/38-community-seeding-global

name: 38-community-seeding-global
description: "Use when the user wants a plan for showing up in communities — Reddit, Facebook Groups, Discord, Slack, LinkedIn groups, Quora, niche forums — without astroturfing. Trigger on 'community marketing', 'Reddit marketing', 'seeding plan', 'post in groups', 'community strategy', 'forum marketing', or 'Discord and Slack communities'."
metadata:
  version: 1.0.0
  category: content
license: MIT
triggers:
  - "community marketing"
  - "Reddit marketing"
  - "seeding plan"
  - "post in groups"
  - "community strategy"
  - "forum marketing"
  - "Discord communities"
  - "Quora answers"
output: "File .md — prioritized community list with rules, named participant roster, 4 post types written in full, response scripts, participation calendar, measurement table, compliance and red-line checklist"
related:
  - product-marketing-context-global
  - 09-customer-insight-global
  - 15-social-listening-global
  - 35-brand-voice-global
  - 37-social-caption-global
  - 06-ugc-egc-brief-global
  - 39-content-audit-global

Community Seeding (Global)

Community marketing done properly is participation, not placement. A brand earns the right to mention itself by being useful first, under a real name, in communities whose rules it has actually read. Manufactured engagement — sockpuppets, brand-written reviews, coordinated voting — is both against every major platform's rules and, in the US, against FTC rules. Getting caught is a bigger loss than never posting.

> Full per-platform rules, disclosure mechanics, and cadence limits: read `references/platform-rules.md`.

Information gathering

Read `.agents/product-marketing-context-global.md` and the insight file (`09-customer-insight-global`) first. If information is missing, ask up to 4 questions:

1. **What is being marketed, and which communities does the target audience actually spend time in?** (subreddits, Discord servers, Slack groups, Facebook Groups, LinkedIn groups, Quora topics, niche forums) 2. **What is the objective?** Awareness / qualified leads / traffic / genuine social proof / product feedback 3. **Who on the team will participate under their real name, and how much time per week can they give?** 4. **Has the brand posted in these communities before — what happened, and was anything removed or banned?**

Principles

1. **Real people, real names, one account each.** Every participant is an actual member of the team using a single account with their own identity. No personas, no second accounts, no purchased or aged accounts. 2. **Value first, at roughly 9:1.** For every promotional or self-referential post, contribute nine genuinely useful ones. This ratio is Reddit's long-standing self-promotion norm and travels well to every other community. 3. **Read the rules before the first post.** Every subreddit, server, and group has its own self-promotion policy. Many require flair, a specific thread, or a minimum tenure. Rules override this plan. 4. **Disclose the material connection every time.** If the person works for, is paid by, or holds equity in the brand, that must be clear in the post itself — not buried in a bio. This is FTC 16 CFR Part 255. 5. **Never write a review as if it came from a customer.** Brand-authored or employee-authored reviews presented as independent are prohibited under the FTC fake-review rule (16 CFR Part 465) and carry civil penalties. Customer stories must come from the customer, with permission on file. 6. **No vote manipulation or coordinated engagement.** No asking colleagues to upvote, no brigading, no cross-account replies to your own posts. Platforms detect this reliably. 7. **Warm up before you contribute anything promotional.** Minimum two weeks of ordinary participation per community; four is better. 8. **Measurable or it does not count.** UTM where links are permitted, a "how did you hear about us" field, and a log of removals and bans.

Workflow — 4 phases

Phase 1 — Community research and rules mapping (1 week)

Selection criteria:

| Criterion | Threshold | |-----------|-----------| | Size | Large enough to matter, small enough to be read — for niche B2B, 3,000 engaged members beats 300,000 dormant ones | | Activity | Daily posts with real comment threads, not a wall of unanswered links | | Rules | Self-promotion permitted in some form (dedicated thread, flair, tenure gate) — record the exact rule text | | Moderation | Active mods. Well-moderated communities are safer to invest in than unmoderated ones | | Audience fit | Members match the ICP from `09-customer-insight-global` |

Output: a table of communities ranked High / Medium / Low priority, with each community's self-promotion rule quoted, its link policy, and the content types that fit it.

Phase 2 — Participant setup and warm-up (2-4 weeks)

Each participant needs:

• A real profile: real name, real photo, a bio that states where they work. Affiliation visible before anyone has to ask.
• Genuine history: joined, commented, answered questions 3-5 times a week, without mentioning the brand.
• A consistent area of expertise that matches what they actually know — a support lead answers support questions, a founder answers business-model questions.
• No brand mention at all during warm-up.

A new account with no history is not usable for this work. If nobody on the team can commit the time, do not run the plan — hand the objective to `06-ugc-egc-brief-global` and work with creators who are already members of those communities, under a disclosed paid arrangement.

Phase 3 — Participation content (ongoing)

Four post types, each written in full at 150-300 words, in a real person's voice rather than a brand voice:

| Type | Purpose | Brand mention rule | |------|---------|--------------------| | 1. Genuine question / research post | Learn from the community, surface demand language | No brand mention at all | | 2. Expertise share / teardown | Give real, specific value; earn recognition