TL;DR
- Some useful signals come from people you already know: a champion on an open deal, a contact at a target account, a former customer, a partner.
- Person Activity Monitoring follows each person's public LinkedIn activity about once a week: the posts they write, what they repost, their comments on other people's posts and their reactions.
- Activity becomes a signal only when it touches a problem your product addresses and reaches urgency 8 or above. With a bar this high, quiet weeks are normal.
- It works differently from monitoring someone's posts as a source. That source finds the audience around a person. Monitoring follows the person.
- Use a signal as context for a relationship you already have.
Some of the people you care about are already known to you. The hard part is keeping track of what they say in public. Checking their profiles by hand every Monday rarely survives a busy week.
What Person Activity Monitoring does
Person Activity Monitoring lives under Intelligence. Add the people you care about, and SignalRaven checks each person's public LinkedIn activity about once a week: their most recent posts and reposts, the comments they leave on other people's posts and their reactions.
Each piece of activity is judged on whether it touches a problem your product addresses. When something clears the bar, it lands in your signal inbox labeled with what the person did, whether they wrote a post, reposted, commented or reacted. Filter Signals by the Monitored Person source type to see them together.
The first check looks back about a month, so you get recent context straight away. It runs immediately for the first ten people in each batch you add, and the rest start at the next daily run. After that, each check covers the week since the last one.
How it differs from monitoring someone's posts
SignalRaven can watch a named person in two ways, and they answer different questions.
Posts written by specific people is a source. It watches what a person publishes and evaluates the people engaging with it. There, the person attracts the audience you want to find. Use it for creators, executives and practitioners whose audience overlaps your market.
Person Activity Monitoring watches the person directly. Its signals are about what that person does on LinkedIn. Use it for people you already have a reason to follow. A profile can be in one or the other in the same workspace, and monitored people don't count toward your source limit.
When activity becomes a signal
The judgment is about what the activity says. A post about a problem you work on, or a comment explaining how their team is handling it, can qualify. A congratulations comment, a work anniversary or a post about an unrelated topic won't. Reactions carry the least information, so they're held to a lower ceiling than posts and comments. The judge also has to quote the words that make an activity relevant, and if it can't point to them, the activity doesn't qualify.
There's a second bar. Activity from a monitored person becomes a signal only at urgency 8 or above on the 1 to 10 scale. You chose these people, so they skip the ICP check, and the higher bar keeps a signal about someone you know worth stopping for.
Expect quiet weeks
With a bar this high, quiet weeks are normal. Many people react far more often than they post, and a lot of what anyone does on LinkedIn is personal or off-topic.
Each check reads recent activity only: the person's few latest posts and reposts, plus their recent comments and reactions. For anyone who posts more than a few times a week, some posts between checks won't be read.
Who to monitor
Add people you already have a reason to follow:
- Champions and key contacts on open opportunities
- Decision-makers at target accounts your team is working
- Former customers and past champions, wherever they work now
- Partners and the people who run partner programs with you
- Executives your team is building a relationship with
Leave out people you have no reason to follow, and resist adding everyone at an account. A short list of the right people produces signals your team will actually read.
How to add people
Open Intelligence, then Person Activity Monitoring. Paste up to 100 profile URLs or usernames at once, then choose how long to monitor them: 30, 90 or 180 days, or until you stop. The default is 90 days. There's no limit on how many people you monitor in total, on any plan.
When a period ends, monitoring stops on its own and the person moves to the Ended or paused tab, where you can resume them for another period. Pausing stops the checks without stopping the clock on the period. You can also start monitoring from a Person Intelligence report with Monitor this person.
Checks use credits only for the activity SignalRaven reads and the signals it delivers, so a quiet week costs nothing.
What to do with a signal
A signal from a monitored person is context. It might give an account owner something useful before a conversation. It might surface a topic that wasn't part of the last meeting. Sometimes it simply tells you something relevant happened and is worth a look.
Picture a fictional VP of finance at a 400-person retailer who is the champion on an open opportunity. She comments on a peer's post that her team is rebuilding its approval workflow before the new fiscal year. For the account owner, that's a good question for Thursday's call. It isn't a reason to send her a message about your product, and the talking points on the signal are context for the conversation you're already having.
What a signal from a monitored person tells you is narrow and useful: someone you already care about did something relevant enough to pay attention to.
FAQ
Does the person know they're being monitored?
Monitoring doesn't use your LinkedIn account, and nothing is sent to the person.
How often is each person checked?
About once a week. The first check looks back about a month.
How many people can I monitor?
As many as you like, on every plan. You can paste up to 100 at a time, and monitored people don't count toward your source limit.
What happens when the monitoring period ends?
Monitoring stops on its own and the person moves to the Ended or paused tab. No notification goes out. Signals you've already received stay in your inbox, and you can resume the person for another period.
What if the person works at a company I track as a source?
SignalRaven still reads their posts and reposts. Their comments and reactions are left out, the same way that company's staff are filtered from every other source.
Does it work for activity in other languages?
Not yet. Activity has to be in English to qualify.