How to Find the People Already Discussing the Problem You Solve on LinkedIn

TLDR: Find recent LinkedIn posts about the problem you solve. Read what each author or commenter wrote. Then ask two questions: Is this the kind of person and company you help? Do their words show a real problem? Keep the post or comment beside the person so you know why you are contacting them. You can do this by hand, or let Signado repeat the search for you.

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A title tells you someone's role. A public conversation shows what may matter now and gives you a reason to start.

Signado finds the people already talking about the problem you solve on LinkedIn.

This is LinkedIn social listening for prospect research. Broad social media monitoring counts brand mentions, sentiment, and reach. Here, social listening on LinkedIn reviews public LinkedIn content, finds relevant conversations, and preserves why each person surfaced.

You can follow this method without a social listening tool. Find people with the original post or comment attached, not a list of names with no reason to reach out.

Start with problem discussions, not title lists

A title list shows who could plausibly buy. It does not show whether the problem matters now, how they describe it, or why you should talk.

A founder asking how to reduce manual reporting is stronger evidence than 500 founders filtered by headcount. An operations lead explaining a failed process gives a consultant more to work with than a static profile.

Activity gives you a reason to look at someone. It does not make every participant a possible client. Check the person, the company, and what they wrote.

Use six steps:

1. Find conversations connected to the problem.
2. Identify the people who participated.
3. Read what each person actually said.
4. Check whether this is the kind of person and company you help.
5. Decide how close the person is to asking for help.
6. Open a relevant conversation.

If you export the names and throw away the posts and comments, you are back to a cold list.

Build a LinkedIn social listening keyword map

Start with ten phrases a buyer might type or say before looking for your service.

An SEO agency should not search only for "SEO." It could watch phrases such as:

• "traffic dropped after migration"
• "looking for a technical SEO audit"
• "agency reporting takes too long"

An automation consultancy might use:

• "doing this manually every week"
• "how are people automating this?"
• "looking for an AI automation agency"

Build the list from five kinds of language:

Language type	What it can reveal	Example pattern
Pain	A problem is already felt	"spending hours on…"
Desired outcome	The person knows what should improve	"need a faster way to…"
Failed alternative	An existing approach is not working	"we tried X but…"
Comparison	Options are being evaluated	"X vs Y for…"
Direct ask	Help or a provider may be wanted	"can anyone recommend…"

Manual method: Keep the phrases in a spreadsheet. Add columns for phrase type, relevance, false positives, and the date last checked.

With Signado: Add keyword sources. A keyword can look for post authors when writing the post is meaningful, or post engagers when the discussion attracts the people you want to meet.

Use keywords as scouts in LinkedIn monitoring

Search each phrase under LinkedIn Posts. Sort by recent activity when available. Open promising posts.

Use each keyword as a scout. LinkedIn monitoring can reveal:

• recurring authors who understand the problem
• creators whose comment sections contain potential buyers
• competitors whose posts attract the right audience
• phrases buyers use more often and individual posts worth inspecting closely

Ignore weak results. Keywords also attract recruiters, vendors, students, peers, and distant discussion. Record sources that repeatedly produce relevant people.

Promote productive sources into a creator watchlist, competitor source, or one-time post review.

Manual method: Run the saved searches on a set schedule. Log the useful posts and note which phrases produced them.

With Signado: Active keyword sources run daily. New people can arrive with the source post or comment attached, so you do not get a list of names with no explanation.

Find relevant conversations around creators and company pages

Some conversations collect around a person or company that already has your audience. A creator teaches the work buyers want to improve. A competitor company page can draw buyers into the comments.

Build two lists:

1. Creators your buyers learn from.
2. Competitors or adjacent providers your buyers compare.

Inspect recent posts. Look past like counts. Ask whether commenters describe their own situation.

A reply such as "great post" says little. "We still do this in three spreadsheets and cannot get the handoff right" reveals a problem, a process, and friction.

Manual method: Check a small source list consistently. Copy the post URL, comment text, person, company, and date into the same research sheet.

With Signado: Creator and competitor sources watch commenters around those profiles each day while active. The goal is to find relevant people and retain why each surfaced.

Work a single public LinkedIn post when the thread is unusually relevant

Focus on posts such as a competitor launch, a creator asking your buyer question, or a thread where several people describe the same pain.

Inspect commenters and reactors. Give comments more weight because they contain words you can evaluate. Treat a reaction as light evidence unless the post shows a specific need.

For each person, record:

• profile URL
• name and current role
• company and whether it is the kind you help
• the post URL
• the exact comment, when one exists
• why the activity may matter
• the next action

Manual method: Review the visible engagement and qualify each person one at a time.

With Signado: Paste one public LinkedIn post and choose commenters, reactors, or both. The source runs once, not daily. Signado still checks whether each person and company match your market and whether their activity is useful.

Read what each person wrote

A comment is not a lead score by itself. Read it in three passes.

Determine the person's relationship to the problem

Are they living with the problem, advising others, selling a competing solution, or commenting from general interest?

"We lose half a day every Friday rebuilding this report" points to lived pain.

"Here is how I solve this for my clients" probably identifies a peer or provider.

"Interesting" proves attention and little else.

Check whether you can actually help this person

Open the profile and company page. Ask four simple questions:

1. Does this person's job involve the problem you solve?
2. Is this the kind of company you help?
3. Is the location relevant, if location matters to your service?
4. Is this a possible buyer, or another provider talking about the same subject?

A direct expression of pain from the wrong buyer is still the wrong buyer.

Preserve uncertainty

Write only what the evidence supports. A reaction does not reveal why someone engaged. A comment about an old project may describe a solved problem.

