Use this workflow to monitor LinkedIn topic engagement and turn relevant activity into actionable signals inside lemlist.

By the end of this tutorial, you’ll know how to create a watchlist that tracks engagement on specific LinkedIn topics, narrow it to the right audience, choose how signals should be processed, and review the setup before launch.

Why this matters

A LinkedIn topics watchlist helps you spot people and companies already engaging with subjects related to your offer. That means you can prioritize warmer leads, focus your outreach, and automate follow-up based on real buying intent instead of guessing.

Prerequisites

You should already know the basics of navigating Signals in lemlist.
You should already have access to the Signals feature and enough credits for topic monitoring.
You should already know which LinkedIn topics, industries, or buyer signals matter most to your team.
If you plan to push signals to a campaign automatically, you should already have at least one campaign ready to use.

Core lesson — step-by-step workflow

Phase 1: Start a new watchlist

Go to Signals from the left sidebar, then click New watchlist. This opens the watchlist builder, where you’ll define the signal you want to monitor and how lemlist should act on it.
In the Signal to monitor step, choose Engaged on specific topics on LinkedIn, then click Next. This signal is useful when you want to find people or companies already interacting with content around your space, which is often a strong indicator of interest.

Phase 2: Configure the LinkedIn topics you want to track

Add a clear Watchlist name so your team can quickly understand what this watchlist monitors. A descriptive name makes it easier to manage multiple watchlists later.
Under LinkedIn topic to monitor, enter one topic or keyword per line, then click Add topics. This tells lemlist exactly which LinkedIn conversations to watch, and each valid topic becomes part of your monthly monitored set.
After adding them, confirm your topics appear as valid entries. lemlist also shows how many topics you’ve added and the estimated monthly credit cost, which helps you control scope before moving forward.
Choose the Types of engagement to track. You can monitor:
- Posts — track people who publish about your selected topics
- Likes on their posts — track people who like posts about those topics
- Comments on their posts — track people who comment on posts about those topics
- Likes & Comments — narrow results to people doing both
This choice matters because it shapes the intent level of the leads you’ll surface. For example, comments often indicate deeper engagement than likes.

Phase 3: Define the segment you want to monitor

Choose which audience this watchlist should apply to: All segments, a Contact list, or a Specific segment. Use this step to control whether you want broad discovery or a more focused workflow tied to your existing data.
If you want more precision, add criteria such as Job titles, Companies, Locations, Industries, and Company sizes. These filters help you avoid collecting activity from people outside your ideal customer profile.
You can also use the Exclusion list to remove engagement from specific LinkedIn profiles or company pages. This is especially helpful if you want to exclude competitors, internal team members, existing customers, or known low-fit accounts before signals start flowing in.

Phase 4: Choose how lemlist should process signals

In Signals processing, decide what should happen when lemlist identifies a matching signal. You can:
- Manually process the identified signals
- Create a task for the identified signals
- Push to campaign automatically
If you want a more hands-off workflow, select Push to campaign automatically and choose the campaign that should receive those leads. You can also decide whether to include contacts already linked to existing signals and how to handle leads already present in another campaign.

Phase 5: Review and launch the watchlist

Open the Summary step and review all sections carefully, including the signal type, the number of topics being monitored, engagement type, billing impact, processing method, and selected segment settings. This final check helps you catch costly mistakes before the watchlist starts running.
When everything looks correct, click Next to finalize the watchlist.

Practical application / real-life example

Here’s a simple example for a sales team selling outbound software:

Topics to monitor: sales prospecting, outbound, b2b
Engagement type: Likes on their posts
Segment filters: SDRs, Heads of Sales, B2B SaaS, 11–200 employees
Exclusions: competitors, your own team, current customers
Processing: Push matched leads into a dedicated campaign automatically

This setup works well when you want to identify people already interacting with topics related to your solution and move them into outreach quickly.

Troubleshooting & pitfalls

Issue: I’m not seeing any signals yet

Root cause: New watchlists can take time to populate, or your filters may be too narrow.

Fix:

Wait a little longer if the watchlist was just created
Review your topic list and make sure the keywords are broad enough to generate activity
Temporarily reduce filtering criteria like industry, company size, or exclusions

Issue: My watchlist is too expensive

Root cause: Each monitored topic has a monthly credit cost, so adding too many topics increases spend.

Fix:

Keep only the most relevant topics
Remove overlapping keywords that describe the same intent
Use audience filters to improve quality instead of adding more topics

Issue: The leads aren’t relevant

Root cause: Your topics may be too broad, or the watchlist isn’t limited to the right segment.

Fix:

Replace generic topics with more specific buying-intent keywords
Add job title, industry, location, or company size filters
Use the exclusion list for companies or profiles you never want to track

Issue: Leads are not being pushed into the right campaign

Root cause: The wrong processing option or campaign was selected during setup.

Fix:

Go back to the Signals processing step
Confirm that Push to campaign automatically is selected if automation is your goal
Check the chosen campaign and review how duplicates or existing campaign members should be handled