In the fast-paced world of business, leveraging automation can vastly improve efficiency and boost productivity. This post delves into strategies for creating effective automations, with a special focus on scraping data and automating LinkedIn connections. If you're a business owner or a new user looking to elevate your automation game, read on for step-by-step guidance and practical advice.

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Thanks for jumping on. Glad we were able to connect. I'm a brand-new user as of last week, and I've already started using some automations. Today, I want to discuss my experience and pick your brain on a couple of questions.

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I've been using a website called Alignable, which is a platform for small business owners. I have several automations running to scrape data and reach out to new users daily. Here are some key questions I'm considering:

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You can either store your scraped data in a Google Sheet temporarily or use Task Magic to start another automation by sending the data there. The key is to make sure you move your data to a location accessible to any automation.

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I've learned that while complex automations might seem time-saving, they often lead to more headaches. For example, a common approach is using a multistep process:

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To illustrate, I had a user who scraped YouTube channels, then grabbed every video from those channels and extracted metadata. This multistep scraping process was more efficient than a single, overly complex automation.

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So, how does this apply to LinkedIn? Imagine wanting to automate messages to 40 people daily in your industry. By following these steps:

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Here's a refined method to ensure smooth operations:

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You'll want to ensure your automations are efficient by:

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In summary, achieving effective business automation involves understanding the balance between complexity and efficiency. By storing data in accessible formats (like Google Sheets) and breaking down tasks into manageable steps, you can automate outreach processes smoothly. Remember to keep it simple—run your scraping automation multiple times to gather sufficient data, then execute your second-stage tasks effectively.

For those needing a visual guide, I've shared tutorial links that elucidate the process further. These steps and tips should help you build robust automations that save time and increase productivity, ensuring you can focus on growing your business.

With this guide in hand, you're now equipped to harness the power of business automations. Dive in and start simplifying your processes today!

Thanks for jumping on glad we were able to connect. Um, let's uh, let's figure out what's going on. Yeah. No, just have a, I love, I love everything. So I'm a, I'm a brand new user as of last week. I've been using, so I use this website called alignable. It's like a small business, uh, you know, business owner website that has just all business owners on it.

I have a bunch of different automations going to different groups scraping it Scraping new users and I you know, I do that daily. I guess I have uh two quick questions, um, maybe you could help so One of them would be I don't know if this is possible but if there if it's not I I know that there's another avenue, but how I think it would be great if I scraped the names of these business owners and then maybe another automation.

Is it possible to read data from another automation, go to LinkedIn? Uh, you know what I mean? Like, and then, yeah. So maybe like, is that possible? It's, it's not so much, it's not so much read from another automation as it is. You can either store that data in a Google sheet temporarily, or you can use the task magic action to start another automation and you can send the data to that automation there.

So it's, I just want to make sure it's not like you have to access a previous one. It's either like you scrape all of these results to a Google sheet, then you have a LinkedIn automation that goes on that same Google sheet, right? And now we have. Now we have a new location with all the data. That's usually what you kind of want to do, um, is move all of this somewhere that any automation can look up is basically what I use.

So it doesn't go right. Okay. So it's similar to like the Instagram unfollow. Like I made the list of the giant, the giant list of the followers for it. And then it went and did it. Is that exactly, that's, I definitely recommend. So. There's some more advanced ways, I think, to keep this all in one automation, but really it just overcomplicates so much of the process.

I prefer just doing it this way. I think it keeps everything, um, simple. You're going to get your results a lot faster and you're going to have a lot less headaches. So it's kind of just that multi step process. Like, um, I had a user the other day, they wrote in what they did is, so just to give you an idea of the steps, right?

They scraped all of the YouTube channels. That they want to engage with. They scraped that to a worksheet. Then they looped over every channel in that worksheet and grabbed every video from that channel. And now that next sheet has every single video from every single channel. Then they looped over that worksheet and got every single, you know, metadata from every single video and put it in a new work.

So it's kind of this like three step process of scraping. That's what I would recommend for that to at least, uh, get that built and get that started. So it is possible that I just get the people's names and then record the action of connecting, then type, then enter, then just keep looping it and they'll go to the URLs.

Do I do I put in the URLs or their name for linkedin? So it depends on I don't know the plot. Do you want to share your screen and we could take a quick look at the platform? I do have another call that starts at 1145, just so you know, so I have a hard stop at that, but I can run just a little bit over with you to try answering these things.

For sure. So LinkedIn.

