Make sure the ‘Collect’ option is selected (as shown in the screenshot)
Now you are ready to do some LinkedIn Searches which give you a great list of about 1,000 2nd or 3rd connect (people that you haven’t already connected with that you want to send a connection request message).
Searching LinkedIn for Profiles
When you are searching for people with whom you would like to connect .. remember, you are searching for people who also believe that it is important to build face to face relationships (refer to the earlier section on Boolean searches)
These potential advocates for you can be ANYONE; so it’s important that understand that this is who you are searching.
Anyone with a like-minded attitude.
Fortunately, if you are also looking for potential clients and business partners, your search will find them in that group too!
Select search words and terms that relate to who you are and what you are looking for.
Here’s a sample of a LinkedIn search used to produce a list of people to connect with:
The search for ‘ambitious’ using the filters for 2nd connects and Brisbane, has come up with 1,197 results.
Searching Basics – how to do a ‘basic’ search ..
1. Go to the LinkedIn ‘Home’ page
2. In the ‘Search’ bar, Type in ‘ambitious’
3. Click on the drop-down “Location” box .. and Type in Brisbane, Sydney or the general locality that you would like to concentrate your search
Click Apply
Follow-on by Clicking on the drop-down “Connections” box .. and Select ‘2nd’ (these are 2nd-level connections)
Click Apply
Note: LinkedIn only allow us to reach or access the first 1,000 of these.
Advanced Searches – Boolean Searches
So you could for example use the NOT OR AND booleans as well as ‘ambitious’ in this search to reduce the list to under 1,000 (see the menu option titled “Searching using Booleans”)
Collecting Profile Names from the results produced by a LinkedIn Search
The next step is to have Linked Helper automatically collect up to 1000 of the profiles produced by your LinkedIn search
You do this by ..
1. Completing your LinkedIn Search (as detailed above)
2. Clicking the ‘Collect Contacts for Inviting’ as shown in the following screenshot:
Linked Helper will then quickly go through the pages of your LinkedIn search and collect up to 1000 of these names from the LinkedIn search results into the Linked Helper list specified by you.
You can stop and restart the process at any time by pressing ‘Collect contacts for inviting’.
When you have finished one collection, you can do another search (perhaps by including a different name in the search)
Add a personal name into your LinkedIn Search
Running the same search twice doesn’t work because the same names are collected
Let’s say you typed the word “ambitious” into the LinkedIn Search bar and selected 2nd connections and the Location “Brisbane” and collected those names into a Linked Helper list.
If you repeated that exact Seach again, almost no more names would be added to the LH list!
This is because the first 1000 names of LinkedIn search results would be the same profiles.
Linked Helper will only collect profiles that it has not already collected.
Note: that if you collected into another empty LH list, it would pick up the first 1000 again as those names would not be in that list yet.
To achieve the purpose of collecting 1000 names with each LH collection run, include a personal name in each Boolean Search
For example:
ambitious OR(driven) Peter
This would produce a list of all the Peters who are ambitious or driven, in Brisbane (location filter) that have not yet connected with you (2nd Connects).
Running the same search again would produce the same profiles and LH would therefore collect no more Peters.
Running the following search however into the same LH list
ambitious OR(driven) Mary
Would produce another 1000 profiles (The ambitious, driven people named Mary)
It is very easy to quickly assemble a list of 4-5 thousand names into one or more LH lists using the above.
Problem – if LH does not appear to be collecting as many profiles as you thought it would
Read the above – that will probably be your answer
Examining Collected Search Profile Names
The next step is to examine the names Linked Helper has collected
To examine the collected list, Click on the ‘View collected’ box (as shown)
The following screen will be displayed:
From the above screenshot, you can see there are 3 lists:
- Inviting Queue (List of people to be invited)
- Invited List (List of people who have been invited)
- Excluded List (List of people that you have excluded from being invited)
Initially, all the names collected are stored in the ‘Inviting Queue’.
When the actual invite process is run (see below), the names are automatically moved from the ‘Inviting Queue’ into the ‘Invited’ list.
If you have already sent someone an invite they won’t be sent another invitation – they will just be moved to the Invited list.
Next time you collect profiles from a Search, they will not be collected if either they are already in the Inviting Queue or the Invited list or the Excluded list.
Now, it does take some time but it’s probably wise to scan the list of people that have been collected (Inviting Queue) and exclude those you don’t want to invite – this could, for example, include close colleagues or friends who may find it strange to get a standard invite or who you don’t want to send a request to connect to.
The value of Exclusion to prevent diluting the quality of your list
The contacts of those who accept your invitation are now “2nd level” connections and you can now send those people an invitation request.
For example, if a student accepts an invitation from you, their list of contacts become your 2nd level connections.
Be careful not to dilute the quality of your list by connecting with people who are likely to have a low-quality list.
Students are often great people but may not have great business connections yet.
It’s easier to exclude people you don’t with a NOT boolean in your search (for example NOT(student)) then to have to manually exclude them later
Also it’s wise to exclude people who have “hollow profiles”.
For example profiles which have no picture AND very little information on their profile.
If those people do connect, it’s very difficult to suggest a one-on-one based on what you have seen on their profile.
Unless they are in the process of setting up their profile, LinkedIn may be of little importance to them and it is also likely that they may not check their LinkedIn account very often.
To Exclude profiles from the Inviting Queue
Select the name by clicking on the check box (see above screenshot) to select the names you want to exclude.
When you are done, you can select the ‘Move selected to Excluded list’.
If there are many names there could be a minute or so delay and then the following message will appear:
Note: You can move things in and out of all 3 lists using the select option.
Important: Be sure you CLOSE this screen by selecting the ‘Close’ button (see following screen)
This will take you back to the main screen
