The Syntax of Intent: Why Nouns Create Noise and Verbs Create Pipeline
You have a product that solves a specific problem. Logic dictates that you should listen for people talking about that problem. So, you go to a social listening tool, or you set up alerts on Reddit and X (formerly Twitter) for your main category keywords.
If you sell a CRM, you track "CRM." If you sell SEO tools, you track "SEO."
And then, your feed explodes. But not with leads. It explodes with noise. You get press releases, marketing influencers sharing "5 tips," competitors doing SEO for their own blogs, and random theoretical discussions.
The signal-to-noise ratio is terrible. You spend hours sifting through hundreds of mentions to find maybe one person genuinely asking for help.
The reason isn't the platform; it's your query syntax. You are tracking nouns (the object) when you should be tracking verbs (the intent).
The "Noun" Fallacy
Nouns describe entities. They are static. When you search for a noun, you are casting a net for the existence of a topic, not a specific state of mind regarding that topic.
If you search for "Quickbooks," the algorithm retrieves every instance where that string of characters appears.
The Accountant: "Here is a tutorial on Quickbooks." (Educational)
The Investor: "Intuit stock rises due to Quickbooks subscriptions." (Financial)
The Competitor: "Why we are better than Quickbooks." (Marketing)
None of these are leads. They are just noise.
The "Noun Fallacy" assumes that mere proximity to a topic equals buying intent. In B2B, that's rarely true. Founders often confuse relevance (is it about my industry?) with intent (do they need my product?).
Tracking nouns is vanity metrics for social listening. It looks like volume, but it's mostly empty calories.
The "Verb" Framework: Tracking Friction
To find pipeline in the wild, you need to stop looking for the object and start looking for the struggle.
Intent is linguistic. When a user has a problem, they rarely just state the name of the software or category. They express an action or a state of being. They use verbs and adjectives that imply friction.
Buying Intent is usually framed as a desire for change ("Switch," "Replace," "Alternative").
Pain is framed as a negative experience ("Hate," "Slow," "Expensive," "Support," "Crash").
This is the "Verb Framework." A noun sits still; a verb moves. In sales, we only care about people who are trying to move away from pain or toward a solution.
Comparative Anatomy of a Search Query
Let's look at the mechanical difference between a noun-based search and a syntax-based search.
Query A (The Noun):
- Input: Salesforce
- Result: A thread about Salesforce's Q4 earnings, a meme about Dreamforce, and a LinkedIn influencer posting a generic poll.
- Value: Zero.
Query B (The Verb/Friction):
- Input: Salesforce + complex OR expensive OR alternative
- Result: A Reddit thread titled: "Is Salesforce too complex for a 10-person team? Looking for alternatives."
- Value: High.
In Query B, the noun acts only as an anchor. The verbs and modifiers (complex, looking for) provide the vector. They tell you the direction the user wants to go.
Engineering the Filter
If you are manually scouring social channels or using basic alerts, you need to refine your Boolean logic immediately. Stop tracking categories. Start tracking "trigger phrases."
You want to catch the user at the moment of frustration. The structure usually looks like this:
[Competitor Name / Category] + [Negative Modifier]
- "Notion is slow"
- "Hubspot pricing is crazy"
- "Cold email deliverability issues"
- "Best alternative to Jira"
This requires a shift in how you view data. You aren't "listening to the conversation"; you are filtering for distress signals.
This is exactly why we built Kynvo. While you can technically construct massive Boolean strings to filter Reddit or X manually, maintaining them is a full-time job. Kynvo acts as the logic layer that parses these conversations, ignoring the generic noise (nouns) and surfacing only the posts where the syntax indicates a genuine need for a solution (verbs and friction).
Stop Listening, Start Decoding
The goal of outbound engagement isn't to be everywhere; it's to be there when it matters.
When you reply to a generic post about "Marketing Trends," you are a nuisance. When you reply to a post saying, "My current marketing tool keeps crashing, what should I use?", you are a savior.
The difference between being spam and being helpful is entirely in the context. And context is hidden in the verbs. Clean up your inputs, and you will clean up your pipeline.
Resonated with this?
We're building Kynvo to help you spend less time searching for the right conversations and more time actually having them. If this perspective resonates with you, we'd love for you to be among the first to experience it.
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