38-community-seeding-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 | Affiliation stated up front; product mentioned only if it is genuinely the answer |
| 3. Answering an existing thread | Help someone who already asked | Disclose the connection in the same comment, in plain words |
| 4. Customer story amplification | Real social proof | Written by the customer, posted by the customer or clearly attributed with permission. Never brand-authored |

What performs in communities: open questions, specific how-we-did-it write-ups with numbers, short guides, teardowns, and honest post-mortems including what did not work.

Response handling for every post:

- Prepare honest answers to the 3-5 questions members will realistically ask (pricing, availability, whether it actually works, alternatives — including competitors).
- Reply within the first few hours. Early real engagement is what most feeds reward.
- If someone asks whether you work there, answer plainly. Never deflect.
- Recommend the product only when a member has described a problem it genuinely solves, and disclose in the same breath.

### Phase 4 — Measurement

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