LinkedIn Didn't Stop Working
During my many, many weekly calls, I hear some version of this: "LinkedIn used to work, and now it doesn't." Response rates dropped, connection requests sit unanswered, and the calendar link that used to book meetings gets ignored. I understand the frustration, and I feel it too. The platform is not broken, but the way buyers use it changed, and most outreach hasn't caught up yet.
Think about what your buyer's inbox looks like right now. AI made it easier than ever to send messages, so the volume of outreach exploded while the quality has definitely degraded (yes, I'm looking at you, pitch slappers). Some estimates suggest 90% of outreach gets filtered out before it's even read, and a 10% response rate on a first message is now considered normal. Plenty of founders would celebrate hitting that number.
I've sat on the buying side of these conversations, so I can tell you exactly what happens when a stranger sends a calendar link in a first message. Nothing happens because it feels presumptuous at best and risky at worst. Buyers at banks and credit unions were already selective, and now they're selective and overwhelmed.
The feed changed along with the inbox. LinkedIn rolled out a new AI ranking system followed by the March Authenticity Update, and the numbers dropped for everyone at once. Independent algorithm research puts views down 50%, engagement down 25%, and follower growth down 59% year over year. The algorithm now scores whether someone actually read your post, meaning saves, comments, and time spent, rather than counting quick likes. It also keeps testing your content against new audiences over time instead of giving it one shot in your network's feed, which is why a post can sit quiet for ten days and then take off. If you're judging your posts at the 24-hour mark, you're grading them under rules that no longer exist.
That shift is also why engaging before you connect works so well. Commenting on someone's posts and participating in their conversations before you send the request can lift acceptance rates to 50-70%. That makes sense to me. When your name is already familiar, the request stops feeling like a pitch.
Follow-up matters more than most people think. 3-4 short follow-ups can raise total response rates to 40-60%, but they have to add something. A follow-up with one useful thought performs well. A follow-up that says "just bumping this up" does not (yes, I just rolled my eyes as I type that).
Patience pays off in ways that surprise people. In one re-engagement test I came across, a team recovered 23 leads from people who had previously said they weren't interested. A no in Q1 is often a not yet, especially in our world where FI buying cycles run long and priorities shift.
Here's what's working for me right now:
Spend a week engaging with someone's content before you send the connection request. Comment with something substantive, and if they spoke at a conference or are active in a community, reference it.
Leave the calendar link out of the first message. Your first message should give the buyer a reason to remember you, not a task to complete. You earn the right to ask for time, and claiming you can fix someone's problem when you've never spoken to them is audacity, not selling.
Keep follow-ups short and useful. Share a relevant data point or a question worth answering, space them out, and cap them.
Give a post two to three weeks before you call it a miss, and watch saves and comments instead of likes.
Stay on your subject. The algorithm now rewards topic authority over follower count, so every post in your lane makes the next one travel further.
Stick around after you publish. Reply to comments and engage with other people's content that day, because the algorithm can tell the difference between someone who participates and someone who broadcasts, and so can your buyers.
The platform is rewarding the same things buyers have always rewarded: relevance, familiarity, and effort. The bar went up, and that's good news for all of us.
Angi Milano
Founder of Maven Advisory
Hope is not a strategy.
