First create a list of Linkedin profiles to send connection requests
Summary: Use PhantomBuster to paste the LinkedIn profiles from a LinkedIn Boolean search into a ‘csv’ results file into your “PB csv” sheet.
These profiles will be nicely displayed in your “To Connect” sheet.
After you have sent a connection request to all those you want to send a connection request, do another Boolean search and repeat the process.
The additional names will be added to the bottom of the results csv file by Phantombuster so that when you paste this file into “PB csv” the new results will be displayed at the bottom of your “To Connect ” sheet.
How do I paste the profiles into “PB csv”?
Click here for the full explanation
Your Daily Process
It is very simple!
Following is a screenshot of your PBO sheet
The URL Column
Rather than opening one link at a time, it is far faster to open a group of links. To do this, highlight a group of profile links and right-click, the following will be displayed:
When you click “Open Links” all the links SHOULD open in your Chrome browser.
Hint
If only 1 link opens, you will probably need to change one of the settings in your Chrome browser – see the Troubleshooting section below
The Exclude Column
This column contains a formula which checks to see if the profile in Column C is also in the Fellow Collaborators sheet.
If so, the word EXCLUDE will appear in the “Exclude?” column and you should not send them a connection request.
Important
In order to make the above work, the first thing to do is to grant access to the Fellow Collaborators as described below
Column AA of your PBO contains a list of profiles that you should not send a connection request. These are imported by the formula in Column AA3.
You need to grant one-time access so that EXCLUDE comes up in the EXCLUDE column if the profile is in the Fellow Collaborators and should, therefore, be excluded.
Here’s what you need to do
Go into your PBO and scroll across to Column AA Row 3 When you hover over this cell, there’s a good chance you’ll see something like the following:
Simply click “Allow Access” and that’s all you need to do!
Important
Do not try to enter any data in the “Exclude?” column or you will overwrite the formula – you should get a warning if you do accidentally try to enter data here!
Important
There is a sheet in the Fellow Collaborators workbook called “Exclude”
Please copy and paste into that Exclude sheet, the profile of anyone you are conversing with on Linkedin who you believe is not a suitable candidate for the Hub (“this is the 19th time I have been contacted”, etc)
This will save other collaborators from wasting their time and also allow us to stop annoying people who do not want to build a network in person (for whatever reason)
As you open and examine each LinkedIn profile
You will determine whether or not you want to send this person a request to connect on LinkedIn
If so you’ll press the “Connect” button as shown in the following screenshot
Hint
Before pressing the Connect button, highlight and copy their first name
We use a Chrome Extension called TextBlaze to store commonly used “snippets” of text which can be quickly and easily pasted into the Connection request shown on the following screenshot
One of the features of TextBlaze is {clipboard}. This takes the last thing you copied to the Clipboard and automatically puts it in the text (in this case, there first name)
After pressing the “Connect” button, the following screen will be displayed in LinkedIn
After pressing “Add a note” the following screen will be displayed
Date Connected Column
As from Version 8 of the Activity Workbook, “Connection Requests” are automatically calculated in the “Daily Activity” sheet as the number of rows with that date in the Date Connect Column in PBO.
So, either enter a date indicating that you sent a connection request or some other value such as ‘x’ or ‘n’ indicating that you chose not to send out a connection request.
Hint
When you double-click in column A, a calendar defaulting to today’s date will appear (see screenshot below)
This makes it very easy to click to enter a date
Reducing your number of “clicks” & making your daily process faster and easier
If you have a large monitor (not a laptop), rather than continuously clicking between 2 screens, the following Chrome extension makes it easy for you to move between screens and enter your data
Tab resize
Find the above Chrome extension by googling and then install it, follow the directions and it will save you a lot of time.
Hint: Once installed and you have opened tabs for a large number of LinkedIn profiles to the RIGHT of your PBO sheet, click on your PBO sheet Chrome tab and then enter Ctrl-Shift-2 (it all in the documentation of the extension and easy to follow)
Managing all those browser Tabs easily and efficiently
Go to the Next Tab
Mac+Windows: Ctrl+Tab
Use this to cycle through to the next tab right of the one you currently have open in Chrome
Close Current Tab
Mac: Command+W
Windows: Ctrl+W
Use this to close the current tab and open the tab immediately to the left of the current tab. If no tab is available on the left, this will open the tab immediately to the right
Reopen Last Tab ( If you accidentally close a tab, you can re-open it with the following key combination)
Mac: Command+Shift+T
Windows: Ctrl+Shift+T
Close all tabs to the right
Half the battle in stopping overwhelm is closing unused tabs!
A great tip here is to use the following Chrome browser feature:
Just click on any tab and then close tabs to the right (see above screenshot)
Duplicate Tab
This is another handy Chrome feature which literally duplicates the current tab.
This is handy where for example, you may be in the middle of messaging someone and you want to get another look at their profile without losing your place in the current tab.
To duplicate the current tab, right-click on it and select as shown in the following screenshot
Dealing with a large number of rows in your PBO sheet
During the set-up process (described below) 50 new rows will typically be automatically added to the bottom of your PBO every second day.
You will be working from the top of the sheet processing these names.
