Finding buying intent in a tweet

Buying intent on X lives in a handful of phrases. Learn them and you can sort posts into reply now and skip in a few seconds each.

September 15, 20264 min read@kittyleads

Buying intent in a tweet mostly shows up in a few phrases. Once you know them, finding leads on Twitter stops being a scroll through noise. You read a post, spot the phrase, check the context, and decide in about five seconds whether it's worth a reply.

This matters because replies take time. If you spend that time on people who were never going to buy, the whole approach feels like it doesn't work. It does. You were just replying to the wrong posts.

The phrases that signal buying intent

→"looking for": they've started searching. Good sign, but sellers use it too ("looking for founders who want more leads").
→"any recommendations": they want a short list. Be on it, with a reason.
→"alternative to": they already pay for something and are unhappy. Budget exists.
→"switching from": even stronger. They've decided to leave, they just haven't picked where to go.
→"is there a tool": they've accepted that the answer is software. Now they need the right one.
→"willing to pay": the rarest and best. Reply fast.
→"sick of": pain without a search yet. Worth a reply if the pain is exactly yours.

Try it on a few posts. Pick a sample or paste one from your timeline, and the phrases light up with a rough score.

Try itSpot the buying intent

Pick a post or paste one

looking for an uptime monitor that isn't $40/mo. 3 side projects, just need a slack ping when one goes down. any recommendations?

98/100 · intent

Reply today. They're asking.askingpainnoise

Strong signals and weak ones

Not every phrase is worth the same. "Switching from" and "willing to pay" mean money is already moving. "Looking for" and "is there a tool" mean they're searching but may still pick a free option. "Sick of" on its own is just pain. The best posts stack two signals: pain plus a search, like "sick of paying $90 a month, is there a tool that just does uptime checks?"

@tomas_builds

switching from our current uptime tool at the end of the month. $90/mo for 20 monitors feels wild for a 3 person team. anyone found something simpler?

@you drafted

A 3 person team with 20 monitors shouldn't need the big plans. Worth checking which features you actually use. For most small teams it's HTTP checks, SMS alerts and a status page. I built Statuskit around exactly that, happy to send details if you want a comparison before the switch.

This one scores very high: switching, a current price, a deadline and a team size. Everything you need to know is in the post. Made-up example.

Read the context, not just the keywords

Keywords get you a shortlist. Context decides. Four kinds of posts match the phrases and are still worth skipping:

→Jokes. "Is there a tool that makes Mondays not exist" has the phrase and no buyer.
→Sellers. "Looking for SaaS founders who want 10x more demos" is someone selling to you.
→Bots and engagement farms. Generic questions, no profile history, hundreds of identical replies.
→Competitors. Another founder asking "is there a tool for X" to market research their own launch.

A scoring rule you can use by hand

Here's the rough rule I used before automating any of this. Add up the points and reply to anything at 5 or more.

→Plus 3 if they explicitly ask for a tool or recommendation.
→Plus 3 if they name a tool they pay for or mention a price.
→Plus 2 for a deadline or urgency ("by Friday", "again", "end of the month").
→Plus 1 for clear pain words ("sick of", "hate", "wasted").
→Subtract 5 if it's a joke, a seller, a bot or a competitor.

Where to search on X

X's search handles this better than people think. Put the intent phrase in quotes and add one word about your problem: "alternative to" uptime, "is there a tool" cron, "switching from" invoicing. Sort by Latest, not Top. Add -filter:links to drop most of the sellers, since people asking for help rarely include a link. Save the five searches that work and run them every morning.

Once you have a reply to send, the next step is writing one that doesn't scare them off. That's covered in replies that don't sound like sales.

The manual version works, it just takes a while every day. KittyLeads runs the same idea around the clock: AI scores buying intent on each post and filters out the jokes, bots, competitors and sellers, so what's left is people worth replying to. If you're weighing it against a general monitoring tool, KittyLeads vs social listening covers the difference, and the devtools page shows what these posts look like in that niche.

Keep reading

Twitter lead generation: how to find customers on X without adsSkip the follower count. Search for people already describing your problem, reply while the post is fresh, and measure conversations. Here's how, with exact searches.Read →Twitter lead generation tools compared: 7 options and who each one suitsAn honest comparison, written by someone selling one of them. I read each tool's public pages and didn't pay for any, so I've kept to what they publish.Read →Getting your first 10 customers from XYou don't need an audience to get your first 10 customers from X. You need to find people who already have the problem and reply to them every day for a few weeks.Read →

Find the people already asking for what you built.

A fresh stack of leads from X every morning, each with a reply ready to send. $29.99 a month, tax included. Cancel anytime.

Get started · $29.99 See how it works