Signado checks the role, company, location, and LinkedIn activity. It gives the person a score and explains the reason in plain language. The original post or comment stays attached so you can check the result yourself.

Separate peers from buyers

Peers use the same vocabulary as buyers, so keyword matching alone is unreliable.

Use a simple test:

Evidence	More likely a peer	More likely a buyer
Profile	Sells the same service	Owns or feels the problem
Comment	Gives provider advice	Describes an internal situation
Language	Talks about client delivery	Talks about "we," "our process," or "our team"
Next step	Potential partner or source	Potential client conversation

A peer may become a partner or creator source. Do not count them as buyer evidence.

Manual method: Add a relationship column with buyer, peer, partner, unclear, or exclude.

With Signado: Review why the person matches, their company details, how close they are to asking for help, and any exclusion that applies. Exclusions stop known people, companies, or countries from appearing again.

Match the opener to the buyer stage

Use a different opener for broad engagement and an explicit provider request.

• Early interest: The person joined the topic but did not describe a problem.
• Interested: The person described a problem, asked a question, or compared options.
• Ready to buy: The person directly asked for help, a provider, or a recommendation.

Start with the topic at early interest

The person reacted or posted without asking for help. Do not pitch. Start with the topic.

Saw your point about reporting getting harder as the client list grows. Which part becomes messy first for you, collecting the numbers or turning them into something the client can use?

Lead with a useful observation when interested

The person described a process, frustration, failed approach, or active priority. Lead with a useful observation. Mention your work only if it helps.

Your comment about rebuilding the handoff in three tools sounded familiar. We usually find the failure starts before the automation, when nobody owns the field definitions. Have you already mapped where the data changes shape?

Answer the explicit ask when ready to buy

The person asked for help, a provider, or recommendations. Be direct and refer only to the visible ask.

You asked for someone who can connect the intake form, check which enquiries are worth following up, and send client updates. That is work we handle. I can send a short outline of how we would approach those three parts if useful.

Signado assigns early interest, interested, or ready to buy while scoring. A ready-to-buy draft stays direct only when the person's own post or comment contains an explicit ask. Otherwise, it falls back to interested.

Software should not invent urgency the person never expressed.

Turn the post or comment into a useful opener

A good opener has three parts:

1. Source: the post or comment that made the person relevant.
2. Observation: a useful thought tied to what they said.
3. Small next step: a question, resource, or permission to continue.

Avoid fake familiarity. Do not praise a post you barely read or claim a reaction means agreement.

The safest rule is simple: every specific claim in your message should come from the original post, comment, public role, or company information.

Manual method: Draft from the saved comment and edit it until the message could not be sent unchanged to 50 other people.

With Signado, you have three choices:

1. Write the message yourself. This costs no extra Signado credits.
2. Connect Signado to Claude Code or Codex. Your existing AI can read the lead, post, and comment through Signado, then help you write the message. This uses no Signado message credits. Your Claude or Codex plan still applies.
3. Ask Signado to write the message inside the product for 7 credits. You can review and edit it before sending.

Run social listening on LinkedIn manually

You do not need software to prove this method. Use LinkedIn, a spreadsheet, and a calendar block.

Create these columns. The spreadsheet becomes a simple working dashboard for the conversations you need to review:

Field	Why it belongs
Person and profile	Identifies the contact
Company and role	Shows whether this is the kind of person and company you help
Source type	Keyword, creator, competitor, or single post
Post URL	Preserves the original conversation
Exact comment	Keeps the person's own words beside their name
Relationship	Buyer, peer, partner, unclear, or exclude
Buyer stage	Early interest, interested, or ready to buy
Reason to reach out	One sentence grounded in evidence
Next action and date	Keeps the research usable

Each week, review which sources produced buyer-heavy conversations. Remove noisy keywords. Add phrases from the strongest comments.

The manual process is the benchmark. Automate only after you know what a useful result looks like.

Automate repeated LinkedIn social listening checks

Signado repeats the same checks for you. It watches active keyword, creator, and competitor sources each day. You can also run one public post once. Every new person keeps the post or comment that brought them in.

For 5 credits, a complete new lead includes:

• the person's name and LinkedIn profile
• their role and company details
• the original post or comment
• a score with a plain-language reason
• one of three stages: early interest, interested, or ready to buy

Finding an email is optional. It costs 5 more credits when an email is found, and the credits are returned when none is found. Writing a message is also your choice. Write it yourself for no extra Signado credits, use Claude Code or Codex with Signado without spending Signado message credits, or ask Signado to write it for 7 credits. The Starter plan is $59 per month with 2,500 monthly credits. Current plan details live on the pricing page.

Signado finds engagement leads from LinkedIn only. It does not replace your CRM. It can send from Gmail, Google Workspace, or custom SMTP. It can also pass leads to Instantly, HeyReach, webhooks, Zapier, Make, n8n, or CSV. Use a CRM if you need a full history for every contact. Use a specialist sending tool if you need large automated campaigns.

If you want to compare the available approaches, read the best tools for finding warm LinkedIn leads from engagement. The direct Signado vs Trigify comparison covers the narrower buying decision. The consultancy receipts framework shows exactly what proof to collect from a real run.

For the broader category, see the current guide to social selling tools.

Keep the reason to talk attached to the person

This method works when the person, their words, and your reason to contact them stay together. Separate them and you are left with another cold list.

Start manually. Learn which phrases, creators, competitors, and posts attract actual buyers. Read the comments. Keep peers separate. Match the opener to the strength of the evidence. Then automate the repeated checks if they become the slow part.

Signado finds the people already talking about the problem you solve on LinkedIn.

Start Free to add a keyword, creator, competitor, or single-post source and see the original post or comment beside each person.