After a while, scrolling through large numbers of rows to get to the last row you processed can be a bit tedious.
You can overcome this by hiding the rows you have already processed or by choosing a different results file (see the set-up process below)
Hiding rows which you have already process is easy – just select the rows you want to hide then right-click and select “Hide rows” as shown in the following screenshot
Troubleshooting your PBO Sheet
Your results are missing
First, check to see if your PBO is showing an #REF! error in Cell C2 like the following
If you HOVER (mover the mouse pointer) over the red triangle that comes up in the top right-hand corner, you will often get a helpful message letting you know that there is something in the sheet blocking the expansion of the data – go to the suggested cell and delete the data there and it should fix it.
You select a group of profiles to be opened (see above) but only one link opens
This usually means you have to change a setting in your Chrome web browser. How to do this is described in the following screenshots
Click the 3-dots shown in the top right of your Chrome browser and then click “Settings” as shown in the screenshot above
Then type “pop-up” into the search bar and click “Site settings” as shown in the following screenshot
Slide the “Allowed” switch to the right and that’s it – you should now be able to open multiple profile links in your PBO!
If you are having any problems Click Here to jump to the troubleshooting section at the bottom of this page before contacting your coach.
Important
Make sure you have read the detailed instructions and have looked into the troubleshooting section before asking your coach/ primary relationship for help. If you are still having problems, then check with your coach or sit in on the relevant workshop topic.
HOW TO PERFORM A SEARCH (quick instructions)
Following are some quick instructions for when you run out of results in your ‘To Connect’ Tab. If you aren’t familiar with using the Phantombuster “LinkedIn Search Export” API, we recommend you scroll down and start with the more detailed instructions. These quick instructions are for those very familiar with Phantombuster (and Activity Workbook 8.1 and beyond).
1. Run your new Booleansearch in Linkedin It could be other potential services in your niche either before or after you in the customer journey, and they want to be collaborative and see value in it for them.
Ensure you filter by connections (2nd) and location (if you wish to meet in person) and remember you can only perform a limited number of searches in a month.
Example: (technology or innovative) (collaborative) NOT(coast)
2. Copy (ctrl+c) the LinkedIn URL from the Chrome address bar
3. Go to you Phantombuster account (for more information, read the more detailed instructions below)
Click on ‘My phantoms’ at the top of the screen and select ‘Console’ of LinkedIn Search Export .
4. Edit your Settings
On the new page, in the right-hand column click ‘Edit’ adjacent to ‘Setup’ to update the settings, including:
Paste the URL (that you copied in Step 2) into the “Search Input” box.
Create a new file in the “Name of resulting CSV file” – This file will be the file to copy into your ‘PB csv’ tab of your Activity Workbook. Example: PB Search 01022020.
Update your LinkedIn Cookie!!! It expires when you log out of LinkedIn and also automatically about every 3 months.
5. Run a manual launch
Click Launch – this will usually take about 10 minutes to run and confirm there are no errors.
6. Right click the new/ updated csv file
This will download and open it (in Microsoft Xcel).
Important
In your Activity Worksheet ‘PB csv’ tab, either delete the previous list of potential connections or paste (ctrl+v) them into the ‘To Exclude’ tab.
7. Copy / Paste from the csv file into your ‘PB csv’ Tab
Open the downloaded csv file, highlight and copy (ctrl+c) all the contents and paste (ctrl+v) the results into the ‘PB csv’ tab of your Activity Worksheet. Once the contents are pasted into your ‘PB csv’ tab, they will automatically appear in your ‘To Connect’ tab as well.
That’s it – you should now have new results in your ‘To Connect’ tab to start inviting to connect!
PHANTOMBUSTER OVERVIEW
A very big part of getting great results when network building is to learn how to do some great searches on LinkedIn (your coach and the documentation will help you with this).
When you do a Search in LinkedIn it will often return in excess of 1000 results.
However, LinkedIn currently only allows us to view the first 1000 of those results. So the idea is to be as selective as you can be to get close to 1000 great candidates.
The next step is to review this list and send relevant candidates on the list a “connection request”.
Problem: The list you generate in LinkedIn does not last!
When you close your browser or shut down your computer, the list is gone!
Even if you could regenerate the list, it would difficult to page through where you were up to – especially as there will probably be new names in the list.
Solution: Save this list of LinkedIn profiles into a CSV file with the aid of Phantombuster and copy this file into the ‘PB csv’ sheet of your Activity workbook.
USING PHANTOMBUSTER
Install the Phantombuster extension in your Chrome web browser.
Set up a free Phantombuster Account.
Choose the ‘LinkedIn Search Export’ Phantom.
Obtain a LinkedIn Search URL.
Set up the Phantom using the URL obtained in step 4
Run (Launch) this Phantom to produce a results CSV file
Download and copy the contents of the results file
Paste the contents into your PBPROFILES sheet overwriting prior results
When you have processed these results via your “To Connect” sheet, do another boolean search, paste the URL into the Phantom, launch and the new results will be APPENDED to the bottom of your results file – note that your results file is not over-written – it contains the result of all your searches
Install the Phantombuster Chrome Extension
This Chrome Extension is used to get a “cookie” which connects Phantombuster with your LinkedIn account (you’ll see how this is used in a moment)
Do a search using Google to find this extension
Create a Phantombuster Account
Open a new tab in Chrome and click the Phantombuster icon just to the right of the address bar as shown in the following screenshot
Follow the prompts to create a free Phantombuster account (you will only need the free account)
Important
After signing up for Phantombuster you will receive an email from Phantombuster asking you to click the link to validate your account.
