To network on LinkedIn, first decide who you need to know next, because your existing connections mostly reflect your past jobs. Then warm those people up in public with useful comments, send short connection requests that reference something specific, and post regularly for the new audience so they keep seeing you. Check who reacts to your posts, and connect with the ones who match the people you're trying to reach.
Networking on LinkedIn comes down to four moves: pick the people you need to know next, show up in their comments before you show up in their inbox, send a connection request with one specific reason, and post consistently so every new connection keeps seeing your thinking.
That's the whole method. The hard part is the first move, and most LinkedIn networking tips skip it. They assume your network already points where you're going. For anyone who changed industries, started a company, or moved into a new role, it doesn't.
Your LinkedIn network is a record of your past
When I worked at Optibus, I had a lot of connections from the public transportation industry. Transit planners, operators, people at agencies and cities. It was a great network for that job.
Then I started building a marketing tech company, and that audience stopped being relevant almost overnight. The people who knew me best on LinkedIn had no reason to care about founder content or personal branding. I had to ask myself a clear question: do I still want to serve that audience somehow, or not?
I see the same pattern with clients who switched industries: the people who see their posts first are the ones who knew them in their last role.
Your network is a fossil record of your career. Every pivot leaves a layer behind, and the connections don't follow you to the next one. People feel this enough that they seriously ask on Reddit whether they should open a brand-new LinkedIn profile after changing careers. (Don't. Your history is still credibility. You just need to add a new layer on top of it.)
Why "leverage your network" can work against you
Here is the mechanism that makes this worse than it sounds. LinkedIn shows your posts to a slice of your existing network first and uses how they react to decide how far to push it. If your connections engage, you reach more of the same kind of people.
For someone who pivoted, that's a loop serving the wrong crowd. You post about your new market, your old network shrugs, the post stalls, and the new audience never sees it. Or you post something your old network loves, it does well, and the algorithm learns to show you to even more people from your past.
So "leverage your network" is advice that assumes your network matches your ambition. When it doesn't, the fix is building a new one on purpose, and that's what networking on LinkedIn actually means.
Step 1: Decide who you need to know next
Before any connection request, write the list. Be specific. "Founders" is too broad. "Founders of B2B software companies with 10 to 100 people, who post on LinkedIn at least monthly" is a list you can act on.
Three questions I ask:
- Who buys, recommends, or hires in the world I'm moving into? These are the people you want seeing your posts.
- Who already has the attention of that audience? Creators, analysts, operators with a following. Their comment sections are where your future network hangs out.
- What do I do with the old network? You don't have to remove anyone. Decide whether you'll still write for them sometimes, or let the relationship go quiet. Making the decision on purpose beats drifting.
Give the recommenders more weight than most people do. Many of the people who will help you in a new market never click anything. They follow you and read, and months later they mention your name when someone in their circle needs what you do, or they back you inside their company when your name comes up in a buying discussion. A marketing team measuring clicks never sees them. Your content has to hand those people something to repeat: an original take, a clear example, proof of how you think. That's how a network in a new industry starts working for you before you've met most of it.
Then fix the front door. When someone from the new list clicks your name, your headline and About section should say who you help now. A profile checker is a fast way to see what a stranger reads first.
Step 2: Warm up in public before you send anything
Cold connection requests from strangers get ignored because there's no context. The easiest context to create is a thoughtful comment on their post.
A good comment adds something: a counterexample, a number from your own experience, a question that moves the thread forward. Do that two or three times on someone's posts over a couple of weeks, and your name is familiar before your request arrives. I wrote more about why this works in commenting as a growth channel.
I once pitched this approach to an SDR team at a B2B company. The idea was simple: comment on prospects' posts before the cold email, so the email lands warm. Their first objection was "SDRs are not responsible for inbound." In the same meeting they told me they were doing everything they could to optimize for qualified meetings. Those two sentences can't go together. If warm context gets you more meetings, it's your job, whatever the org chart calls it.
