How to find warm leads from a competitor's or influencer's LinkedIn posts
People who engage with a competitor's or a thought leader's post are self-identifying as your market. The play: pick the right posts, capture the public engagers, qualify by fit, and reach out warmly referencing the shared topic, using public data only, no cookies, and honoring opt-outs. It converts because it starts from demonstrated interest, at a moment when about 95% of the market is not yet actively buying.
Last reviewed: July 2026
Why engager lists beat bought lists
A purchased contact list is cold: nobody on it asked to hear from you, and everyone gets the same template. An engager list is the opposite. When someone comments on a post about a problem you solve, they are publicly self-identifying as interested in that topic, right now. That is a far warmer starting point, and it matters because only about 5% of buyers are in-market in any given quarter (Ehrenberg-Bass), so catching early interest is how you get on the shortlist before it forms.
How to do it, ethically and compliantly
The responsible version of this uses only public data, no cookies, and respects opt-outs and do-not-contact requests. Choose posts your buyers actually engage with (category thought leaders, competitors, adjacent experts), note who comments and reacts, and treat that as a lead to qualify, not a list to blast. The goal is a relevant, human conversation, not mass automation.
Qualifying for fit
Engagement alone is not enough. Filter the engagers against your ideal customer profile: seniority, function, industry, company size. Someone who fits and engaged is a warm lead. Someone who engaged but does not fit is noise. This fit-times-engagement filter is what separates a useful list from a noisy one.
The first message
Reference the shared context, the post you both saw, and add a genuinely useful thought. Do not pitch. LinkedIn touches already draw roughly double the response of cold email (Sopro), and being early and relevant is decisive: the first vendor a buyer contacts wins about 80% of deals (6sense, 2025).
Slingapult's read: your competitors' audiences are a warm list hiding in plain sight. Qualify by fit, reference the shared context, and reach out like a human.