Make sure not to forget to do this or all your hard work will go to waste!
Now Make sure you choose the right “Phantom”
Phantombuster has MANY LinkedIn, Facebook and other “Phantoms”.
Important
Make sure you choose the correct “Phantom” – see instructions below
After signing up you will be taken to the Store. Search for the “LinkedIn Search Export ” agent as shown in the following screenshot
Create a LinkedIn Search URL
Click Here for some great information about constructing searches on LinkedIn which will help you find great candidates.
Ask your coach to help you
Read the documentation so that you are up to speed then seek the help of your coach to refine your search and add filters like: Location and 2nd and 3rd connections
Record the Search terms you use in your “My Searches” sheet of your Activity Workbook
When you come to do a fresh search you’ll want to know what you used last time.
Also have your last seach recorded will remind you of the structure next time.
Hint just copy and paste the final version into your sheet.
Copy the URL of your LinkedIn Search from the Chrome address bar as shown in the following screenshot
Now set up your Phantom by selecting as shown in the following screenshot
After selecting “LinkedIn Search Export”, the following will then be displayed (Step 1 of 3)
The first step is to get your LinkedIn Cookie (this will only work if you have already installed the Phantombuster Chrome extension (see above).
After pressing “Get Cookie from LinkedIn”
The cookie will appear as shown in the following screenshot
Search Input
As shown in the following screenshot, Phantombuster allows you to enter a LinkedIn Search in a number of ways
We are going to enter the URL we copied from LinkedIn (see above). So just paste the URL here
Make sure the 2 fields shown in the following screenshot are empty (indicating we want all the results from the URL)
The next 2 fields will be ignored because they are only relevant if you are entering specific search terms instead of a URL. However, for safety, set them as shown in the following screenshot
In the next field type in the name of the CSV file you want the results put into.
This can be any file name. If you are setting up your Phantom for its first run (launch) just accept the default (result)
Important: Don’t change this file name with subsequent launches unless you have to. One of the reasons for this is that it allows Phantombuster to check to see if a profile from a new search is already in the file and not add it again.
Leave the next 2 fields blank because we are not using a spreadsheet for input
Now select as follows and click Save
This will take you to the next page where you need to set as follows:
Click Save and you will be taken to the final page where you need to set as follows:
After pressing save, you will be taken back to this screen:
Click Launch
Phantombuster will then process to process your LinkedIn URL and place the profiles into the results file you specify
On the free version of Phantombuster, you have 10 minutes of processing time. This should be enough time to extract 800-1000 profiles from your URL.
Monitor the progress of the Phantombuster launch
The counter shown in the above screenshot will count down from 10 minutes.
When the process is finished the status will go to “Inactive”
Then hover over “Recent Activity” and have a look at the log to see if everything looks right
When you press “View log” you should get something that looks like this
Now download the results file PB just updated
You would normally have only 1 CSV results file. However, if you have more than one file, click the one you are currently specifying in your PB setup
A window like the following should appear asking if you want to save the results file to your computer
Press Save
This will save the file to the Downloads folder of your computer. Also, an icon like the one in the following screenshot should appear at the bootom left of your screen.
Click this and an Excel spreadsheet like the following should be displayed
You need to copy and paste the contents of this spreadsheet into the PBPROFILES sheet of your Activity Workbook
First Highlight all the contents
Press the button shown in the following screenshot
Then copy (Ctrl-C)
Now Paste this into your PBPROFILES sheet
Unless this is your first search, you will probably have entries in your PBPROFILES sheet. If so they need to be cleared out. Just highlight all and select as shown in the following screenshot
Now paste the values you just copied into this sheet (Ctrl-V). This should contain all your previous results PLUS the results from the new search you have just done.
Most Important
There is a lot of data to be pasted here and it will probably take several minutes to paste. If a message comes up saying something like “Pages is unresponsive”, press the ‘Wait’ button.
Be patient
That’s it – you can now go into your “To Connect” sheet and start your normal daily processing!
Click here to access the documentation on how to use your “To Connect” sheet
Things are just not working immediately after you did your first set-up
Carefully re-check your steps and make sure you have completed everything. It might take a little time but it’s worth it.
However, don’t struggle – ask for help!
The process has been working but has suddenly stopped working
(1) Check to see that your LinkedIn cookie is still valid
If you have set up Phantombuster correctly you should receive an email for each launch of your Phantom.
In that email, it will often give you a clue if something has gone wrong. For example, it may have a message like “Linkedin Cookie no longer valid”
In this case, go into your Phantombuster console and select Edit (as described above) and in Screen 1, press the Get Cookie from the LinkedIn button – as shown in the following screenshot
Now press Save & Close as shown in the following screenshot and all should be good!
