Brand Interaction FAQs

Last updated: January 6, 2026

Overview

Brand Interaction helps you understand and act on who is engaging with a brand’s content across major social platforms. This includes people who interact with posts (likes, comments, shares), not just followers.

Use Cases

Brand Interaction is useful when you want to:

  • See who is actively engaging with your brand (likes, comments, shares)

  • Identify engaged audiences for outreach, partnerships, sponsorships, or GTM workflows

  • Refresh engagement data without relying on manual scraping workflows

  • Monitor how fresh the engagement dataset is before running analysis or outreach

  • Export or operationalize engagement audiences for downstream workflows

Key Features and How to Use It

Current State: Brand Interaction

Supported Engagement Signals

Brand Interaction captures users who engage with your brand’s content, including:

  • Likes

  • Comments

  • Shares (where available per platform)

Note: Followers are handled separately under Brand Affinity and are not part of Brand Interaction.

LinkedIn Integration (via Authorized Connection)

For customers who authorize a LinkedIn account, Brand Interaction can pull engagement activity from LinkedIn. This includes interactions such as likes, comments, and shares.

What to know:

  • Works only for customers who authorize the LinkedIn account

  • Captures engagement interactions

  • Followers are excluded, as LinkedIn does not reliably expose follower endpoints

Manual / Legacy Scrapes (Currently Available for Some Customers)

Some customers may still have engagement scrapes run via existing third-party scraping workflows. These runs:

  • Can populate the Brand Interaction dataset once completed

  • Are currently managed manually by the team

  • May vary in reliability and turnaround time

  • These workflows are being transitioned into a more productized experience.

Data Availability and Refresh Behavior

  • Older datasets may remain visible in filters even if they are not automatically refreshed

  • New runs overwrite or update existing data where matches are found

  • Freshness depends on the platform and the method used (authorized vs non-authorized scraping)

Current State: Brand Affinity (Followers)

Brand Affinity refers to followers of a brand page — i.e., users who have chosen to follow the brand.

LinkedIn: follower scraping is highly restricted. Many endpoints and methods are blocked or unreliable, even for page admins. As a result:

  • We cannot current support new refreshers to Affinity beyond brand interactions

  • Existing follower datasets may be stale if not manually updated

Note: Automation for follower scraping is still under exploration

Other Platforms (Meta, X, Instagram):

  • Follower exports may be possible for page admins, but automated ingestion into CRED is not yet broadly available.

What’s Coming Next: Brand Interaction

Brand Interaction is moving toward a more self-serve experience where customers can trigger scrapes from within CRED without requiring external tools or manual scheduling. Platform expansion will roll out incrementally (starting with LinkedIn, then Meta, X, and Instagram).

Limitations (Things to Watch Out For)

Platform Constraints

Follower scraping on LinkedIn is heavily restricted, and follower datasets may not be refreshable automatically.

Engagement scraping (likes/comments/shares) remains more feasible than followers on LinkedIn.

Refresh and Dataset Freshness

Some datasets may appear in filters even if they haven’t been refreshed recently.

Customers should confirm dataset freshness before using it for time-sensitive outreach.

Match Rates and Completeness

Engagement datasets are typically not 100% matchable due to missing public identifiers, privacy settings, and platform limitations.

Match rates depend on the platform and available data. Results can vary significantly between accounts.

Duplicates and Billing

Engagement datasets may include repeat interactions or overlapping identities across runs.

We can't exclude duplicates from the cost of the scrape.

Third-Party Data Availability

Some engagement data is sourced via third-party tooling. Reliability, completeness, and refresh speed may vary depending on platform constraints and data-provider behavior.

FAQs

Q: What’s the difference between Brand Affinity and Brand Interaction?

A:

Brand Affinity refers to followers of your brand page.

Brand Interaction refers to users who engage with your brand’s content (likes, comments, shares).

Follower access (especially on LinkedIn) is significantly more restricted than engagement access.

Q: Which platforms are supported?

A: LinkedIn is supported first. Additional platforms will roll out over time, including Meta, X, and Instagram.

Q: Can I trigger a scrape myself?

A: In many cases today, scrapes are managed manually by the team. A more self-serve in-app experience is being rolled out, starting with Brand Interaction.

Q: What’s the expected match rate?

A: Match rates vary based on data availability and profile visibility. In general, match rates may fall in the ~60–70% range, but outcomes depend on the platform and the completeness of identifiers.

Q: Will scraping cost credits?

A: Yes — scraping is expected to be credit-based. Pricing will depend on volume and frequency.

Q: Is there a workaround for LinkedIn followers?

A: LinkedIn follower scraping is significantly restricted. In some cases, page admins can manually export followers, and admin-driven export tooling may be supported over time. Availability varies depending on LinkedIn access.

Q: Can I receive raw scraped data even if matching isn’t perfect?

A: In some cases, raw scraped datasets may be available alongside matched results. This is helpful when you want full visibility while matching continues to improve.

Q: How often can I refresh the dataset?

A: Refresh frequency will depend on platform limits, the scrape method, and credit pricing. Some platforms may be rate-limited or have practical constraints that prevent frequent refreshes.