How to Get Leads from LinkedIn Posts and Comments: Three Approaches

The r/marketing thread on this question collected responses ranging from "yes, comments work great" to "no, never gotten a lead from a comment." Both can be true simultaneously because people are describing three different activities that all get called "getting leads from LinkedIn comments."

Approach 1: Comment on others' posts to build visibility. The McVal Osborne method — 10-15 targeted comments per day on posts by industry leaders whose audiences match your ICP. Long-game brand building that generates inbound DMs over time, not immediate leads.

Approach 2: Scrape post commenters for outbound. The Conrad Niedzielski method — find high-engagement LinkedIn posts on a topic relevant to your product, scrape the commenters using Apify, enrich with emails via Prospeo or Clay, run cold outreach. Volume-based, treats engagement as a proxy for interest.

Approach 3: Monitor LinkedIn for buying intent posts. Find the specific posts where someone in your ICP explicitly describes a problem you solve, asks for product recommendations, or expresses competitor frustration — and respond within the participation window. Targeted, high-converting, doesn't require scraping.

These have different ROI profiles, different time requirements, and different risk levels. This guide covers all three honestly.

Approach 1: Commenting on others' posts for visibility

The r/marketing consensus on this approach is accurate: it's a long-game tactic, not an immediate lead channel. One commenter put it well: "Commenting isn't about lead generation, it's about building connections to get reach in the algorithm in front of your ICP."

The mechanism: LinkedIn's algorithm distributes comments to the commenter's network as well as the original poster's network. A substantive comment on a high-distribution post by an industry figure puts your name and your perspective in front of their audience — which, if you've targeted correctly, is your ICP.

What "substantive" means: not "great post!" — a comment that adds a specific insight, shares a relevant data point, or asks a question that advances the conversation. The Kaspr guide's taxonomy is useful: genuine compliment with specific detail, thoughtful question, relevant experience or insight, additional resource. The r/marketing comment that this works best when "you only comment where you think you could genuinely provide value" is correct.

The McVal Osborne claim of "more leads from comments than posts" is real but qualified — it depends on having a consistent practice (10-15 per day over time), targeting the right posts (audiences that include your ICP), and having a profile that converts when someone clicks through.

The ROI timeline: Weeks to months, not days. The r/marketing respondents who said it never worked for them are typically describing sporadic engagement without the consistent daily practice the approach requires.

What this approach doesn't do: It doesn't surface people who are actively looking to buy right now. The visibility it builds is useful when someone in your audience later needs what you offer — not for catching buyers at the moment of intent.

Approach 2: Scraping post commenters for outbound

The Conrad Niedzielski LinkedIn post describes a specific workflow: find a high-engagement post on a relevant topic → copy the URL → use Apify's LinkedIn Comment Scraper → import to Prospeo for email enrichment → run cold email outreach via Instantly. Claims 30-40% email find rate from the enrichment step.

The underlying logic: someone who commented on a post about, say, "challenges with customer churn" has self-identified as caring about that topic. If you sell churn reduction software, they're more relevant than a random cold list.

What it actually produces: This is enriched cold outreach with a topic-relevance signal. The commenter expressed interest in a topic; they didn't express interest in buying a solution from you. The response rate for this type of outreach will be higher than truly random cold email, but lower than outreach to people who expressed active buying intent.

The "1,000 high-intent leads in 30 seconds" framing in Niedzielski's post is marketing hyperbole — commenting on a post is not the same as expressing intent to buy, and the enrichment drop-off means the actual list is much smaller.

When this makes sense: If you have a specific post that's directly topically adjacent to your product's use case and a large audience to pull from. A post titled "We're evaluating alternatives to [competitor] — what are people using?" would produce genuinely high-intent commenters worth outreaching. A generic industry post produces much weaker signal.

Approach 3: Buying intent monitoring on LinkedIn

This is the approach the SERP doesn't cover, and it's the one that produces the highest conversion rate because it targets people who are actively and explicitly expressing purchase intent in real time.

Specific post types that indicate genuine buying intent on LinkedIn:

These posts are materially different from general category discussion. The person has stated they need a solution, they're in active evaluation mode, and they're explicitly inviting recommendations. A response from you — with disclosed affiliation and genuine product-specific advice — is appropriate and welcome.

The participation window on LinkedIn is 24-48 hours. Unlike Reddit (2-8 hours) or X (1-4 hours), LinkedIn's algorithm surfaces posts more slowly but sustains them longer. A post from yesterday morning is still worth responding to; a post from last week generally isn't.

How to find them systematically:

Handshake monitors LinkedIn alongside Reddit, HN, Twitter/X, Facebook Groups, and other platforms for buying intent signals. When a relevant post appears, you get a Slack alert with an AI-drafted contextual reply for your review. You post from your own account after editing. Builder plan at $69/month.

Syften monitors LinkedIn with keyword and Boolean query support plus Slack integration. No AI drafting, but strong filtering. From $29/month.

How to respond:

The r/marketing commenter who described a hybrid approach was correct: "comment and if there looks like an opportunity you follow it up with a DM after you comment. But ONLY if there looks like an opportunity, not just willy nilly."

If they engage with your comment, a short DM to continue the conversation is appropriate: "Saw you replied to my comment — happy to share more detail about how [product] handles [their specific requirement] if useful."

The conversion comparison

Approach 1 (visibility commenting) → leads through inbound profile visits over weeks/months. Low immediate conversion, high brand building value.

Approach 2 (commenter scraping) → enriched cold outreach with topic relevance signal. Higher than random cold outreach, but still requires warming.

Approach 3 (buying intent monitoring) → responding to people actively asking for solutions. Highest conversion because intent is explicit and expressed at the moment you engage.

The RevBoss article's framing is relevant here: "Engagement signals intent. A comment or like isn't random — it's a sign someone's paying attention." This is true, but it understates the difference between passive engagement (someone liked a post about a topic) and active buying intent (someone posted asking for alternatives to a competitor). The latter converts at materially higher rates.

The AI citation return

One reason investing in LinkedIn comment engagement — particularly Approach 1 and Approach 3 — pays off beyond immediate leads: research tracking 30 million AI citations found Perplexity cites Reddit in 46.7% of responses, and AI systems increasingly draw from LinkedIn public content for professional recommendation queries.

Well-upvoted, authentic comments in buying intent threads contribute to the AI recommendation corpus. The comment you post today in a "[competitor] alternatives?" thread may influence how AI systems answer that question for future buyers long after the original discussion is closed.