LinkedIn lead magnet posts: send the resource to every commenter

A LinkedIn lead magnet post is the one that ends with “comment CHECKLIST and I’ll send it to you”. It works because a comment is a public, low-effort yes. What breaks it is the next step: two hundred messages to send by hand, and a good share of them to people you are not connected to and cannot message at all.

This guide covers both halves: writing a post that earns the right comments, and getting the resource to every commenter without an evening of copy-pasting a link. It also says plainly where Swimlane does the work and where it doesn’t.

What the post is really for

The resource is the pretext. The asset is the thread you open with each person who asked for it. Someone who comments on a post about pricing pages has told you what they are working on this week, and the message that delivers your checklist is the first line of a conversation you did not have to start cold.

That changes what you optimise for. A post with 400 comments and no replies to your messages did less than one with 40 comments and a dozen real conversations. Judge the post by the second number, not the first.

Pick a resource worth a comment

• Give away the thing you actually use. Your real teardown template, the checklist your team runs before a launch, the spreadsheet behind a decision. A generic “ultimate guide” attracts people who collect guides.
• Keep it small and finished. One page, one sheet, one template. The reader should be able to use it the day it arrives.
• Don’t gate it twice. They already commented. Send a link that opens without a sign-up form, or you are asking for two favours in exchange for one resource.
• Choose it for your buyer, not for the crowd. The resource decides who comments. Something only your buyer would want filters the list before you ever see it.

Write the LinkedIn lead magnet post

Open with the problem, not the resource. The lines above “see more” have to stand on their own. Name the situation your buyer is in, in the words they would use.

Show a piece of the resource. Three of the ten checks, one row of the sheet, a before and after. People comment for something they can already see is useful.

Keep the ask to one line and one keyword. “Comment CHECKLIST and I’ll send it.” One word, easy to type on a phone.

Say how it will arrive. “If we’re not connected yet, I’ll send you a request first.” It is honest, it explains the invitation they are about to receive, and it makes accepting it the obvious next step.

Answer comments yourself. A short, real reply to anyone who adds more than the keyword is the part of the post nobody should automate. It is often where the best conversation starts.

The delivery problem

Your commenters fall into two groups, and LinkedIn treats them differently.

• First-degree connections can receive a message straight away.
• Everyone else cannot, short of paying for InMail. They need a connection request, and the resource can only follow once they accept. The note on a request is capped at 200 characters on a free account and 300 on Premium, and free accounts get a limited number of personalised notes per month.

By hand, that means checking every commenter’s degree, messaging the first group, inviting the second, then coming back for days to see who accepted. That bookkeeping is exactly what a sequence is for.

Doing it in Swimlane

Swimlane has no “lead magnet” button, and it does not watch comments for a keyword or reply to them. You build the delivery from two pieces that work today: a recurring import that watches the post, and a campaign on the list it fills.

1. Watch the post with a recurring import

In Import Leads, open the Recurring Imports tab, choose Auto Post Engagement and paste the URL of your post. Swimlane creates a dedicated list and reads the post’s comments again every two to four hours, at random intervals and only inside your virtual office hours. Each commenter becomes a contact with their headline and connection degree, and anyone already in your contacts is simply added to the list.

Use this import rather than Auto Profile Engagement, which gathers the commenters of your last five posts: it mixes audiences, and it doesn’t record the connection degree the campaign relies on.

Three limits to know before you rely on it:

• It does not read the keyword. Everyone who commented lands in the list, whatever they wrote. On a post whose only call to action is the keyword, the two groups nearly overlap. If someone commented only to argue, archive the contact: archived contacts are left out of every automation.
• A pass reads the first pages of comments, roughly the first 80 in LinkedIn’s own order. On a post that collects several hundred, some commenters will be missed.
• It keeps running until you stop it. When the post goes quiet, pause the recurring import from the list.

2. Deliver with a campaign on that list

Create an outbound campaign and pick the list in the Audience step. The step can also narrow contacts by tag, headline keyword or ICP match; for a lead magnet, leave it open, since everyone who asked should get what you promised. Then build this flow:

1. Source The list filled by Auto Post Engagement on your lead magnet post
2. Condition If connected
3. Yes Message Delivery message from a saved template: the link and one question
4. No Connection request Connection request, note: "You asked for the checklist. Accept and I’ll send it here."
5. No Condition The request’s acceptance wait, 14 days: accepted?
6. Yes Message The same delivery message, linked to the same template
7. No Tag Tag "checklist-not-accepted" and nothing more

The condition comes first for a reason. A connection request step only goes to contacts Swimlane knows to be second or third degree; an existing connection who reaches it leaves the flow without a message. Checking If connected first sends each group down the only path that can reach them.

The campaign enrols new members of its list as they arrive, so every pass of the import brings new people into the flow without relaunching anything. A contact is never enrolled twice in the same campaign, so reading the same comments again never resends the resource.

3. Write the message once, as a template

Steps are locked once a campaign is launched. Save the delivery message as a message template and link both message steps to it: if the link breaks or the wording needs work, you edit the template and every later send uses the new version.

Hi {firstName}, here's the pricing page checklist you asked for:
https://example.com/pricing-checklist

Out of curiosity, what are you reworking right now: the page, or the plans behind it?

Links in messages are rewritten as short tracked links, so the person receives a redirect rather than your raw URL, and each click shows up on the Activity page as “Anna clicked your link”.

End on a question. A resource delivered with no question is a transaction. One question turns it into the conversation you wrote the post for.

4. Follow up only where it helps

A sequence does not stop when someone replies. If you want a follow-up, put a Replied to message condition in front of it, with a delay of four or five days and a window of the last 7 days. On yes, add a tag and let the inbox take over. On no, send one short follow-up at most. Branches never merge back, so add the same check under both message steps. Just before any message goes out, Swimlane checks the conditions above it again, so someone who replied in the meantime is moved to the branch that now applies instead of receiving a stale nudge.

For wording that doesn’t read like a sequence, see the LinkedIn follow-up guide.

Pace it like a person

• Daily ceilings apply. By default Swimlane sends at most 20 connection requests and 150 messages a day, and you can raise each to 200. At the default pace, 150 unconnected commenters take more than a week to invite, so promise “this week” in the post, not “within the hour”.
• Nothing goes out in a burst. Messages are spaced by random gaps of a few seconds to six minutes, invitations by up to ten minutes, and only inside your virtual office hours.
• A reached limit makes sends wait. They show as deferred in the campaign and go out once the limit resets.

The reasoning behind those limits is in how to automate LinkedIn without getting restricted.

What to measure

The campaign shows enrolled contacts, requests, accepted invitations, messages and replies. Read them in this order:

1. Acceptance. These people asked for the resource. If they don’t accept, the note isn’t connecting the request to the post. Name the post in it.
2. Replies to the delivery message. This is the number the post was for. If it is low, the question is too broad or too easy to ignore.
3. Clicks on the link, from the Activity page. Plenty of clicks and few replies means the resource landed and the question didn’t.

Everyone who replies is now a thread in your inbox with a contact record behind it. From there it is ordinary work: write replies that keep the conversation going. To run the same campaign on the commenters of someone else’s post, adapt the post-commenters flow, and see what else the builder does on the LinkedIn automation page.