Clicking on the “Get LinkedIn Cookie” in Phantombuster causes a new tab to open LinkedIn – The cookie is not loaded, and no error messages are given
Possible Cause and Resolution: This can be caused by security config which denies Phantombuster plugin access to LinkedIn. Resolving this can be done by right-clicking on the Phantombuster plugin and clicking “Manage Extensions”
Ensure the Plugin is set to “On” at the top of the screen
Scroll down to the Site Access Section, and ensure that either “Automatically Allow Access” is selected, or both LinkedIn and Phantombuster.com are enabled. “Automatically Allow Access”
Granular Control
After this has been done, the user can return to Phantombuster and use the “Get Cookie” button as per normal.
If you have upgraded your V8.0 to include the PBPROFILES sheet then CLICK HERE for new instructions (especially for when you need to do a new LinkedIn boolean search)
If you have not upgraded, continue using the (old) instructions below
Trouble Shooting
If you are having any problems Click Here to jump to the troubleshooting section at the bottom of this page before contacting your coach.
Following are some Quick instructions if you run out of results in your PBO because Phantombuster has processed everything (remember Pantombuster can only access a maximum of 1000 results from any LinkedIn search) or you are just not happy with the results that are coming up in your search
1. Identify new boolean search based on who you want to search for. Could be other potential services in your niche either before or after you in the customer journey and they want to be collaborative and see value in it for them
Example (technology or innovative)AND(collaborative)NOT(coast)
2. Put your new boolean search in the LinkedIn search bar
Ensure you refine the search to People & Brisbane, 2nd connections (the area you want to connect with)
Note – be aware of the number of results
3. Copy the LinkedIn URL
4. Go to your PBI sheet and paste in the URL into cell A5
5. Go to Phantom Buster
Click on My phantoms
Click on Edit
Click Get Cookie From LinkedIn
Click Save & Close
Click on Console
Scroll down to where it has you Current Setup
Note what is written in the section Csv Name – (for me it is “result”)
Find the corresponding name under Files
Right-click on results.csv (as seen in the picture above, or if your name is results1 etc.) Be sure it is the csv one.
Click on Copy link address
6. Go to PBI sheet and paste that link into cell A6
The following is for quick reference only (if you are not yet familiar with the process read below first)
PBI Field: “Search input“
Copy the URL of the PBI sheet into this field (see the following screenshot)
Important: Make sure you are in the PBI sheet before you do the copy
PBI Field: “Number of results to scrape per launch”
Enter 50
PBI Field: “Number of results to scrape per search”
Leave this as blank – this means Phntombuster will collect all the results from the search
PBI Field: “Number max of lines of your spreadsheet to process per launch”
This MUST be 1
PBI Field: “Column name of your input spreadsheet from which to get searches”
Up To Page
Important: Copy and Paste the above (Up To Page) to make sure you get it right.
There are many other options that you will need to select when setting up Phantombuster but they are more straightforward. The above are the more critical ones. The rest of the options are covered in the documentation below.
Beginners Overview
A very big part of getting great results when network building is to learn how to do some great searches on LinkedIn (your coach and the documentation will help you with this).
When you do a Search in LinkedIn it will often return in excess of 1000 results.
However, LinkedIn will only allow you to view the first 1000 of those results. So the idea is to be as selective as you can be to get close to 1000 great candidates.
The next step is to review this list and send relevant candidates on the list a “connection request”
Problem: This list does not last!
When you close your browser or shut down your computer, the list is gone!
Even if you could regenerate the list, it would difficult to page through where you were up to – especially as there will probably be new names in the list.
Solution: Save the list into a CSV and gradually work through the entries.
The Process
Note: The initial set-up of the process does take a while but you only have to do the full set-up once!
After that, the ongoing maintenance of the process is simple.
The only ongoing maintenance you should need is to either (1) do a new LinkedIn search when your last one has run out or (2) Get another LinkedIn cookie if yours becomes invalid (you can see this by looking at the log that Phantombuster emails you). Then you simply place the URL of that search in your PBI sheet as described below.
Create a LinkedIn Search URL
Click Here for some great information about constructing searches on LinkedIn which will help you find great candidates.
Ask your coach to help you
Read the documentation so that you are up to speed then seek the help of your coach to refine your search and add filters like: Location and 2nd and 3rd connections
Record the Search terms you use in your “My Searches” sheet of your Activity Workbook
See screenshot below.
When you come to do a fresh search you’ll want to know what you used last time.
Also have your last seach recorded will remind you of the structure next time.
Hint just copy and paste the final version into your sheet.
The following screenshot shows where you need to paste the LinkedIn Search URL (see (3) in the above screenshot)
Important
Make sure you paste the URL from the address bar of the LinkedIn page into A5
DO NOT accidentally paste your search terms into A5 – you need the URL from the address bar – study the above images carefully if you are unsure
Install the Phantombuster Chrome Extension
This Chrome Extension is used to get a “cookie” which connects Phantombuster with your LinkedIn account (you’ll see how this is used in a moment)
Create a PhantomBuster Account
Click the following link to create a free Phantombuster account (you will only need the free account)
You should then see a screen that looks like the following
Enter your email address and password as shown in the following screenshot
Important
After signing up for Phantombuster you will receive and email from Phantombuster asking you to click the link to validate your account.
