Competitor-Engagement Audience Seeding
Build a relevant network from people who already engage
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 98%
Competitor-Engagement Audience Seeding starts with the audience rather than the post. Identify a successful creator whose subject matter overlaps with yours, then inspect the people who actively like and comment on that creator's posts. These actions provide evidence that a person both cares about the topic and uses LinkedIn. Send a contextual connection request that names the shared interest and explains why your content may also be relevant. After acceptance, introduce your content once, then move into a genuine conversation and nurture people who respond. Continue filtering for recent activity rather than accepting every possible connection. The mechanism builds a network predisposed to engage, improving the chance of early reactions that LinkedIn uses to decide whether a post deserves wider visibility.
Origin
Taha used Gary Vee as the adjacent creator for her podcast, inviting people who liked or commented on his LinkedIn posts and then personally nurturing responsive connections.
Core principles
- 01Audience relevance comes before content distribution
- 02Recent engagement is stronger evidence than follower count
- 03A contextual invitation is better than a blind connection request
- 04Real conversation turns acquisition into community
- 05Early engagement determines whether LinkedIn distributes a post
How to run it
- 1
Choose an audience analogue
Find a creator who covers similar topics and whose followers would plausibly enjoy your work too.
Pro tip Prioritize audience overlap over the creator's total follower count.
Watch out A famous account with a different audience seeds irrelevant connections.
- 2
Find active people
Review recent posts and identify people who like or comment, proving current platform activity and topic interest.
Pro tip Comments provide stronger context for personalization than passive follows.
- 3
Send a contextual invitation
Mention the adjacent creator or topic and explain briefly why your related content may be useful.
Pro tip Keep the first message focused on shared relevance rather than a link.
Watch out Do not pretend to have a personal relationship that does not exist.
- 4
Orient the new connection
After acceptance, explain what your content covers and offer one relevant example without repeatedly pitching.
Pro tip Give enough detail for the person to self-select into the audience.
- 5
Become a real human
Thank people who respond, ask about them, and continue a genuine two-way conversation rather than ending at acquisition.
Pro tip Reserve time for replies as part of audience growth, not as an interruption to it.
Watch out Automated-looking follow-ups can destroy the trust created by a relevant invitation.
- 6
Protect network quality
Check whether incoming and prospective connections have engaged recently, and avoid filling the network with inactive accounts.
Pro tip Evaluate the network by engagement quality, not its raw size.
Watch out Blind acceptance can dilute early post engagement and distribution.
In the wild
Taha identified Gary Vee as a creator with an audience likely to enjoy her podcast. She contacted people liking or commenting on his posts, referenced that shared interest, introduced Young and Profiting after they accepted, and held real conversations with those who replied.
→ Her network grew from people already demonstrating both topic interest and active LinkedIn behavior.
Common mistakes
Buying or collecting passive followers
A large inactive audience does not produce the early engagement needed for distribution.
Stopping after the connection
The method depends on explaining relevance and nurturing real relationships, not merely increasing the connection count.
Blindly accepting everyone
Inactive connections make the visible network larger while weakening its value as an engaged audience.
Is it for you?
Best for
LinkedIn creators with a clear topic and an identifiable adjacent creator whose audience would value similar content.
Not ideal for
Creators seeking untargeted mass reach or unwilling to sustain genuine one-to-one conversations.
From the transcript
“step number one is building a community that actually would engage in the type of content that you would post”
“what i did is i looked at all of his posts who is liking and actually commenting on their posts”
“the third step then is to be a real human and to actually care about the people who care about you”
From the episode
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