How you reach software engineers audience for talking about problems they have?

Hello Makers! Making a developer tool, I've faced the problem of reaching software engineers. Not selling the product itself, but for verifying ideas and listening to their pains. Initially, I assumed to use conferences as a main networking channel, yet it stopped work when the COVID lockdown happened. I've also investigated LinkedIn as a channel, and it looks now that people are more bothered than interested when someone unknown wants to talk. I realized that the most viable approach is to go public and talk to communities via articles, so people would know you and choose themselves if they want to connect and tell you something. I've faced two impediments so far. 1. Where are these communities? I know about Ukraine, where I'm from, and that's where I'm trying to start, but I'd like to focus on the US market, which is quite different in professional media. 2. How to get attention while you aren't famous yet? It looks that just writing a personal blog won't get you readers, so it's better to get published by someone at the very beginning. I'd like to hear any opinions on this and talk about software engineering problems if you are making developer tools. So, what do you think? Than you, Alex