How to scrape and connect with members from LinkedIn groups

Hey guys, Sanja here, checking in for the first time with my first ever social selling growth hack through Orca. It’s taken me a minute, but you know what they say…

Good things take time.

I didn’t want to share anything until I had something really valuable to share. There’s justway too much garbage and noise out there already, right?

That said, I’m super excited and a bit nervous at the same time to share this little social selling hack with you. Fingers crossed that you get something out of it.

Let’s splash in (see what I just did hehe )

In this article, I am going to show you how to scrape and engage members of LinkedIn groups with automated social selling sequences in Orca, but first let me share some thoughts on this hack.

Why scrape LinkedIn groups

“Is this hack even worth my time?” you’re asking.

I’ve been running this hack for the past week, and have been making some mental notes that I am now going to share with you into writing.

Here are two reasons why scraping members from Linkedin groups rock my socks…

#1 Build ginormous lead lists in under 5 minutes

You can build a lead list of 500,000+ leads in under 5 minutes unless of course, you have really slow internet speed, type slow, or just do things slow…that I cannot help you with dear sir or madam.

Plus, you can literally find a Linkedin group for any niche, vertical, market, segment, etc. There are teeny tiny groups to supersized groups. Take your pick.

#2 More data = better segmentation = improved messaging in your campaigns

The lead data you get back from this scrape is for a lack of words: “Woaaah”

You’re not only going to get the basics like name, position, LinkedIn URLs, but also top 3 skills, current companies they’re working at, previous companies, the industry, titles and the different groups they’re in, which btw you can probably run a follow up scrape on. 

Why is having more data better? Well, when you have a list of a few hundred thousand leads, you’ll want to segment and bucket them into smaller categories. So with all this data in your CSV, you’ll be able to narrow your lead list into more precise segments… I highly recommend playing around with different combinations of interests and professions.

Once you’ve narrowed down your groups, you will be able to do a much better job personalizing messages in your social selling campaigns. Write engaging copy and use the data to generate real conversations to help you start building relationships with potential buyers and followers on Linkedin.

Convinced yet? Keep reading…

So, to run this social selling hack, you will need the following tools:

1. Phantombuster
2. Orca and, of course…
3. Positive vibes and some creativity 

Okay, let’s not wait any longer and get going with the hack!

Step 1

Create a Phantombuster account on. You’ll get a 14-day free trial — trust me that’s plenty of time to scrape a few Linkedin groups. After that, you’ll need to upgrade. If you got some value from this hack… it might make sense to take the leap,

If you don’t subscribe, you can still scrape one Linkedin group per day with some heavy call limits. So… keep that in mind.

Step 2

Once your account is created, go to the Phantombuster’s Linkedin Group Members API. Read through the API if you must, but if you’re ready, simply click on the bright orange button to Use this API.

Clickity-click.

Step 3

Next, you’ll be redirected to your dashboard (aka My APIs) where you can configure the Linkedin Group Members API.

Click on Show More designated by the three dots next to the Launch button.

Step 4

Next, we’ll need to insert your Linkedin session cookie and the group URL into the configuration.

But Sanja… “How do I get the session cookie?”

No worries homey, I got your back… just follow these steps:

1. Open LinkedIn, right-click anywhere on the screen. A drop-down menu will show up.
2. Select Inspect from the list. A side window will open.
3. Under the Applications tab, click on Cookies from the left panel and select “https://www.linkedin.com”.
4. Locate the li_at cookie from the table and copy the alphanumeric string under the Values column.
5. Go back to Phantombuster and paste the string into the Season cookiefield.

‍

Tada! And there you have it… on to the next.

Step 5

Next, copy and paste the LinkedIn group URL into Group URL field into configuration form.

Note: You need to be a member of the group in order to scrape it.

Step 6

Give your list a name.

Step 7

When ready, Launch the extractor and watch growth hacking magic happen right before your eyes.

Step 8

Once it’s done scraping, you can download your CSV by clicking on the Download button.

Step 9

Once you’ve got your lead list, head on over to your dashboard in Orca and create a campaign.

I recommend choosing the Upload CSV campaign because that’s the one I’m going to use for this hack. Alternatively, you can also use Zapier, though I’d like to reserve those campaigns for lists that are generating leads dynamically through on-going hacks.

Note: Make sure your CSV has a column of Linkedin profile URLs.

Once you’ve uploaded the CSV and set up your social sequence in Orca, Publish the campaign.