Make sure not to forget to do this or all your hard work will go to waste!
You will then be asked to enter these details
Now Make sure you choose the right Phantombuster “Agent”
Phantombuster has MANY LinkedIn, Facebook and other “agents”.
Important
Make sure you choose the correct “Agent” – see instructions below
After signing up you will be taken to the Store. Search for the “LinkedIn Search Export ” agent as shown in the following screenshot
After selecting “LinkedIn Search Export”, the following will then be displayed (Step 1 of 3)
The first step is to get your LinkedIn Cookie (this will only work if you have already installed the Phantombuster Chrome extension (see above).
After pressing “Get Cookie from LinkedIn”
The cookie will appear as shown in the following screenshot
Search Input
As shown in the following screenshot, Phantombuster allows you to enter a LinkedIn Search in a number of ways
We are using the “Google Spreadsheet URL” option (see screenshot above)
Which means you need to enter the URL address of the PBI sheet from your Activity Workbook.
So you need to enter the URL of that spreadsheet in the “Search input” field shown in the above screenshot
Choose your PBI sheet and copy it’s URL as shown in the following screenshots
When you paste the URL into the “Search Input” box and you should get something that looks like this:
Number of results to scrape per launch
Make this 50 as shown in the following screenshot
Number of results to scrape per search
Leave this empty as we want all results from the search – see the following screenshot
People and Connections
These parameters are irrelevant in our case because we are not using Phantombuster to do the LinkedIn search. We already entered these parameters in LinkedIn to get the Search URL!
However, set them as follows:
Name of resulting CSV file
Here you are entering the name of the file into which Phantombuster will put the LinkedIn profiles when it processes the Search URL
Just accept the default – but you can change this to any file name you like – or start putting results into one file and then start “with a clean slate” with another file
Here’s a screenshot:
Number max of lines of your spreadsheet to process per launch
This MUST BE 1 as shown in the following screenshot
Column name of your input spreadsheet from which to get searches
This is the column heading of the column containing the search URL Phantombuster will search for a column with the name you put in here When it finds that column is will take the URL from the first cell In our case, this is Column S (Up To Page)
The URL in this column is the same as the one you got from LinkedIn and pasted into A5 except that it has a LinkedIn page number appended to the back of it (by a very complicated formula)
Having a page number allows Phantombuster to start at the page after the page it last processed.
We are collecting 50 profiles at a time, which is 5 LinkedIn pages at a time.
We go to all this trouble to make sure we don’t raise any alarm bells with LinkedIn algorithms!
This MUST BE exactly as shown in the following screenshot
To make sure you get it right just copy and paste the following string
Up To Page
Important
If you don’t get the above right Phantombuster will just use Cell A1 and you will get some very strange results!
Tick the “Remove Duplicates Box” and press Save to move to the next screen as shown in the following screenshot
The next screen looks like this (Step 2 of 3)
Every time the Phantombuster agent launches, it will collect another 50 profiles from the LinkedIn search URL specified in your PBI sheet and put them into the CSV file that you have specified.
This launch can be done manually at any time.
However, it is much better to have this done automatically so that you don’t have to keep remembering to do it!
In order to make the agent launch automatically, click “Repeatedly” (see above screenshot).
Then select “Once every other day” from the dropdown options.
This means that 50 new profiles will be collected into your CSV results file (and displayed in your PBO sheet) every second day.
Tip
Don’t be concerned about PhantomBuster putting in more entries than you can process.
It’s Ok for Phantombuster to get ahead of you.
At most Phantombuster can collect 1000 profiles from each Search URL and you will eventually catch up.
Note: When Phantombuster does get to the end of the LinkedIn search, you will need to do another search in LinkedIn and replace the last Search URL (in cell A5) of your PBI with the new search URL. The entries will continue to be appended to your specified CSV file (and are displayed in your PBO sheet)
Limits, Folder Management, Proxy settings
The remaining settings for “Page 2” should be as shown in the following screenshot. After you have entered them press Save
Notifications (Step 3 of 3)
First Select Advanced (as shown in the following screenshot)
Now Select Email notifications for everything as shown in the following screenshot
Tip – why you actually do want email notifications!
You want email notifications so you can go check the log that comes with the email when something goes wrong.
This will be helpful for any person trying to help you figure out what went wrong (in many cases it will simply be that Phantombuster has extracted all profiles from your current LinkedIn search URL – this will be evident from the log that is emailed to you)
Slack Notifications
Unless you use Slack, leave all the boxes shown in the following screenshot unticked and then press Save
Launch!
Finally, you are ready to manually launch and extract your first lot of results!
After pressing save you should be back at the following screen
Press the Launch button!
Phantombuster should process for about 45-90 secs (you can see how long it has taken by watching the counter at the top of the screen)
While processing the screen will say “Processing”
When it’s finished, the screen will say “Inactive” (see screenshot above).
Check the log file
After the Launch has finished, it’s a good idea to check the log file to see that everything looks right. You can do this by “hovering” as indicated in the screen below.
Tip – “View Log” only appears when you hover
You have to over your pointer over the right spot to make “View log” appear.
