Cold messages to people in my field, do they work?, production planner here

I sent 5 messages on a professional network and got two replies. I worked as a production planner before this. I want advice, not a job directly. How do you phrase the request?

Follow up with a thank-you and a short update. One of my chats led to a referral a month later.

Thanks for writing this out. I went through something close to it 12 months ago, and it settled down once I kept a simple log of every call and form.