What helped you find early users when social posts weren't working?

I'm on a small team building an early-stage product, and I'm struggling with where to put our limited time and acquisition budget.

Some of our community posts haven't been approved. On X and Facebook, where we've been able to post, reach has been limited.

I understand why communities have rules around promotion. The difficult part is balancing the time it takes to participate meaningfully with the need to reach potential users. I'm also unsure when paid acquisition is worth testing at this stage.

What we're looking for is a small group of people who will use the product and give honest feedback.

If you've been through this, what specific action brought you early users who actually used your product?

It would help to know what you were building and roughly how much time or money that approach took.