Posting Best Practices
Yasmina Akni Ebourki
Last updated: Oct 30, 2024
We’ve all seen LinkedIn posts where people discuss finding leads or becoming a lead magnet after discovering a scraping app.
Others may have learned how to scrape manually (if you can pull that off, props to you!).
This has sparked our curiosity about what scraping is, how to do it, and best practices to follow to avoid getting our LinkedIn accounts blocked.
Let me break it down for you and share some top techniques you can adopt before you start
TLDR; Scraping on LinkedIn allows you to quickly gather valuable data on potential leads in your niche. While it can enhance your prospecting efforts, you must follow LinkedIn's terms of service to avoid account restrictions. Combining scraping with high-quality content creation boosts engagement and establishes trust with your audience.
What is Scraping?
Before diving into the risks and how to avoid them, it's important to understand that scraping is a technique for gathering information.
In simple terms, it involves extracting public data from various LinkedIn profiles in your niche for future contact.
Instead of searching for profiles one by one and adding them to an Excel sheet, scraping tools enable you to collect potential client profiles all at once.
This method allows you to quickly build client lists, analyze the competition, and much more.
Benefits and risks of scraping LinkedIn data.
Since LinkedIn is the largest professional social network, you'll likely find profiles that are relevant to your business and niche.
You can achieve this by using filters, utilizing LinkedIn Sales Navigator, or creating a group that gathers individuals interested in a specific topic.
Additionally, this technique has its advantages; it allows you to collect a significant amount of data that can later be automated to connect with potential clients, enhancing your lead generation efforts.
However, scraping on LinkedIn also presents challenges.
The professional network has a user agreement policy that lacks clarity regarding the use of individuals' information and content, despite the information being public.
This creates a dilemma, which is why most scraping tools are designed to navigate this gray area.
If LinkedIn detects scraping activities, the consequences can be severe for your account.
Not only could your access be restricted, but your account may also be blocked for violating the user agreement.
LinkedIn takes user security seriously, and there are ethical ways to scrape data while adhering to LinkedIn's rules and still acquire quality leads.
How to Scrape LinkedIn Safely
There are indeed strategies to scrape LinkedIn data without risking account restrictions or, worse, a complete ban.
These techniques primarily revolve around a strategy known as “warming,” which involves preparing your account for various interactions.
Maintaining an active account is crucial; having a completely inactive account raises significant red flags for LinkedIn.
The platform may view your inactivity as an indication that your sole purpose is to find clients, rather than engaging in meaningful social networking.
Importance of following LinkedIn’s terms of service.
It's crucial to keep this in mind, even if it seems like the boring part that everyone wants to skip in favor of client extraction.
Remember, it’s better to be safe than sorry, and this rule definitely applies here.
LinkedIn’s terms are clear:
You must respect data privacy.
Avoid spamming people who haven’t shown interest or who aren’t in your industry and share nothing in common with you.
Lastly, steer clear of any form of harassment.
On the other hand, LinkedIn monitors and analyzes everything about your account:
Your account needs to be verified and build trust.
Be cautious about having too many extensions connected to LinkedIn that automate different processes like engagement.
Only extract relevant and permissible profiles, and once you've done that, review your selections to ensure everything is in order.
Tools and methods for scraping safely
Scraping can certainly be performed manually if you possess the necessary skills and knowledge of coding.
However, for those who may not be as technically inclined, there are external tools available that provide scraping services, making the process safer and more efficient since they are designed to streamline your efforts.
One such tool is Lemlist, although alternatives like PhantomBuster and Octoparse also exist.
As with any tool, these services typically come with a fee, as most require payment for the functionalities they offer.
Maximize Your Prospecting Results with Content Creation
To ensure that your prospecting list and scraping efforts are effective on LinkedIn, it's essential to maintain an active account.
By "active," we mean posting regularly on LinkedIn, providing valuable content, representing your brand, and engaging in personal branding, among other activities.
Not only will this lead to better results with various prospects, but consider this: if someone reads your automated message on LinkedIn, they are likely to check your profile to learn more about you.
If they encounter a poorly maintained account with your last post dating back three months or, even worse, no profile picture at all, they may quickly lose interest and move on.
Why creating relevant content can complement scraping efforts.
That said, it's not just about posting for the sake of posting; the content must be of high quality, generate interest, and provide real value.
It should also align with what you offer or the problems you solve for your clients.
Additionally, you need to focus on personal branding, as it reveals the person behind the professional image.
This builds trust and encourages individuals to respond more confidently, as they begin to feel familiar with you through your profile picture.
At this point, you might be thinking, "That sounds great, but I don’t have time to write content three times a week while managing my job and other responsibilities."
I understand your concern. Here are two options: you can hire someone to manage your LinkedIn presence, but this can become costly over time, or you can leverage the innovation of this decade: AI.
One popular choice among established LinkedIn creators is MagicPost. It’s not your typical content AI; it generates content tailored to your profile and posts.
This means you won’t have to constantly modify it to avoid sounding robotic, as the AI learns from you and customizes posts in seconds.
In just minutes, you'll have your content prepared for the entire week.
How to leverage both scraping and content for improved engagement and conversion.
Ultimately, it's a bit like yin and yang: content creation goes hand in hand with scraping
Writing quality posts complements the process of sending messages, creating connections, and reaching out to prospects—all aimed at generating conversions.
Generating leads and sending prospecting messages rely on the relationships we build with clients.
On LinkedIn, instead of jumping straight into sending messages, you can start by liking and commenting on their posts, showing genuine interest in what they share.
This approach helps establish your authority and positions you as a recognized figure with solid connections in your network, rather than just someone who appears out of nowhere.