When “View Log” does appear, click on it and you will screen that looks like the following
You can tell a lot by examining this log! This is also the log that is emailed to you when you have the email notifications set
Tip
Check the troubleshooting section below, if you suspect things haven’t gone according to plan
Paste a link to your CSV into cell A6 of your PBI sheet
When you paste your link to your CSV file into A6 of your PBI sheet, the results from the CSV file will be displayed in your PBO sheet (the place you go to send connection requests each day)
First, get the link to your CSV as shown in the following screenshots
Now paste that link into cell A6 of your PBI sheet as shown in the following screenshot
Now select your PBO sheet
The results from your CSV file should be displayed in here as shown in the following screenshot
Tip – What to do if the results from your latest launch do not appear
Referring to the above and following screenshots, cell C2 contains the formula
=importdata(PBI!A6)
This simply displays the data from the CSV file you put in A6 of your PBI
However, it appears that Google only refreshes the import every couple of hours
So if you for example do a second manual launch in Phantombuster to put another 50 names into your CSV, you may be baffled as to why those results are not being displayed in your PBO
You can force a refresh by following the steps below (unfortunately a simple refresh of the sheet doesn’t do the trick)
How to force a refresh to get the latest results in your PBI
Note: This is not normally needed with automatic processing – the results show up just with a slight delay. So it’s really for when you’ve done a manual launch and you want those results to show up immediately.
The basic procedure is to delete the formula in cell C2 [ =importdata(PBI!A6) ] and then immediately press the undo button to re-instate the formula – see the following screenshots
Daily Processing using your PBO sheet
Read the instructions in your PBO sheet as shown in the following screenshot
How to edit Phantombuster after the initial set-up
Go to the Phantombuster website (www.phantombuster.com)
Tip
This can also be easily accomplished by opening a new tab in Chrome and clicking the Phantombuster icon as shown in the following screenshot
This will take you to the following screen
When you click on “My Phantoms” the following will be displayed
Now click Edit as shown in the following screenshot and the familiar screens will appear.
Things are just not working immediately after you did your first set-up
Carefully re-check your steps and make sure you have completed everything. It might take a little time but it’s worth it.
However, don’t struggle – ask for help!
The process has been working but has suddenly stopped working
(1) Check to see that your LinkedIn cookie is still valid
If you have set up Phantombuster correctly you should receive an email for each launch of your Phantombuster agent.
In that email, it will often give you a clue if something has gone wrong. For example, it may have a message like “Linkedin Cookie no longer valid”
In this case, go into your Phantombuster console and select Edit (as described above) and in Screen 1, press the Get Cookie from the LinkedIn button – as shown in the following screenshot
Now press Save & Close as shown in the following screenshot and all should be good!
(2) Check that you have not come to the end of your LinkedIn Search results
If when you run Phantombuster you see “empty line… skipping entry” in the log file, this is a good indication that Phantombuster has come to the end of your LinkedIn search URL (Note that you can also see this in the email that Phantombuster sends you when you have it set to run automatically and have email notifications set on)
See screenshot below for a typical log entry after Phantombuster has processed all entries in your search URL.
In this case, check the page are you up to in your Search as per your PBI
Look over to the top right of your PBI sheet and see what page you are up to (see the following screenshot)
The maximum number of “pages” you can access from a LinkedIn search is 100. As there are 10 profiles per page that is 1000 profiles.
So if you are up to page 120, you know that Phantombuster has attempted to access results beyond page 100 and LinkedIn just won’t play ball! (LinkedIn won’t return any more results even though there may have been thousands of results returned in your original LinkedIn search).
In that case, it’s time to do another LinkedIn search and place the URL in A5 of your PBI, do a manual launch and you’ll be off and running again!
You have just done a manual launch of Phantombuster and the extra results are not showing at the bottom of your PBO sheet
There is often a delay in the results generated by Phantombuster appearing in your spreadsheet (lost in space!)
The solution to this is to refresh the results in your PBO by following the steps outlined just above this troubleshooting section (see above)
Clicking on the “Get LinkedIn Cookie” in PhantomBuster causes a new tab to open LinkedIn – The cookie is not loaded, and no error messages are given
Possible Cause and Resolution: This can be caused by security config which denies PhantomBuster plugin access to LinkedIn. Resolving this can be done by right-clicking on the PhantomBuster plugin and clicking “Manage Extensions”
Ensure the Plugin is set to “On” at the top of the screen
Scroll down to the Site Access Section, and ensure that either “Automatically Allow Access” is selected, or both LinkedIn and PhantomBuster.com are enabled. “Automatically Allow Access”
Granular Control
After this has been done, the user can return to PhantomBuster and use the “Get Cookie” button as per normal.
IF you are stuck DO NOT STRUGGLE ON ALONE! Ask what your next steps might be and collaborate.
Before reaching out to your coach or the Connect Collaborative Admin
When you have created a Boolean Search on LinkedIn, you could start examining the profiles of the people that come up in that search and send a “Connection Request”. This could be done without leaving LinkedIn.
