Triggering a social sequence with Google Forms to build your influence on Linkedin

Triggering a social sequence with Google Forms to build your influence on Linkedin What up, fam. I hope you guys enjoyed the last article on how I scraped my competitors FB group, found their Linkedin profile urls, and pushed those leads into Orca to engage and connect with, if not… well, I just don’t know wh-what to…

Oh hey, you’re still reading. Thank you. I love you. You just gave my ego the boost it needed to survive.

Okay then, moving right along. In this post I’m going to show you how you can set up a Zapier trigger with Google Forms to automatically engage prospects who want to access to a guide, e-book, or just pretty much anything you can share that you think will lure them into your funnel.

Warning: This little tactic is super useful when posting in highly engaged groups… that said, whatever you decide to share in life, make sure it’s something of value. Last thing you want to do is waste someone’s time for bullshit, while damaging your own brand or image.

Btw, I’m NOT talking about how and it’s perceived by the general public. I’m saying, as long as you genuinely believe it’s adding value, share it. Deep down, we all know when we’re doing something good or bad. That feeling is called conflict. Resolve it and whatever you do will prove fruitful.

I’m a firm believer that we should only do the things that make us feel good when we do it.

This hack can be used or abused. It is in my hope that you do not abuse it and instead, use it to create value.

What you need for this hack:    

Orca Zapier Google Forms and Something you want to share

But before we get started. A story on How this hack come about: Over the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about Facebook and how to use it effectively to engage members in groups I think could be potential buyers. Now, my thought on Facebook is that it feels more personal, kind of like email, as opposed to Linkedin where by design it feels more public facing.

In practice, Facebook isn’t really personal, but it is perceived as such and that’s the important thing to keep in mind here. Perception trumps all, and that’s why your personal brand and company’s is super duper important. It’s hard to earn, so don’t fuck it up by doing stupid shit. Just sayin’ That said, outbound engagements on Facebook are not super effective because it feels just as cold as email. Facebook is excellent for observing potential buyers in a social

environment to learn about their culture and psychology. Take notes and learn how to interact like them.

Anyways... Back to the story.

So there I was, leaning back on my chair with my legs kicked propped on my desk, deep in thought and high as a mf.

It’s high noon. The sun pierces through the skylight into my eyes, the same eyes I Lasik’ed a few years back.

I squint my already squinty eyes, and that’s when the idea hits me.

“Eureka!” I exclaim losing balance in the process and falling backwards off the chair and onto the floor. Thank God, it’s carpet...

As I lay there, my mind is racing… what if I could share something of value in a Facebook group, but instead of giving them immediate access to the doc, grab their email, then trigger an automated follow-up via email with a link to the guide.

“Good idea!” I shout. Shooting up from the ground, making a one-step dash back to my desk, then carefully pulling out my 5-year old mac I think is about to die on me and slowly type in my password (I’m high gotta do shit super slow sometimes, passwords are one of them things…)

In a matter of hours, I put together a guide on how I scraped DS group members, which at the time was just a google doc, then went ahead and made a post in the Dux-soup user group with a link to Google Forms, where I captured their email triggering a follow up with the link to the doc.

I’m sitting at the same desk right now, and it occurs to me that I should have instead captured their Linkedin url so that I could set a social sequence to build up my network of potential buyers, followers, readers on Linkedin.

So that’s what we’re going to do here.

First, things first…

Make sure that whatever it is you plan on sharing can be shared. For example, if you’re sharing a Google doc, make sure it’s available to the public for anyone who has the link. I’m not going to insult your intelligence by showing you how to do this… you’ve gotten this far in this particular article, I am led to believe you are smart enough to figure the sharing piece on your own.

Next, let’s setup the Google Form Open up Google Drive and click on the big +New button on the side menu and select Google Forms from the drop down. You may need to first select More to expand.

Give the form a name, like Bill or George! Anything but Sue! Then give it a nice description.

Add a question and change the question type to Short Answer so you can ask for Linkedin profile URL. Make sure the question is Required.

If you know about regular expressions, click on the show more button indicated by the three vertical dots and select Response validation.

Make sure Regular Expression is selected and type the expression into the form‌ then send the expression over to me because I literally just tried setting that up for 45 minutes and got no where. FML

Once the content of the form is set up, go to settings by clicking on the gear icon in the navigation bar. You can opt to grab user’s emails and limit to 1 response. Most importantly, don’t forget to uncheck the Restrict to {{your_org}} userif its checked.

Don’t to save your settings. When the form is ready, click Send and grab a shareable link.

Next, we’ll need to create a Send Linkedin Profile URLs by Zapier campaign in Orca.

I’ve already got a few pieces showing you how to set up sequences in Orca, so I’m not going to dive into detail here, but if you need a refresher, feel free to check my previous articles to learn how or here’s a link to recording of a Live Webinar I did on Social Selling with Orca.

The last thing we need to do is set up a trigger in Zapier to push leads into the campaign you created in the previous step.

Create a new Zap and select Google Forms from the list of apps. Then choose the option to trigger an action when a new response row is added to the bottom of a spreadsheet… which reminds me, we totally forgot to set up the form to accept responses and to push those responses to Google sheets.

So let’s do that now. Open the form you we’re working on and go to the responses section and Toggle on Accepting Responses.

Then click on the show more button indicated by the three vertical dots and choose Select response destinationfrom the drop down. Create the new spreadsheet. I just use the suggested name.

Back in Zapier, go to the next step and select the Google account you want to use. This is the account where your form is saved.

Next, we need set up your Google Forms Response by selecting the spreadsheet where your responses are being sent to.

Make sure you have at least one response in the form so that Orca can test the push. I usually just throw my Linkedin URL in there. Then Fetch+Continue.

Next, add an action step and select Orca from the list of apps. By default, whenever a response is added to the spreadsheet, the Linkedin URL will be pushed over to an existing campaign of your choosing in Orca.

But first, select the Orca account you want to use. Then once the account is connected, select the campaign you created in Orca to engage respondents. Don’t forget to set the column storing Linkedin URLs (or responses).