Find Customer Story Candidates From Public Posts

Public praise can point you toward a strong customer interview. It does not give you permission to publish a testimonial or repeat an unverified result.

This brand mentions workflow finds specific product outcomes and routes them to customer review.

SocialListeningAPI searches public posts on LinkedIn, X, Reddit, TikTok, and YouTube for the phrases you choose and returns normalized records with source URLs.

Step 1: Search for outcome language

Create a SocialListeningAPI account and claim the 100 free credits. Combine your brand with phrases that may reveal a useful story:

• brand name saved us
• migrated to brand name
• using brand name for
• built with brand name
• brand name case study

Search plain brand and product names too. People often share an outcome without using praise words.

Step 2: Search public brand mentions

for endpoint in \
  linkedin/search-posts \
  x/search-posts \
  reddit/search-posts \
  tiktok/search-posts \
  youtube/search-posts
do
  curl --get "https://api.sociallisteningapi.com/api/v1/$endpoint" \
    --data-urlencode 'query=using brand name for customer research' \
    --header 'x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY'
done

One query across five sources costs 6 credits. Read the API introduction for source details. The MCP can run the searches through Claude or ChatGPT.

Step 3: Label concrete outcomes

Store author, source URL, platform, published date, outcome wording, relationship status, and review notes in an external system. An external LLM can flag posts with numbers, migrations, or detailed workflows, but a person must read every candidate.

Keep the original context. A short praise line without a task or outcome is a weak story lead.

Step 4: Verify the relationship and claim

Confirm that the person used the product and that the result still reflects their experience. Do not treat an affiliate, copied post, or casual mention as a customer result.

If the source is Reddit, read the community rules before any public reply. Contact and verification happen outside SocialListeningAPI.

Step 5: Ask for permission

Invite the person to an interview and explain how the story may be used. Get explicit approval for quotes, numbers, company details, images, and final publication. Never publish the source post as an automatic testimonial.

Conclusion

Prioritize posts that explain the starting problem, what changed, and the result. Those details give you a useful interview outline.

No story moves forward until the customer verifies the claim and agrees to publication.

Continue with Find Early Adopters on Hacker News With an API.

Written by ShashFounder at sociallisteningapi, focused on product and growth