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Automate B2B Marketing With Hermes Agent, LinkedIn, and X

#hermes #webdev #automation

Checking LinkedIn and X for posts where you can plug your product can get tiring and repetitive.

Instead of doing this manually, Hermes Agent can run the same
searches each weekday, skip posts it has already found, and prepare one short brief for review.

The SociallisteningAPI searches current public LinkedIn and X posts
and returns normalized records with source URLs. Hermes handles the schedule, deduplication,
analysis, and delivery outside the API. You still decide whether to reply or send a message.

Step 1: Connect Hermes Agent to the SocialListeningAPI MCP

Install and configure Hermes using its official setup
guide. Then create a SocialListeningAPI account and
claim the 100 free credits.

Add the SocialListeningAPI MCP as a remote OAuth server:

hermes mcp add sociallisteningapi \
  --url https://api.sociallisteningapi.com/mcp \
  --auth oauth

hermes mcp test sociallisteningapi
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Complete the browser sign-in and approve access to your workspace credits. The hermes mcp
documentation covers
connection and login commands.

Run this in Hermes to confirm the connection:

List the SocialListeningAPI tools available to you. Do not run a search.
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You should see search_social_posts. If the connection works but the tool is missing, start a new
Hermes session or reload the MCP tools.

Step 2: Choose searches that show a real problem

Broad searches such as marketing software return too much noise. Begin with four to eight phrases
that someone may use when asking for help, comparing tools, or describing a problem.

For a social listening product, useful examples include:

  • recommend a social listening tool
  • how to track brand mentions
  • missing LinkedIn mentions
  • LinkedIn post search API
  • alternative to social monitoring software
  • social listening tool too expensive

Keep each phrase at least four characters long and do not include quotation marks. Add your ideal
customer, excluded industries, supported locations, and minimum fit rules to the prompt.

Step 3: Test one B2B opportunity brief

Run the workflow by hand before scheduling it. Open Hermes and use this prompt:

Prepare a B2B opportunity brief from public LinkedIn and X posts.

Search both platforms for every phrase below:
- recommend a social listening tool
- how to track brand mentions
- LinkedIn post search API
- alternative to social monitoring software

Keep only posts where the author asks for a recommendation, describes the problem, compares tools,
or wants to replace a product. Exclude generic news, reposts, job posts, and promotional content.

For each useful post, return:
- platform and author
- published date
- source URL
- exact problem or request
- why it may fit a social listening API
- one helpful next action

Deduplicate by source URL. Do not contact anyone or publish a reply.
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Four phrases across LinkedIn and X cost up to 12 credits per run. Each successful LinkedIn search
costs 2 credits and each successful X search costs 1. Failed requests use no credits.

Open every source before keeping it. Remove phrases that mostly find unrelated posts. A useful match
should contain a clear problem, fit the product, and still be recent enough for a reply to help.

Step 4: Save seen URLs and schedule the brief

Hermes cron jobs run in fresh sessions, so give the job a fixed working directory. This lets it keep
a small file of URLs already included in earlier briefs.

mkdir -p "$HOME/hermes-workflows/b2b-opportunity-brief"

hermes cron create "0 9 * * 1-5" \
  "Search LinkedIn and X through the SocialListeningAPI MCP for: recommend a social listening tool; how to track brand mentions; LinkedIn post search API; alternative to social monitoring software. Read seen-urls.txt if it exists and exclude stored URLs. Append each new source URL after preparing the brief. Return platform, author, published date, source URL, exact problem, fit reason, and one helpful next action. Never contact anyone or publish a reply. If there are no new useful posts, respond with only [SILENT]." \
  --workdir "$HOME/hermes-workflows/b2b-opportunity-brief" \
  --name "B2B opportunity brief" \
  --deliver local
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The cron expression runs at 9:00 a.m. from Monday to Friday. Four phrases use up to 60 credits over
five runs. Reduce the phrases or frequency when that is more than you need.

Hermes needs its gateway scheduler running. Install it as a service, check the job, then trigger one
test run:

hermes gateway install
hermes cron status
hermes cron run "B2B opportunity brief"
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Hermes saves local cron output under ~/.hermes/cron/output/. You can change --deliver local to a
configured Telegram, Slack, email, or other supported destination. The Hermes cron
documentation explains working
directories, delivery targets, and job history.

What SocialListeningAPI and Hermes each do

SocialListeningAPI searches public posts and returns available post data with source URLs. It does
not provide the schedule, URL history, ranking, brief, CRM update, or outreach.

Hermes performs those external steps, but its summary can be wrong. Read the original post before
acting. Keep all outreach human-approved and disclose your connection when mentioning your product.

This workflow suits founders and small B2B teams that want a short, current research queue. Use a
dedicated sales platform when you need private contact data, native CRM enrichment, or automated
outreach.

Conclusion

I hope this guide was helpful. We run this setup for our SaaS products and its been super helpful.
We're exploring on automation social media posting and other bits now.

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