There's a way of thinking about this I borrowed from medicine. InSightec, an Israeli medical-device company, destroys tumors with focused ultrasound. Each individual beam is too weak to damage tissue. Many beams converge on one point, and at that point you get the effect. Networking works the same way. One comment, one like, one profile view is too weak to matter alone. Several light touches converging on the same person over a few weeks add up to recognition.
Step 3: Write a LinkedIn connection request message that gets accepted
When you do send the request, keep it short and specific. LinkedIn caps the note at a few hundred characters, and free accounts currently get a limited number of personalized notes each month, so check what your account allows and save notes for the people who matter most.
The formula I use: one line on why them, one line on the link between you, no ask.
| Situation | Connection request message |
|---|---|
| You've commented on their posts | "Been enjoying your posts on pricing. Your point about annual discounts changed how I'm thinking about ours. Would like to stay connected." |
| Same new industry, no prior contact | "I recently moved into your space from a different industry, and your posts are the ones I keep learning from. Happy to connect." |
| Met them at an event | "Good talking after the panel on Tuesday. Still thinking about what you said on hiring your first marketer." |
| They reacted to your post | "Saw you reacted to my post on founder-led sales. Curious what you're seeing on your side." |
What to leave out: a pitch, a calendar link, "I'd love to pick your brain," and anything that reads like it was sent to 500 people. If the note could go to anyone, it goes to no one.
After they accept, don't send a pitch as the first message. Keep commenting. Let the relationship run in public for a while. The DM will be easier when there's something real to reply to.
Step 4: Let your posts do the networking at scale
Comments and requests work one person at a time. Posts are how the new network keeps meeting you without you doing anything extra.
When you pivot, your posts will have a rough stretch. You're writing for the audience you want, and the audience you have isn't the one clapping. Reach can dip. That's the price of moving the network, and it's temporary if you keep writing for the right people. Every new connection from Steps 2 and 3 is someone who will now see those posts and, eventually, react to them. Their reactions teach the algorithm to show you to more people like them.
A few things that help the new network find you:
- Write about the problems of your new audience, from your own experience, including what you carried over from the old world. The outsider view is often the most interesting thing you have.
- Post on a steady cadence. A network forms around a rhythm people can expect.
- Reply to every comment, especially from people on your list. The comment section is a networking room.
If you're starting with a small following, I wrote a separate piece on getting more followers on LinkedIn at an early stage.
Step 5: Mine your reactors for the people you missed
This is the most underused LinkedIn networking tip I know, and anyone can do it this afternoon.
Open your last 10 or 20 posts. Click the reactions. Look at who engaged, who commented, who reposted. Then match those people against the list from Step 1. You'll find people from your target audience who have been quietly reading you, whom you never connected with or talked to.
Make a list, even manually. Those people are a sample of the larger group who saw the post and didn't react. They're the warmest connection requests you'll ever send, because they already chose to engage with you. The fourth row in the table above is built for exactly this.
Do this every couple of weeks. It turns every post into a list of warm introductions.
LinkedIn networking tips: the quick version
If you only take a checklist from this:
- Write down who you need to know next. Specific enough to search for.
- Update your headline and About section for that audience.
- Comment on their posts two or three times before sending a request.
- Send short notes: why them, what connects you, no ask.
- Don't pitch in the first DM. Keep the conversation in public for a while.
- Post weekly for the new audience, even while reach dips.
- Every couple of weeks, open your recent reactors and connect with the ones who match your list.
What I'd skip: mass-sending blank requests, joining an engagement pod to fake activity, and purging your old connections. Your past network is still proof you've done real work somewhere. It just shouldn't be the only audience you write for.
My own rule is that you can't lead what you've never touched, and networking is the same. You can't hand it off entirely. The comments, the notes and the first replies have to sound like you, because the whole point is that people get to know you.