re-frame a statistic beat a rambling paragraph of praise. Avoid canned compliments. Instead of “Great insights, thanks for sharing,” open with “We saw the same drop in response time after merging support and success inboxes automation cut hand-offs by three hours.” The author feels heard, readers learn something new, and your profile earns a bookmark in their mind.

Add context where it helps. If you reference a study, link to it. If you quote a number, explain how you measured it. LinkedIn rewards comments that keep readers on the platform, so resist the urge to drop an external link unless the author expressly asks. When you must link, shorten the URL and promise the payoff in plain words.

Momentum builds quickly. Make it a habit to leave five thoughtful comments each weekday. Fifteen minutes with coffee in the morning, fifteen minutes while your next meeting room clears. Over a week you will touch fifty conversations, fill your notifications with replies, and teach the algorithm that your voice holds attention.

Comments are not throw-away lines. They are micro-posts that showcase your expertise, nurture relationships and prime the feed to favour your own content. Keep them specific, keep them helpful, and keep them coming.

Prune outdated connections

Scroll through your list of connections and ask whether each person still fits the work you do today. Unfollow or remove anyone whose updates you no longer read. They will not be notified, and your timeline becomes instantly cleaner.

I start with my oldest connections and remove who is not longer relevant. Don't try and get to 100%, just remove the obvious ones. Aim for 10 a week if you have a big list of connections like me

Clear unanswered invites

Old, unanswered connection requests drag down acceptance rates, a metric LinkedIn factors into profile trust. Open the “Invitations” panel, filter on “Sent,” and withdraw every request older than two weeks. This tidy-up shows the platform you respect other users’ inboxes and keeps your pending-invite ratio healthy.

Add five warm contacts a day

To refill your network with relevant people, send five fresh invitations each workday. Start with colleagues of colleagues, conference acquaintances, or people you have already met on a video call. A short note such as “We spoke during last month’s growth meetup, would be great to stay in touch” reminds them who you are and lifts the acceptance rate. After a month you will have one hundred new, context-rich connections and an algorithm that understands exactly where you play.

Nothing signals trust on LinkedIn like a profile lined with genuine endorsements and thoughtful recommendations. They show the algorithm (and real people) that real people value your work.

Endorsements: quick social proof

Endorsements live in the Top Skills block of your profile.

Set a target of twenty new endorsements this week. Open your connections list, pick colleagues who have seen you in action, and send a friendly note:

“Hey [name], I’m refreshing my profile this month. Would you mind giving a quick click on the skills you’ve seen me use?”

Because an endorsement costs only a second, most people say yes. Rotate through a few contacts each day so the activity appears natural.

Recommendations: deeper credibility

Recommendations sit at the bottom of your profile.

These carry more weight because they take effort to write. Aim for five fresh reviews. Before you fire off requests, call each person. Explain why you are rebuilding your presence, mention the specific projects you worked on together, and ask if they would be comfortable writing a short paragraph about the results. This phone check avoids awkward declines and ensures the final text feels authentic.

Once the recommendations arrive, reorder them so the strongest sit on top. Together with the new endorsements, they round out your warm-up and tell LinkedIn (and profile visitors) that you do great work backed by real people.

Warming up a LinkedIn profile is mostly common sense, but it only works if you do the work. Start real conversations that flow in both directions, leave thoughtful comments that add something useful, trim or expand your network until it matches the people you actually want to reach, and back it all up with endorsements and a few honest recommendations. Taken together, these four habits tell the algorithm “this account gives more than it takes,” which is exactly what LinkedIn rewards.

Treat the next seven days as a boot-up phase. Keep the messages rolling, add five relevant connections every morning, and thank anyone who endorses or recommends you by returning the favour where it makes sense. By the time you publish your first long-form post, your profile will have a steady heartbeat of engagement and your content will land in front of far more eyes than a cold start ever could.

The groundwork is now in place. In the next chapter we will shift from warming the engine to driving forward—planning a calendar, writing posts that earn shares, and turning LinkedIn into a dependable growth channel for your business.