I removed 1,524 LinkedIn connections

Hey there!

Most think growing an audience on LinkedIn means adding more connections and followers. But what if that’s actually hurting your reach?

In this issue, I’ll show you how I removed 1,524 “bad” connections — and how that’s improved my reach, engagement, and sales.

If you’re posting content on social as part of your audience-building strategy but you’re getting dismal engagement, today’s deep dive will be a welcome reprieve.

Let’s get into it!

Ever hear billionaires say, “Money won’t make you happy”?

It’s easy to roll your eyes at that. But they’re not wrong. More money doesn’t automatically equate to more happiness.

And on LinkedIn, more followers doesn’t mean more reach. And certainly doesn’t mean more revenue.

For a while, I had over 11,000 followers (~7k were connections). Sounds impressive, right?

But my posts were barely reaching 300 people — <2% of my network!

Meanwhile, my friend Caitlin has 2,109 followers, and her content not only reaches thousands, but she receives steady DMs from people looking to hire her.

What gives?!

The algorithm doesn’t care about your vanity metrics

When you post, LinkedIn initially shows it to a small percentage of your first-degree connections.

If those people engage, LinkedIn’s algorithm expands the reach. If they don’t, the algorithm assumes your content isn’t valuable, and throttles it.

So if thousands of your connections don’t care about your content, the algorithm learns:

❌ Your content = irrelevant

❌ Your content = not worth showing to others

❌ Your content = dead on arrival

The result?

You’re posting into the void, while people who would care about your content never see it.

Now, let’s be clear — cleaning up your connections isn’t a silver bullet.

In addition to removing connections, I’ve also been consistent with these equally important habits:

• Continually testing + refining my content: format, length, cadence, tone, topics

• Tuning up my profile

• Engaging with my ICP’s content

• Engaging with partner’s content — people with whom I share an audience

• Sending connection requests to my ICP

• Spending the majority of my time in the DMs — where the rubber meets the road

If you’re doing these habits and still struggling with reach, purging your connections may be the missing puzzle piece.

How I tidied up my connections

Since last October, I’ve been using an automation tool to systematically disconnect from 1,524 connections — people who were dead weight in my network.

In parallel, my content has gotten more reach, improved engagement, and more DMs. That’s resulted in more (better) sales calls — with fewer total connections.

What follows is a step-by-step walkthrough of what I did, so you can do the same.