So essentially I wish it could just go, you know, type in Alexis Lee and then it clicks on her name and then it hits more. And then there's a, there's like a air, like even message right here, like hits this. Hits this high. So what's going to happen in a line? Sorry. I'm kind of, I'm confused on how we go from LinkedIn.

Is it, is it just their name and we're doing that search? So, so this is a separate question that, so the alignable I get now, we don't even have to connect with the alignable. Just, we can start from LinkedIn. Okay. Got it. Yeah. So, okay. So in LinkedIn, so what you're going to, just to make sure I have the situation understood correctly, is this like an automation is going to start and it's looping over just like how your unfollow one is?

Yeah. Like I wish every day or like 1am or something, like it would go to, it would message at least 40, you know, people that are in the field, a certain message, it could be the same message, but literally just, um, I guess. Do I find the information for it to go find, or can it type in, let's just say podcasters?

Oh, I see what you mean. Okay. I'm just trying to find. Yeah, yeah, definitely. So there's two different ways you can do this. So, um, the reason that I prefer scraping everything to a Google sheet is because eventually when you do this podcast search, you're already going to be connected with the first page people.

Um, granted, you could adjust your filters, I guess, to make sure you don't include first level connections. Okay. Maybe? Um, let me, let me send you a video really quick on this. This is the feature that you're looking for. This is basically what you would do is you would scrape every single connect button on the page.

Okay. Then you would loop over every button, clicking it, typing something, et cetera. And that's kind of the step process. So I just sent you a video that shows how to use this on, let me see what website this was. This uses this on a real estate website. So basically what it does is they do a search for a list of properties in an area over every result in that list.

So very similar to what you're doing here. Just a different website. And so you would scrape all this information 1st or the connect. Right. Like all the connects. And then once that's in the sheet, it will go and access the sheet and then like use that. And, and like, sorry, I don't, I want to, I think I confused myself and you and I was explaining.

So there's, there's different, it's, it's difficult because there's different ways to go about this. Right. You can either set up an automation that scrapes The name and the profile URL and puts that in a Google sheet. Yes. Then you have another automation that loops over that Google sheet and connects with each person the same way your unfollow one does.

Got it. Okay. Get the info first, then way to build this and super kind of doable to do, uh, or super realistic, I guess I would say. If, if this was you, would you recommend This way is probably like, it's the fast, I don't like building automations the complicated way. Yeah. Because it seriously doesn't save time.

Okay. Like it's with something like this, you're gonna you're gonna run this scraping automation like a couple of times before your Google Sheet has 10, 000 people ready to connect with, right? And then you're never gonna be running that automation again. So there's no point having all this complex scraping logic when you could just have a temporary automation.

And then you know what I mean? That's kind of it. Yeah. At least how I go about it. Um, I sent you this other video that I sent you is a more complicated way to handle it, but I feel like you're going to end up finding a situation where you you'd like this feature, so I'd still recommend watching this, but for this automation, I would definitely do basically do exactly what you did for unfollowing unfollowing users on Instagram.

Got it. And then how do I, so after I get all the scraping on this, I hit an action for the next page, right? And then do the same thing. And then next page, like, how do I keep it going? Yeah, so what you would do is the list. I don't know if I've sent you this tutorial So I apologize if I have the list trigger is a really easy way to handle pagination Let me show you this video goes over how to do that.

Are you sending this on email? Yeah, it's a it's in the Google Meet chat. I'll go back to that. Apologies No worries. So what this does, this shows you how to click the next, it's just a super simple way to go about clicking the next page button. Um, the chat's in the bottom, right down there. Uh, Oh, I got it.

Yeah. It's a little weird, but they put it. So the first video is a complicated way to do looping that sometimes is your only option. So that's why I just, just know that, I guess. Um, however, for your LinkedIn automation, I would recommend doing it this way that I just described of, uh, Scrape everything, then loop over everything.

Super simple, easy way to go about it. That makes perfect. And then I just have one more question for you, because I'm trying to be thoughtful of your time. I appreciate that. No worries, though. Let's see. So, so, and then, um, okay, so, like, for example, one of the automations is going here to this, right? Yep. And then it hits on this, the new members, and then these are new people that join this group.

And then I have new members, it clicks on this, and then I just hit like this, the black, the black, the black, the black, like their names, and then it'll say like, populated 19. And then like, I wish it would just keep going all the way down here without just getting a few segments. And then I, I use the scroll feature to scroll it down and then I hit scrape again, right?

I'm sure there's an easier way to do that then. Yeah. What you can do is you can, there's two things I want to point out to you to kind of make building easier in general, um, for your scroll down step, what you should do is you should make. You should make the automation scroll down as far as you would want it to end.

