How we use MentionKit to 10x our social presence

Early on, social listening did more for Swipekit than any polished marketing plan ever could.

We did not have a big audience.

We did not have a content team.

We definitely did not have a fancy outbound system.

What we did have was time, a product that solved a real problem, and a willingness to sit inside the same corners of the internet where our users were already talking.

How Reddit drove early traction for Swipekit

For me, social listening mostly meant Reddit.

I would search for threads where people were asking how to save ads, organize ad inspiration, build swipe files, or keep track of competitor creatives.

Sometimes the posts were directly about ad libraries. Other times they were from media buyers, founders, or creators complaining that their research workflow was messy.

Instead of waiting for people to somehow discover Swipekit, I went into those threads and started talking to them.

If the thread was relevant, I would leave a reply. If the people in the thread seemed like a strong fit, I would DM them as well.

Doing Manual outreach worked because intent was high

This was not some elegant growth loop.

It was manual. Repetitive. A bit scrappy.

But it worked because the intent was already there. These were not random people being interrupted in the middle of their day, they were already discussing the exact problem Swipekit solves.

That is what made social listening so powerful for us early on. It shortened the distance between demand and distribution.

Instead of figuring out where our customers were, we could see the industry levle conversations happening in real time.

And instead of running broad awareness campaigns, ads, tiktok reels, etc, we could focus our effort on a tiny number of highly relevant conversations.

Social listening shaped our messaging

The other benefit was messaging.

When you spend enough time reading Reddit threads, you stop writing marketing copy the way marketers write it. You start describing your product the way users describe their problems.

That made our positioning better.

It even made the product roadmap better, because I could see what people actually cared about instead of what I assumed they cared about. It also became easier to understand industry insights, so I could see what people want and start prioritizing/building those features.

There are also other benefits for SEO and AIO, however we haven't seen much difference in these areas.

When users started recommending Swipekit organically

Over time, something even better started happening.

People began recommending Swipekit without me having to jump in first.

At the start, nearly every mention was something I initiated.

I was the one replying, DMing, following up, and pushing the product anywhere it made sense. But after enough repetition, enough useful conversations, and enough happy users, the momentum started compounding.

Someone would ask for a tool recommendation and another user would mention Swipekit on their own. That kind of organic recommendation is worth a lot more than a forced promo post.

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Founders often want scalable acquisition too early.

But if you are still figuring out positioning, audience, or product-market fit, manual social listening is one of the fastest ways to get traction.

You learn what people want, you get direct feedback, and you create distribution at the same time.

How MentionKit now streamlines our social listening process

These days, I use MentionKit to streamline the process.

Back then, I was doing everything manually.

I would search, monitor, revisit threads, and try not to lose track of who said what, this would get messy quickly.

MentionKit makes the workflow much cleaner by helping me stay on top of relevant conversations without so much manual digging.

It also does X so no more sitting around X's own TweetDeck(which has become a paid tool), plus it does Linkedin as well.

Even better, there's a way to mark the mention as 'done'. So I can hand it off to a freelancer and they can do it on my behalf - and I can track the work they have done.

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So the core strategy has not changed.

However Reddit has definitely become messier since 2024. Expect accounts to get banned, shadow banned, and then get outright banned.

We rely on 2-3 different accounts these days instead of a single account.

Anyways, hope you enjoyed this post. If you're looking for a social listening tool, I can highly recommend Mentionkit.