# Social listening

People posting about a topic or your brand.

In the API this is the signal type `social_listening` (Social listening). You run it with the same route as every signal: a search.

## What it finds

People who post about a topic on LinkedIn, and/or who react to or comment on those posts. Each row is a person whose post matches the words, with the post, without any AI. There is no relevance check, so narrow the search with the query syntax, must_include and exclude, and judge each post yourself.

## Rows and price

- One row per person, as the source shows it, with no AI judging it: you decide which rows fit.
- At most 100 rows per search, 25 unless you send `limit`; more with `cursor`. **1 credit** per row.
- A search that delivers nothing is free.

## The signal object

Send it as `signal` in the body of POST /searches. The other fields of the body are on [Start a search](/docs/api-reference/start-search).

- **`type`** `string` · **required** — Always `social_listening`.
- **`query`** `string` · **required** — Keywords as the LinkedIn post search reads them, with at most 5 AND, OR and NOT.
- **`must_include`** `string[]` — Words a relevant post also uses; they narrow the search: every post uses one of them. Up to 10 items.
- **`exclude`** `string[]` — Words that only belong to another meaning; posts with them are dropped. Up to 10 items.
- **`leads_from`** `string` — authors = people who wrote a post; reactors = people who reacted to or commented on the busiest posts; both = merged and deduplicated. Defaults to `authors`. One of: `authors`, `reactors`, `both`.

## Limits

- LinkedIn posts of about the last month, as far back as the post search reaches: there is no backfill.
- Every post that matches the words counts, job posts and ads included: there is no relevance check.

## Run it

- **Once**: [Start a search](/docs/api-reference/start-search) (`POST /searches`). [Preview a search](/docs/api-reference/preview-search) shows the most it can cost first. The rows are in [List search results](/docs/api-reference/search-results).
- **To follow it**: run the search again, for example every week. There are no watches.
- **Keyword monitor**: [Create a monitor](/docs/api-reference/create-monitor) (`POST /monitors`) reads the LinkedIn posts that use your keywords on a schedule and delivers each new one as a mention, at 1 credit per mention. Read them with [List mentions](/docs/api-reference/list-mentions).
- **From your assistant**: `search_signals` runs it ([MCP](/docs/api-reference/mcp)), on the mySDR connection the assistant signed in to, or on the Signals MCP server with a key.

## Example

A search, `POST /searches`:

```json
{
  "signal": {
    "type": "social_listening",
    "query": "\"payroll software\" OR \"payroll provider\"",
    "leads_from": "authors"
  },
  "limit": 25
}
```