Uploaded leads will be in pending approval status, during which Orca will be working in the background to verify the profile URLs. Once verified, leads will move from pending status to approved status, which basically means they’ve been passed into the sequence.

This can take anywhere between to 30–60 minutes depending on the number of engagements scheduled ahead of this campaign.

***** Update *****

I’m currently running two campaigns with this social selling hack, I’ll be updating this post at the end of my campaigns with the results and after action review.

If you enjoyed this post, give it a little 

Source https://useorca.com/blog/blog/how-to-scrape-and-connect-with-members-from-linkedin-groups

Triggering a social sequence with Google Forms to build your influence on Linkedin

What up, fam. I hope you guys enjoyed the last article on how I scraped my competitors FB group, found their Linkedin profile urls, and pushed those leads into Orca to engage and connect with, if not… well, I just don’t know wh-what to…

Oh hey, you’re still reading. Thank you. I love you. You just gave my ego the boost it needed to survive.

Okay then, moving right along. In this post I’m going to show you how you can set up a Zapier trigger with Google Forms to automatically engage prospects who want to access to a guide, e-book, or just pretty much anything you can share that you think will lure them into your funnel.

Warning: This little tactic is super useful when posting in highly engaged groups… that said, whatever you decide to share in life, make sure it’s something of value. Last thing you want to do is waste someone’s time for bullshit, while damaging your own brand or image.

Btw, I’m NOT talking about how and it’s perceived by the general public. I’m saying, as long as you genuinely believe it’s adding value, share it. Deep down, we all know when we’re doing something good or bad. That feeling is called conflict. Resolve it and whatever you do will prove fruitful.

I’m a firm believer that we should only do the things that make us feel good when we do it. This hack can be used or abused. It is in my hope that you do not abuse it and instead, use it to create value.

What you need for this hack:

• Orca
• Zapier
• Google Forms and
• Something you want to share

But before we get started. A story on How this hack come about:

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about Facebook and how to use it effectively to engage members in groups I think could be potential buyers. Now, my thought on Facebook is that it feels more personal, kind of like email, as opposed to Linkedin where by design it feels more public facing.

In practice, Facebook isn’t really personal, but it is perceived as such and that’s the important thing to keep in mind here. Perception trumps all, and that’s why your personal brand and company’s is super duper important. It’s hard to earn, so don’t fuck it up by doing stupid shit. Just sayin’

That said, outbound engagements on Facebook are not super effective because it feels just as cold as email. Facebook is excellent for observing potential buyers in a social environment to learn about their culture and psychology. Take notes and learn how to interact like them.

Anyways… Back to the story.

So there I was, leaning back on my chair with my legs kicked propped on my desk, deep in thought and high as a mf.

It’s high noon. The sun pierces through the skylight into my eyes, the same eyes I Lasik’ed a few years back.

I squint my already squinty eyes, and that’s when the idea hits me.

“Eureka!” I exclaim losing balance in the process and falling backwards off the chair and onto the floor. Thank God, it’s carpet…

As I lay there, my mind is racing… what if I could share something of value in a Facebook group, but instead of giving them immediate access to the doc, grab their email, then trigger an automated follow-up via email with a link to the guide.

“Good idea!” I shout. Shooting up from the ground, making a one-step dash back to my desk, then carefully pulling out my 5-year old mac I think is about to die on me and slowly type in my password (I’m high gotta do shit super slow sometimes, passwords are one of them things…)

In a matter of hours, I put together a guide on how I scraped DS group members, which at the time was just a google doc, then went ahead and made a post in the Dux-soup user group with a link to Google Forms, where I captured their email triggering a follow up with the link to the doc.

I’m sitting at the same desk right now, and it occurs to me that I should have instead captured their Linkedin url so that I could set a social sequence to build up my network of potential buyers, followers, readers on Linkedin.

So that’s what we’re going to do here.

First, things first…

Make sure that whatever it is you plan on sharing can be shared. For example, if you’re sharing a Google doc, make sure it’s available to the public for anyone who has the link. I’m not going to insult your intelligence by showing you how to do this… you’ve gotten this far in this particular article, I am led to believe you are smart enough to figure the sharing piece on your own.

Next, let’s setup the Google Form

Open up Google Drive and click on the big +New button on the side menu and select Google Forms from the drop down. You may need to first select More to expand.

Give the form a name, like Bill or George! Anything but Sue! Then give it a nice description.

