How to Use the LinkedIn Auto Connect

Before you start

• Awareness of LinkedIn’s safety limits:
  • LinkedIn lets you send up to 100 invites a week, but that depends on your account activity. Your actual limit may be lower, especially for newer or less active accounts.
  • We recommend that you start slow, around 10–20 invites per working day, spaced across launches.
  • If you enable email discovery, cut this number in half.

Step 1: Choose which LinkedIn profiles to invite

You can provide your profiles in three ways:

1. My Lists:
   Choose a saved LinkedIn Leads list you’ve already created in PhantomBuster.
2. A URL:
   • Paste a single LinkedIn profile URL.
   • Provide a Google Sheet with LinkedIn profile URLs (make sure it’s shared with “Anyone with the link”).

   • Upload a CSV file with LinkedIn profile URLs (make sure it’s publicly accessible, and note that CSV upload is only available on paid plans).

     → If you’re using a spreadsheet, the Phantom defaults to the first column (A). To use a different column, enter the column’s header name in the field “Name of column containing profile URLs.”

3. My Phantoms:
   Use results from another Phantom as input (e.g. LinkedIn Search Export results).

Step 2: Connect your LinkedIn account

To let the Phantom act on your behalf:

1. Install the PhantomBuster browser extension and connect your LinkedIn session in one click.
2. If you’re not using Chrome or Firefox, you can retrieve your session cookie manually (see our cookie guide).

Check your browser user agent
Make sure your browser is up to date before connecting your account. 
→ If your Chrome or Firefox version is outdated, your session cookie may expire much more quickly, and you’ll need to reconnect often.

Step 3: Write and customize your connection request message

1. Extract all available profile data (optional):
   • Check the box “Scrape all available profile data.”
   • Required if you want to:
     • Use placeholder tags beyond #firstName# (e.g. #company#, #jobTitle#), which rely on details extracted directly from the LinkedIn profile.
     • Enable email discovery later in the setup.

2. Enter your message:

   • Write your message in the Your message field (up to 8,000 characters).
   • Click on the tags listed below the message box to insert them automatically.
     → Keep in mind that placeholders expand into real text, which adds to your total character count. If your message + expanded placeholders go over the limit, the invite won’t be sent.
   • Click the + icon to see all available tags.
     → If you enabled Scrape all available profile data, you’ll see more placeholder options.
   • Custom placeholders: If you’ve added your own columns in your input file, you can still type those manually (e.g. #customIntro#).

   Watch the character counter in the bottom-right corner of the message box to track your usage. This helps you stay within limits and avoid your message being cut off.

• Placeholder tags:
  • All available tags appear at the bottom of the message box.
  • These include both standard tags scraped from profiles (e.g. #firstName#, #company#) and any custom tags you’ve added in your input file.
  • Click on a tag to insert it, or use the + icon to see the full list.
• Custom placeholders:
  • If your input file contains custom columns (e.g. customIntro, such as a personalized note or detail you want to include), they’ll be automatically detected and appear below the message box or under the + icon.
  • Placeholders that don’t have a value (empty cell, missing profile detail) will appear blank in your message.
  • Do not use #message# as a placeholder tag. This conflicts with the Phantom’s own message output column and may cause your text to be replaced or duplicated.
  • Likewise, avoid naming a spreadsheet column message unless absolutely necessary.
• Formatting restrictions:
  • Emojis are not supported.
  • Hyperlinks are not supported: any pasted link will appear as plain text.

Step 4: Enrich your leads with professional emails (optional)

You can choose to add verified professional email addresses to each LinkedIn profile.

Not every profile will return an email address. The match rate depends on the data available, so the number of verified emails may be lower than your credits used.

1. Click on the “Select your email discovery service” dropdown.
2. Choose one of the following options:
   • PhantomBuster credits (default option)
     • Each plan includes monthly email discovery credits.
     • 1 credit = 1 attempt to find and verify an email for one profile.
     • Credits reset monthly.
   • Third-party services
     • Connect your own account by entering your API key for:
       • Dropcontact.io
       • Hunter.io
       • Snov.io

Enabling email discovery means the Phantom will spend more time on each profile, since it needs to process both the message and the email lookup. This increases execution time per launch.

Tip for safe use
When using email discovery, process about half of the default daily recommendation for your Phantom. This reduces the risk of hitting LinkedIn’s rate limits.