Go back through the Agenda tab of your Activity Sheet and read the syllabus document
Look through the topics below that have come up previously. You can scroll down or use the ‘find ‘ function – ctrl+f and enter a keyword in the pop up that will appear the top right of your Chrome browser right
Visit the Connect Collaborative Forums and see if someone has come across the same issue before (coming soon)
If you can’t find a solution, speak with your coach to collaborate on a solution. If you can’t find one then you can email admin@connectcollaborative.com with a detailed description and screenshots (if required).
Hint
Remember, do what you want your partners to duplicate. If everyone you are coaching calls you to solve their problems, before trying to resolve it by following these simple steps, will that work for you?
PHANTOMBUSTER
Things are just not working immediately after you did your first set-up
Carefully re-check your steps and make sure you have completed everything. It might take a little time but its important to do before reaching out
However, don’t struggle – ask for help!
The process has been working but has suddenly stopped working
(1) Check to see that your LinkedIn cookie is still valid
If you have set up Phantombuster correctly you should receive an email for each launch of your Phantombuster agent. In that email, it will often give you a clue if something has gone wrong. For example, it may have a message like” Linkedin Cookie no longer valid.
In this case, go into your Phantombuster console (press this link)
Click the 3 dots and then click “Get Cookie” as shown in the following screenshot
Now scroll to the bottom of the screen and press save
And all should be good!
(2) Check that you have not come to the end of your LinkedIn Search results
If when you run Phantombuster you see “empty line… skipping entry.” in the output, this is a good indication that Phantombuster has come to the end of your LinkedIn search URL (Note that you can also see this in the email that Phantombuster sends you when you have it set to run automatically and have email notifications set on see screenshot below)
What page are you up to in your Search?
Look over to the top right of your PBI sheet and see what page you are up to (see the following screenshot)
Could that be near the end of the last page of your LinkedIn Search?
If so, you need to do another Search and plug the URL for the new search into your PBI
You have just done a manual launch of Phantombuster and the extra results are not showing at the bottom of your PBO sheet
There is often a delay in the results generated by Phantombuster appearing in your spreadsheet (lost in space!)
You can easily force your spreadsheet to refresh as follows
Delete the formula in cell C1 in your PBO sheet as shown in the following screenshot
This will cause all your results to disappear
Now press the back arrow in the sheet (see the following screenshot) to undo that delete and all your results (including the new ones) will now be displayed
You select a group of profiles to be opened in your PBO but only one link opens
This usually means you have to change a setting in your Chrome web browser.
Click the 3-dots shown in the top right of your Chrome browser and then click “Settings” as shown in the screenshot above
Then type “pop-up” into the search bar and click “Site settings” as shown in the following screenshot
Slide the “Allowed” switch to the right and that’s it – you should now be able to open multiple profile links in your PBO
When you are introducing say 2 people per week to the CC, you end up having a lot of people in various states of play!
How do you manage to keep track of all those people!
The answer is the “Potential Partnerships” sheet of your Activity Workbook
Overview
It is important to have an effective, simple, duplicatable system of follow-up!
When you are coaching others, it is very useful to be able to see their photo. It’s also great to have the ability to quickly access other information such as their LinkedIn profile.
It’s also be able to access the details of the people being coached by someone you are coaching.
All this is possible using your “Potential Partnerships” sheet.
Which people should be entered in the Potential Partnerships sheet?
As a rule of thumb, we suggest you enter people in this sheet when you have booked them in to attend an introduction to the Connect Collaborative zoom session (using Calendly)
Filter Views
Rather than making copies of data for people you and your coach are focusing on, keep just one spreadsheet and use the Google Sheet Filter Views that are automatically included when you download a new Activity Sheet.
Google Sheets Filter Views
Filter views allow you to see what you want without sorting the actual spreadsheet. They are really useful!
Click Here to view Google’s explanation of Filter Views (different from Filters)
Click Here to view a good explanation of why to use Filter Views instead of Filters and how to set them up
Your Potential Partnerships sheet comes with 3 “Filter Views” already set up.
It is easy to just click on a Filter View that has been previously created and this will show you the people you want to focus on.
And when you are finished you can just leave the filter and go back to all the data in your normal sheet.
Note: You can also create your own Filter View whenever you need one.
Your Potential Partnership sheet comes with the following predefined Filter views:
Date Booked In View This view will give you a list of people that you have booked into CC introductory sessions. They are listed in descending “Date Booked in” order.
In other words, the person who is scheduled to attend the furthermost into the future will be at the top of the list
Follow-Up Priority Filter view
This view will give you a list of people in order of the follow-up priority you have specified for them (e.g. 1,2,3) This view is based on the values you enter in the Follow-Up Priority column
My Core-10 & My Committed Team Filter View
This is the most used Filter View
When you get really rolling, you may be ready to set a Core-10 goal
This filter shows people who are in one of the following categories
1A = New Personal on NBS
1P = Possible New Personal on NBS
2A = New on NBS for my Personal
2P = Possible New Personal for my Personal
A = Possible Personal Core-10
B = Actual Core-10
C = Worth staying in touch with
TIP
Hover over a column heading to see hints about what to enter in each column. For example, as you hover the heading for Column “I”, the following would be displayed:
A brief explanation of the Columns in your Work In Progress Sheet
First Name, Last Name & Email columns
The information that needs to be filled in for these columns is self-explanatory.