Add a question and change the question type to Short Answer so you can ask for Linkedin profile URL. Make sure the question is Required.

If you know about regular expressions, click on the show more button indicated by the three vertical dots and select Response validation.

Make sure Regular Expression is selected and type the expression into the form… then send the expression over to me because I literally just tried setting that up for 45 minutes and got no where. FML

Once the content of the form is set up, go to settings by clicking on the gear icon in the navigation bar. You can opt to grab user’s emails and limit to 1 response. Most importantly, don’t forget to uncheck the Restrict to {{your_org}} userif its checked.

Don’t to save your settings. When the form is ready, click Send and grab a shareable link.

Next, we’ll need to create a Send Linkedin Profile URLs by Zapier campaign in Orca. I’ve already got a few pieces showing you how to set up sequences in Orca, so I’m not going to dive into detail here, but if you need a refresher, feel free to check my previous articles to learn how or here’s a link to recording of a Live Webinar I did on Social Selling with Orca.

The last thing we need to do is set up a trigger in Zapier to push leads into the campaign you created in the previous step.

Create a new Zap and select Google Forms from the list of apps. Then choose the option to trigger an action when a new response row is added to the bottom of a spreadsheet… which reminds me, we totally forgot to set up the form to accept responses and to push those responses to Google sheets.

So let’s do that now. Open the form you we’re working on and go to the responses section and Toggle on Accepting Responses.

Then click on the show more button indicated by the three vertical dots and choose Select response destinationfrom the drop down. Create the new spreadsheet. I just use the suggested name.

Back in Zapier, go to the next step and select the Google account you want to use. This is the account where your form is saved.

Next, we need set up your Google Forms Response by selecting the spreadsheet where your responses are being sent to.

Make sure you have at least one response in the form so that Orca can test the push. I usually just throw my Linkedin URL in there. Then Fetch+Continue.

Next, add an action step and select Orca from the list of apps. By default, whenever a response is added to the spreadsheet, the Linkedin URL will be pushed over to an existing campaign of your choosing in Orca.

But first, select the Orca account you want to use. Then once the account is connected, select the campaign you created in Orca to engage respondents. Don’t forget to set the column storing Linkedin URLs (or responses).

Source https://useorca.com/blog/blog/triggering-a-social-sequence-with-google-forms-to-build-your-influence-on-linkedin

Things you’re not doing on Linkedin, but should

Hey! Dan here. I’m one of the founders of Orca and I was tagged to write our first blog post ever … Yippie!

Full disclaimer. I’m a sales guy, not a writer. So if you’re expecting Pulitzer quality blogs, thank you… but you are sadly mistaken.

 I write at about the fourth grade level, you’re just gonna to have to bear with me on this one.

Now that expectations have been set, let’s kick this thing off with the question that’s on everyone’s mind:

What is Orca and why did we build it?

Hold up. Multi-tasking. Thinking, writing, coffee in belly. Need to process.

I’m gonna assume you do sales like me and you’re starting to see a drop in email opens and responses.

I know what you’re thinking. No, it’s not you… it’s the The Law of Shitty Click-Throughs. 

Coined by Andrew Chen, a ex-Growth at Uber, the law states: “Over time, all marketing strategies result in shitty click-through rates.”

The same law applies to email automation. Cold emails are ineffective because everyone and their mothers are doing it.

That brings us back to Orca. What is it exactly?

Orca is a social selling tool that automates engagements on Linkedin, like visiting profiles and sending connect requests, and emails all in a sequence.

Say what ? You read that right… with Orca you have the ability to not only automate and sequence emails, but also Linkedin engagements and eventually across other platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Angellist, etc.

Why should you automate your Linkedin?

For starters, LinkedIn is a gold mine. Professionals all around the world use it to find and engage leads and interact with their network.

And you know this… chances are you’re already using Linkedin as we speak to find leads, visit profiles, and send connect request to potential customers.

Most of you are probably doing this manually, one tedious-ass click at a time. Some of you even hired interns to do this for you because it really is that boring .

But guys… no finger should ever suffer the fate of 1000 clicks.

Thank God for automation.

But let’s get honest here… sales is not about automation, it’s about real conversations with real people. Everything you do up to that point is simply trying to get your foot in the door.

But getting your foot in the door ain’t that easy anymore. It’s gotten harder and harder over the last few years.

Cold emails alone just aren’t as effective as they used to be. So you gotta somehow make yourself standout in the crowd.

What do you do? You gotta warm them up through social selling.

