Grow Your LinkedIn Network with Phantombuster

How to do this Growth Hack and what can it do for you?

Here you will learn how to extend your network 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

It's time to show you interesting things with Phantombuster (by far my favorite marketing tool).

You have a free 14-day trial where you can experience these experiences and if it's worth it, decide to buy it later.

• Growth Hack Type: Automating actions on LinkedIn with Phantombuster
• Expected results: Increase in the number of contacts in your network and the number of leads

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Why use this Growth Hack?

This growth marketing tool can extract data from LinkedIn and a lot of other platforms.

It can help you automatically add, send messages, like, follow, even extract emails and more.

But at this point, the aim is to add your potential customers and like-minded people to your network.

How do you do this Growth Hack?

You will get there in 3 steps:

1. Extract data from LinkedIn Sales Navigator results.
2. Scrape all profiles and enrich the data you've extracted.
3. Send connection requests and automated messages to your audience

I know that all these words SCRAPE, EXTRACT, and DATA can seem scary to a lot of people.

But Phantombuster is child's play.

You'll do a few clicks and copy and paste, that's all.

In addition, I will show you with images to illustrate all the steps.

So let's start doing all this awesome stuff.

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Access Phantombuster

You'll use these three features in the Phantombuster toolbox. In order:

Linkedin Sales Navigator Search Export > LinkedIn Sales Navigator Profile Scraper > LinkedIn Network Booster

In this scenario, we will be a SaaS product that offers SEO solutions for content creators.

We know that the “head of content” understands the problem well.

He may have the power to influence decision makers or is already a decision-maker himself.

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Step 1: Extract data from your LinkedIn search browser

You need to know who your target audience is to reach the right people.

Here (depending on the scenario), your aim is clear.

Let me give you an example for one of my former customers who attacked the Belgian market.

You will find people whose job is “Head of Content” in Belgium.

After playing with the filters, there are 2,519 people left.

Now let's export their data with Phantombuster.

You will be using the Phantom: LinkedIn Sales Navigator Search Export for that.

Now you have four screens coming in.

1. LinkedIn Cookie Session : you can click the “i” button to add the Phantombuster add-on and automatically get your LinkedIn cookie session.
2. Searches to Scrape : Here, you'll paste the LinkedIn Sales Navigator search results URL. That is all.
3. Behaviour : Here, you'll decide how many people you want to extract per launch. Do not exceed more than 2500 people at one time.

If you do, LinkedIn can report it as suspicious activity and suspend your account (temporarily or not)

Read the updated guidelines on the Phantombuster page by clicking on the question mark.

Important note : by the time you are reading this growth hack, the limitations may have changed. Thus, the limit of 2500 contacts could have evolved to 500, 750, etc... To know the limits, always read the Phantombuster guidelines and act accordingly.

4. Settings : Here, you have more than 2,500 profiles to export, a single extraction will be sufficient. But let's say that if you had more than 7,500, then it would be useful to divide the process into 4 times for example to not alert LinkedIn.
   

On the next screen, you hit “Launch” and let Phantombuster take care of the rest.

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Step 2: Scrape all profiles and enrich the data you've extracted.

First, you need to enrich the data you obtained during the first export.

Because at this stage, you still don't have the URLs for the personal LinkedIn profiles of your prospects.

Since your goal is to send messages and add people, you need their profile URL first.

Here, you're going to use the Phantom LinkedIn Sales Navigator Scraper to retrieve these URLs.

You already know how to use session cookies.

Now, for the URL for the spreadsheet for the profiles to be scrapped, you have two options.

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Option 1: Download the.CSV file from the first export result.

Create a Google Sheets sheet in your Google Drive and paste the.CSV file into that sheet.

Then make sure your spreadsheet is publicly accessible.

If you don't know how to do it, you can follow these steps.

After making it public, copy your spreadsheet URL and paste it into the spreadsheet URL field.

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Option 2: Copy the link address to get up-to-date results from the LinkedIn Sales Navigator search export.

Then paste it into the same field “URL of the spreadsheet of profiles to be scraped”.

You may be asking yourself “why this option?”

If you are exporting very large volumes in STEP 1, you will have to wait for hours before getting your final CSV file.

By copying the link address, you can start STEP 2 at the same time.

You don't need to wait for your “final” .CSV file as the link will add the data and update itself.

• Column name from which to get profile URLs : Here, you need to tell Phantombuster what column to enter in the spreadsheet. In this case Phantombuster should enter profileURL.

• Number of profiles to visit per launch : Do not scrape more than 10 profiles here during each launch. Anything greater than 10 at this stage can alert LinkedIn robots that you are using an automaton. Then, of course, name your file whatever you want.

As you can see, there are several boxes above the record button.

If you want to enrich your data with additional features, feel free to check them off.

After pressing the save button, you will see this screen.

Choose repeatedly (Repeatedly) and up to 8 times per day. That is the limit.

So you are going to scrape 8x10 = 80 people per day.

Now you're going to use this rich data to add people and send messages to them.

Let's continue.

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Step 3: Send connection requests and automated messages

It is the last step in our small automation chain.

You are going to use the Phantom “LinkedIn Network Booster” here.

For the spreadsheet URL of who to invite: Here, we'll use the strategy of copying the link address.

You can collect data from 80 people per day.

That means you can add and send messages to 2500 people in 31 days.

So it's best to let the list update itself every day, so you can add and send messages to new entries - all in an automated manner.

Copy the link address and paste it into this field.

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Custom message templates.

You can send a personalized automatic message with your connection request.

If you manage to write a good one, it can increase your acceptance rate.

With Phantombuster, you have plenty of customization options. You can personalize your message using #firstName #, #fullName #, #, #company #, #jobTitle #, and #school #.

Make sure your message is no longer than 300 characters. (Custom fields included).

Here you can send various messages with different intentions.

One thing is for sure, don't try to sell or push anything at first.

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Here are a few examples to inspire you.

1. Honest message (considering the “content manager” as the target):

It's a direct message about your intent. People usually accept this type of invitation because you're not trying to sell anything to them.

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Hey #firstName #,

Hope you have a nice day.

I am trying to learn more about content marketing and to expand my LinkedIn network.

Currently, I am looking for knowledgeable and like-minded people on LinkedIn to follow them, learn from them, and exchange ideas or tips.

I thought it would be great to simply join your network,

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2. A bit selling but not too pressing

This message is quite personal and honest. Here you are asking for permission to send them a free trial, blog post, or any other desired goal.

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Hey #firstName #,

Sorry to send you a message out of the blue.

I have an idea that solves X problems for content marketers.

I try to connect with like-minded people to get feedback and advice from them.

Having looked closely at your journey, I would love to hear back on this idea.

Let me know if you are interested, that would be great 😀

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3. Promise them valuable content

You may already know this, but content is the key to lead generation on LinkedIn.

So this approach could be the right one for you.

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Hey #firstName #,

I am trying to be more active on LinkedIn and connect with like-minded people.

I plan to share unique content on “X” every week.

As a content marketer, I thought you might find value in it.

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That's it for this tutorial!

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