However, it is worth noting that having this information handy, enables you to copy and paste straight it into the mail merge list.
The Mail Merge feature of your Activity Sheet is very powerful for staying in touch with the people you are working with.
Date Booked In Column
This is the date the person is scheduled to attend an Introduction to the CC Zoom meeting.
When you select the Date Booked In Filter View, it shows the rows that have a non-blank entry in the ‘Date Booked In’ column with the most future date at the top.
Which means you (and your coach) can see who will be attending the Zoom introductions and when.
My Core-10 Column
This column has data validation – the only valid entries (apart from Blank) are:
1A = New Personal on NBS
1P = Possible New Personal on NBS
2A = New on NBS for my New Personal
2P = Possible on NBS for my New Personal
A = Possible Core-10
B = Actual Core-10
C = Worth keeping in touch with
Photo Column
Note: Having a photo (especially for new people) makes all the difference for you and your coach and the Builders you are coaching to be able to recognise new people and make them feel welcome.
The row height for this column has been set to 100px so that the Photo will display properly. Note: When you right-click on a row number and Insert one above or below, it will automatically insert a row with a row height of 100px.
First, obtain a link to the photo from LinkedIn
Access the LinkedIn profile and right-click on the image as shown in the following screenshot
Then click “Copy image address”
Click into the cell where you want to place the photo as shown in the following screenshot:
Then select as shown in the following screenshot
The following screen will then be displayed
Select “By URL” as shown in the above screenshot. The following screen will then be displayed
Paste the URL you obtained for the LinkedIn profile image (see above)
When the image is displayed, click Select to insert it into the cell.
The First and Last Name Columns
This is either the name of:
Someone you have invited to the Hub who has not yet joined the NBS OR
Someone you are coaching who is on the NBS
If they are on the NBS Link their name to their Activity Workbook
When someone you have introduced joins the NBS, they will download an Activity Workbook just as you have.
During Coaching sessions, you need to be able to quickly access their Activity Sheet so that you can review it with them.
This is best accomplished by linking their first name to their Activity Sheet. Then all you have to do is click on their first name and you will instantly see their Activity Sheet.
Following are the steps to link the Activity sheet of one of the people you are coaching to their name in your Activity Sheet
Obtain the link to their activity sheet
The best time to do this is when they first download their Activity sheet and share it with you
Copy this link (using Ctrl-C)
You can then easily hyperlink it to their first name in your Activity sheet using the following steps:
Right-Click on their name and select as follows:
Press Ctrl-V to paste the link as indicated in the above screenshot
Now the person you are coaching’s Activity sheet is linked to their name
Which makes it very easy to access (also you can send them the link to their Activity sheet if they ever lose it)
Profile Link Column
This is simply their LinkedIn Profile link which you can obtain from their LinkedIn profile as follows:
Copy the link from their LinkedIn “Contact Info” as shown in the above screenshot
And then paste it into the Profile column.
This helps you and your coach quickly access your potential network builders profile to get some quick background.
Comment/Action/Reminder Message Column
This is such an important column! Use it to keep track of the following:
A summary to remind you what they are about
A way of tracking LinkedIn or phone conversations so that you remember where you are up to (when you have a lot of people, you can easily forget)
The most basic way of using this column is to enter multiple lines of text within each cell. This can easily be entered sequentially as shown in the following screenshot:
To do this, enter Ctrl-Enter after each comment instead of just ‘Enter’
Consider putting a link to a Google doc
If you want to copy and paste LinkedIn conversations or you want an easier way of entering text about your partner / potential partner consider inserting a link to a Google Doc that you have created for them
Date Booked In Column
This is the date your potential network builder is scheduled to attend an introduction to the CC Zoom meeting.
Use the Filter View “Date Booked In”, to see who is attending on each date.
Reminder Date Column
You can put a Date in this column to be used with the Google Sheets Add-on: Add Reminders.
This Add-on will send you an email with the spreadsheet row when the reminder date is reached – this very handy and really helps with efficiency.
When the row comes into your email inbox, you can just click the link to your message thread in the spreadsheet row in the email and it will take you straight into your Work In Progress sheet at that row.
Here’s how to get the Add Reminders Add-on:
Click the Add-Ons menu option at the top of your sheet as shown in the following screenshot the do as shown in the screenshots after that
Click enter to search
In the above example, the add-on has been added.
If you have not already added it, the above will say Add instead of Manage.
Just Click Add and follow the instructions that come up.
After that, the documentation for the Add-on is good so just read it to find out how to use it. Access the Help function as shown in the following screenshot
The Coach Column
You will normally be the Coach.
However, as your group grows, you need to keep track of some of the people who have been introduced through the people you have introduced.
When this happens, it helps to note who is coaching this person in the Coach column.
Setting up additional Columns and Filter Views for personal use
In general, we are attempting to create a standard approach to follow-up so that we have a duplicatable process understood by all.
However, please feel free to set up your own columns in addition to the Standard columns.
Also if you have a suggestion for an additional standard column, please let Admin know and we’ll consider it.