In other words, you’ve got to use Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, etc. to engage and build rapport with leads.

In my opinion, Linkedin is the best platform to engage and warm up leads. There are several things you can do to get noticed, or initiate what I like to call a look back.

A look back happens when you do something that causes someone to visit your profile.

Most people don’t know this… but your Linkedin profile page is really just a landing page. There are ways to optimize your Linkedin profile, which I’ll talk about in a future post.

Here are some actions you can take to trigger a look back:

 Visiting a lead’s profile

 Sending an invite to connect

 Endorsing skills

 Liking or commenting on posts

The best way to think about a look back is to think of it as if it were a billboard on a highway. You’re taking small actions here and there that gets you noticed by potential customer. These actions add up over time.

In marketing, we call this orchestration. Hence the name, Orca .

We’ll talk more about orchestration, but generally speaking, orchestration is a strategy used to control consumer touch points across different channels or platforms.

There are several tools out there on the market that one can use to automate engagements on Linkedin, here are few:

• Dux-soup
• GPZ Linkedin
• Linkedhelper
• Linkedomata

These tools are awesome. I’ve personally used Dux-soup and GPZ Linkedinand they are great, but both lacked the functionality to sequence across multiple channels.

For example, if you wanted to visit a profile, wait a day, and visit the profile again, the only way to do this on Dux-soup is visit the profiles, save the profiles, literally wait a day, and visit the saved profiles again.

Furthermore, if I wanted to visit a profile, send a connect request, then send a few emails in sequence… I’d have to use other tools along with Dux-soup to do it.

I’d have to use a lead gen tool to generate work emails. Then I’d have to take the lead list, upload it to cold email tool, like Mailshake, and set up a sequence there…

That’s already too much work for me. I’ve got more important stuff to do like talking to customers… and organizing my desk .

This leads us to the second part of the question we asked at the beginning.

Why did we build Orca?

The answer is simple. I’m lazy, which is normally a bad thing, but sometimes some good can come out of it.

We built Orca to create an end-to-end sales development experience, a TOFU(top of funnel) sales tool that handles lead generation and prospecting plus all the social stuff you can do on Linkedin.

Sales the traditional way:

Currently, sales peeps are either buying lead lists or scraping the web for leads and uploading it to a lead gen tool, like FindThatLead or Hunter.io, to generate the emails, downloading the list and importing it into a CRM or email automation tool to sequence emails and calls. To run any social selling engagements, they’ll have to use a different tool to visit and connect with leads.

Whyyyyy? 

That’s so much work… not to mention how tedious and repetitive it is.

Orca makes prospecting easier by taking out all unnecessary in-between steps from finding a lead to generating emails to sequencing emails and calls, minimizing your stack the same time. And because it’s all automated, Orca frees you up to focus on the most important thing that is talking to leads and closing deals.

Orca literally handles everything. Tell Orca WHO you want to talk to and define HOW you want to do it and Orca will execute.

It’s like having a virtual sales development assistant. 

“Ask and you shall receive.”

What Orca can do for you…

Auto-visit leads

Orca will auto-visit profiles and automatically retrieve data such as name, role, company, size, and most importantly, emails.

Yeah, you read that correctly. We will grab work emails for you… You don’t have to worry about downloading a csv file and uploading it into a third party tool or Google sheet add-on to get emails.

All the profiles you visit will get a notification indicating that you’ve visited them, some of them may even visit you back or possibly even connect with you.

That said, make sure you work on your Linkedin profile. Optimize it and treat it like a landing page or website. Offer value upfront and you’ll start getting new connections, introductions, and leads without lifting a finger.

Auto-connect with leads

Instead of manually clicking on the “connect” button and writing out an invite, Orca will auto-connect you with leads.

You can personalize your messages using magic snippets.

Orca also has a feature, where you can automatically follow up after you’ve made a connection.

My connection rate is about 46%.

And now that they are in my network, I’ll be able to add value in a number of different ways to start building rapport.

If you’re looking to get the most out of your connections on Linkedin, you’ll need to go beyond just automation… you’ll need to invest some real quality time to build value.

Remember automation gets your foot in the door, the rest of it is up to you.

Cross-platform sequences

This is our bread and butter and by far the coolest feature we have. Instead of talking about it, watch the video below to get a sense of how you can use Orca to automatically scale your reach and land more meetings.

Check out the video.

Source https://useorca.com/blog/blog/things-youre-not-doing-on-linkedin-but-should