The Engagement With Topics, Keywords & Thought Leaders Playbook

This play builds outbound lists from the people publicly engaging with your industry's thought leaders, keywords, and topics on LinkedIn. Anyone liking, commenting, or reposting the right content has already self-identified as someone who cares about your category, so the hard work of education is done. We capture that engagement, enrich it in Clay, and show up at the right moment with a relevant offer.

Why does engagement beat static list building?

A LinkedIn like, comment, or repost is a public, time-stamped signal of interest. Static firmographic filters tell you who looks like they should care about your category. Engagement tells you who is currently paying attention, and that difference is the whole play.

Audiences active on LinkedIn also reply at roughly 2x the rate of cold prospects who never post. The play combines intent (they engaged with relevant content) with reachability (they are active on the platform). Both halves matter, and this is one of the few list sources that delivers both at once. For context on what a good reply rate actually looks like, see our cold email reply rate benchmarks.

How does the play work?

1. Pick the right thought leaders

Choose 5-15 industry creators, operators, and thought leaders whose audiences overlap heavily with your ICP. The best targets post consistently about the problem you solve. Influencers who just happen to have your buyers in their audience produce weaker lists.

2. Capture every engagement

We use Trigify and Jungler to monitor posts continuously and pull the LinkedIn profile of every person who likes, comments, or reposts. We also capture the post URL and the engagement type, because both get used in the copy later.

3. Add the connection layer

On top of post engagement, we scrape each thought leader's network and recent connections. People who follow or recently connected with a thought leader signal the same intent, just one layer up the funnel.

4. Route everything into Clay

All signals flow into Clay, where we normalise LinkedIn URLs, company domains, engagement type, source post, and the thought leader they engaged with. Clay becomes the single source of truth before any outreach happens.

5. Enrich and qualify

We run company-level enrichment (industry, size, geography, funding) and contact-level enrichment (role, seniority, department). Then we use AI in Clay to score each lead against ICP fit.

6. Tier and route

What copy converts on this signal?

The opener references the specific post or thought leader they engaged with. Generic personalisation ("I saw your post about X") gets ignored. Real signal-tied context gets read.

Short. Specific. No pitch in line one. Curiosity-driven. The post they engaged with is the proof you bothered to look.

What tools do we use?

Trigify and Jungler for engagement scraping. LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Findymail for connection data. Clay for orchestration and enrichment. HeyReach for LinkedIn outreach. Instantly for email. Slack for alerts on Tier 1 leads.

What should you watch for?

• Do not pick thought leaders whose audience is mostly other vendors. Always exclude competitors and employees from the final list.
• Engagement decays fast. Reach out within 7 days of the engagement or the relevance is gone.
• Avoid "I saw your comment" if the comment was 14 days ago. Use the post itself or the topic as the hook instead.

FAQ

What counts as an engagement signal on LinkedIn?

Likes, comments, and reposts on a relevant post, plus follows and recent connections with the thought leader who wrote it. Each one is a public, time-stamped indicator that the person cares about the topic right now.

How quickly should you reach out after someone engages?

Within 7 days. Engagement decays fast, and after that the relevance is gone. If the comment is 14 days old, hook the message on the post or the topic instead of the comment itself.

How many thought leaders should you monitor?

5 to 15. Pick creators and operators who post consistently about the problem you solve and whose audiences overlap heavily with your ICP, then exclude competitors, vendors, and their employees from the final list.

What tools does this playbook use?

Trigify and Jungler capture the engagement. LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Findymail cover connection data. Clay handles enrichment and orchestration. HeyReach runs LinkedIn outreach, Instantly runs email, and Slack carries the Tier 1 alerts.

Why do engaged LinkedIn audiences reply more?

They combine intent with reachability. They engaged with content about your category, and they are active on the platform where you are reaching them. Audiences active on LinkedIn reply at roughly 2x the rate of cold prospects who never post.