Step 5: Configure connection limits and behavior

1. Invitations per launch:
   • Set the number in the Invitations to send per launch field.
   • Maximum = 10 per launch (recommended: 10 or fewer to stay safe).
2. Stay within LinkedIn’s weekly limit:
   • LinkedIn lets you send up to 100 invites a week, but that depends on your account activity. Your actual limit may be lower depending on your account history and engagement.
   • Best practice: start slow and spread them out → about 10–20 per working day.
     Example: 2 launches of 10 invites each, during office hours.
   • If you’re also using an email discovery service, halve this number for safety.

Advanced settings (dropdown in setup)

1. Simulate dwell time:
   • Enable to wait ~1 minute at each profile before sending an invite.
2. Only invite 2nd-degree connections:
   • Enable if you want to limit requests strictly to 2nd-degree profiles.

If you want to connect specifically with Sales Navigator profiles, use the Sales Navigator Auto Connect Phantom instead.

Step 6: Select launch frequency

Choose how often the Phantom should run:

1. Launch manually: Start the Phantom yourself whenever you need.
2. Launch once at a specific time: schedule a one-time run at a set date and time.
3. Launch repeatedly: schedule regular runs (e.g. once per day, several times during working hours).
4. Launch after another Phantom: chain automations together so this Phantom starts right after another finishes.
5. Advanced scheduling: customize the exact minutes, hours, days, or months when the Phantom should run.

→ For a complete walkthrough of scheduling options, see our guide to scheduling Phantoms automatically.

Step 7 (Optional): Advanced settings

Advanced settings are available if you want to fine-tune how your Phantom runs, but by default they’re already optimized for most use cases.

We recommend leaving them as they are unless a guide specifically instructs you to change something.

→ For a detailed overview of all advanced options (like execution limits, retries, email notifications, proxies, webhooks, and file management), see our Advanced settings guide.

Launch and results

When you’re ready:

• Click Launch to start your Phantom.
• Once it finishes, open the Results tab in the Phantom console to see who was invited.
• Download your results as a CSV or JSON file, or view them on the LinkedIn Leads page.

→ To learn how to export your data to Google Sheets, integrate with other tools, or reuse it in more automations, check our Access and Export your Phantom Results guide.

Export and input limits on the Free plan
If you’re on the Free plan or Free trial, some features are limited:
- CSV exports include only the first 10 rows of results.
- CSV download links (for dynamic viewing in Google Sheets or integrations) are not available.
- JSON exports are not available.
- CSV upload as an input method is not supported.
To unlock all features, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.

What you give (Input) and What you get (Output)

This section gives you a detailed breakdown of everything you need to provide to run this Phantom, and everything you’ll receive once it completes.

What you give (Input)

What you get (Output)

Tips and troubleshooting

Common pitfalls

• Forgetting that your weekly invite limit is dynamic and depends on your account activity. Exceeding it can cause your Phantom to pause or trigger LinkedIn restrictions.
• Using search URLs as input → this Phantom only works with profile URLs. If you want to target search results, use LinkedIn Search to Lead Outreach instead.
• Using this Phantom with Sales Navigator profiles → Use the Sales Navigator Auto Connect Phantom instead.
• Expecting follow-ups → this Phantom does not support follow-up messages. If you want optional follow-ups and a dashboard/report view, use LinkedIn Outreach instead.
• Not enabling Scrape all available profile data when planning to use placeholders in your message.
• Expecting to connect with company pages: this Phantom only works with people.
• Some profiles have privacy settings that prevent invitations → for example, they may require knowing their email address or the “Connect” button may be unavailable.

If you run into issues

• Check how to troubleshoot your phantom using Logs.
• Browse the Fix Issues & Troubleshoot Errors section for solutions to common problems.
• Review our Automation Rate Limits by Platform guide.
• Check our Best Practices for Social Media Automation guide.

Suggested automations

• Use this Phantom before to personalize at scale → Use the AI LinkedIn Message Writer to generate custom invitation or follow-up messages first, then feed them into your automations.
• Warm up your leads → Engage with them using the LinkedIn Auto Liker or extract their recent posts with the LinkedIn Activity Extractor to craft more relevant follow-up messages.
• Maintain your network → Run the LinkedIn Connections Export to keep an updated database of all your connections. From there, create segmented lists in your LinkedIn Leads database and use them with any other Phantoms.