Okay, so the reason is, is because although if we scroll down for don't do this right now, but if we scroll down for 60 seconds right now, you as a person cannot click Jennifer's name, right, but automation could. So it doesn't matter. So you just need to let it scroll all the way down, then we can scrape everything above us, even though you can't do that.

Do we do the scroll step first? Or do we do that? Yeah. So you would want to scroll down. So sorry, do you have to click their name? Or do you just want to scrape it? I just want to scrape it. Okay, perfect. So you're going to have a scroll down step that scrolls all the way down. Then you're going to have a scrape list step because it's an order of operations thing.

We want to scroll all the way down the page. Then we want to scrape everything and then I hit scrape and then I can just start here and it will still capture the ones up top. Like if I just you're going to what you're going to do is you're going to you're going to when you start this recording, you're going to Add a go to page step, just to give you a quick tip, you can add a go to page step just to go exactly to the URL you're on right now, rather than go through all those steps, so you don't need to record all those steps.

You can just go directly there. Then what you're going to do is record a scroll down step. And make this run for like, I don't know, 120 seconds, right? Whatever you think is going all the way down. You don't need to like run this autumn, run this while you're recording, just record that step. Then if you record scraping a list, do you know how to record that?

Scroll down step? Uh, yeah, I know how to do it, but then it always, it always sends, like, it always says like 10 seconds, but I can edit that. Right. Like exactly. So even though when you run, when you record that scroll down step and it plays it, um, the scroll back up to the top of the page and record your scrape list step with the first and second people, what we'll do is when this automation runs, it'll scroll all the way down and then it'll be able to find everybody in that list.

So that should work exactly how it, I think you had to do this for your scraping Instagram followers, right? Yeah. Same exact thing. Scroll down and load every follower, then scrape every person. Scrape from the bottom or the top from the top. Okay. So go let it scroll all the way down like for the automation, but scroll all the way up to record it.

Right? Exactly. Yes. Automation needs to scroll all the way down. But when you record this, you just need to make sure the scroll down step was recorded. Got it. Okay. That makes perfect sense. Perfect. Awesome. That that'll definitely help because right now it's only grabbing like 30 at a time or 20 and I'm like, do I keep making like scroll for 10 seconds?

I'm like this guy. Yeah. Yeah. It's a tricky thing. It's a tricky thing because because the other Okay. Items when you scroll down, they're not like removed from the page. We can still scrape them compared to, we need to scroll down to load new options. We don't need to scroll up to load previous ones.

That's kind of the reason that you, so that's exactly kind of the, I understand that's exactly what you were building for. You don't need to do that, at least in this situation. And I've never seen that be. The case in any situation so far. Um, but yeah, that's, it explains how you got to that logic. You're not, you're not wrong.

Websites just are complex. And, and you definitely, um, you like certain you like, um, single automations rather than trying to tie an automation from scraping data on one website and making another automation read, like instead of doing all that, just do it like one at a time. Yeah, so what you can do is you can remember, you could always have your scraping automation tell a different automation to start running or something like that.

Um, so there's some, there's some things that you can do that. It just depends on the situation. Like for this, you don't, if you don't need to scrape it every single day and it's like a one time scrape, there's absolutely no point to making it a crucial part of your automation. Um, compared to somebody we had building an automation, they want to scrape all the new listings for homes every day and then post those to LinkedIn for that automation.

We do that all in one flow. We scrape and post in that same flow and never store the data anywhere. But that's because it's only like 10 posts per day. This isn't like, I want to reach out to 5, 000 people. I wish now that's funny. No, I appreciate it. And then I guess that, so I bought it, I bought a, um, IP address, like just, uh, you know, So I don't ever run into trouble there.

You know what I mean? Like a VPN with you guys. Okay. And so, um, I guess my only question is I have one automation scheduled for 2am. It looks like I can only run an automation, like on autopilot. Because there's like a little check mark next to it, like a light and it looks like it's on. Is that correct? Or can I run multiple and like, here's my automations and you see this little green dot here?

That's just telling you that this automation is turned on right now. You can turn on as many as you want. Oh, great. And then those will run whenever they're scheduled the only and I have to jump on this other column a second, but the only Trade off there is you can only have one of each automation run at a time Otherwise it for you so it'll run one and then it'll run the next Sure, and you can only run one per chrome profile if you started getting into chrome profiles.

Oh, that's no problem All right, man. I appreciate it Seriously, let me know if you have any other questions. Uh, great talking to you. Yes, sir. Have a great day