Community Engagement SOP

Phase 1: Find Watering Holes

Reference: Etienne Garbugli, "Lean B2B" — go where your users already gather.

Step 1: Map Potential Communities

Search the web for communities where the target audience discusses their problems. Check:

• Reddit: search for subreddits by topic keywords, check subscriber count and post frequency
• Discord: search Disboard, Discord.me, and Top.gg for relevant servers
• Slack: search Slofile, Standuply's Slack community list, and Google "[topic] slack community"
• Forums: product-specific forums, Stack Overflow tags, specialized communities (e.g., Indie Hackers, Elixir Forum)
• Newsletters: Substack, Beehiiv newsletters in the niche — comment sections are communities too
• Twitter/X: identify key accounts and their reply communities
• LinkedIn Groups: search for active groups (most are dead — verify activity before joining)

Output a table:

Step 2: Validate Each Community

For each candidate community, use Playwright MCP to browse and evaluate:

1. Read the last 50 posts/threads — are these actually your target users?
2. Check activity level — are posts getting responses? How old is the latest post?
3. Read the rules — is commercial activity tolerated, restricted, or banned?
4. Look for competitors — are similar products mentioned positively, negatively, or not at all?
5. Assess tone — technical, casual, meme-heavy, professional? You must match it.

Score each community 1-5 on: audience fit, activity, commercial tolerance, effort required.

Step 3: Select 5-8 Communities

Pick based on:

• Audience fit score >= 4
• Activity level >= 3
• Commercial tolerance >= 2 (must allow SOME mention of tools/products)
• Manageable total time commitment (all communities combined <= 1 hour/day)

Quality over quantity. Being active in 5 communities beats being invisible in 20.

Phase 2: Value-First Engagement

Reference: Mary Thengvall, "The Business Value of Developer Relations."

Step 4: Weeks 1-4 — Pure Value, Zero Promotion

This phase is non-negotiable. For the first 2-4 weeks in each community:

1. Answer questions — find unanswered questions in your area of expertise. Write genuinely helpful, thorough responses.
2. Share useful resources — link to helpful articles, tools, tutorials (NOT your own product).
3. Provide troubleshooting — help people debug problems, even if unrelated to your product.
4. Engage in discussions — add thoughtful opinions, share relevant experiences.

Rules during this phase:

• ZERO product mentions. Not even subtle ones.
• Use your real name/identity — never create fake accounts
• Be genuinely helpful — if you're only helping to eventually promote, people will sense it
• Match the community's communication style (formal, casual, technical depth)

Use Playwright MCP to monitor communities daily and draft responses.

Step 5: Build Reputation

Track your reputation in each community:

• Reddit: karma in specific subreddits
• Discord: role level, reaction count on your messages
• Stack Overflow: reputation score in relevant tags
• Forums: post count, thank-you reactions, moderator recognition
• Twitter/X: follower growth from community interactions

Milestones before graduating to Phase 3:

• At least 10 helpful responses in the community
• Positive feedback (upvotes, thanks, follows) on at least 5 responses
• Recognized by at least 2 community members as a regular contributor

Step 6: Graduate to Mentioning Your Work

Only after meeting Phase 2 milestones. Rules:

• Mention your product ONLY when genuinely relevant to someone's specific question
• Frame it as "I built something that might help" — not "check out our product"
• Always disclose that you're the creator/affiliated
• If the community has rules about self-promotion, follow them exactly
• Never force a mention — if your product isn't the best answer, recommend what is

Phase 3: Ongoing Operations

Step 7: Daily Operations (20 min/day)

For the top 3 communities (highest engagement + conversion):

1. Check for new questions/discussions in your area
2. Respond to any replies to your previous comments
3. Upvote/react to other helpful content (reciprocity builds goodwill)
4. Draft responses — use Playwright MCP to browse, draft locally, post manually for Reddit/HN

Step 8: Weekly Operations

Every week:

1. Identify high-intent threads — people actively asking for solutions you offer. Use web search and Playwright MCP to find phrases like "looking for", "any recommendations for", "alternative to [competitor]"
2. Review engagement metrics — which communities are you getting the most positive responses in?
3. Content ideas — note questions that keep coming up. These become content-create inputs.
4. Respond to DMs/messages — people who reach out directly are highest-intent leads

Step 9: Monthly Review

Every month, evaluate each community:

Decision rules:

• Keep: positive engagement trend + measurable referral traffic
• Increase effort: high conversion rate but low volume
• Reduce effort: high time investment, low conversion
• Drop: no engagement after 60 days of consistent effort

Replace dropped communities with new candidates. Always be testing.

Step 10: Track in Auto Memory

Store in memory/communities.md for each community:

• Community name, platform, URL
• Join date
• Reputation/karma score (updated monthly)
• Number of posts/responses
• Referral traffic (from UTM or analytics)
• Conversions attributed
• Notes on tone, rules, best-performing content types

Ethical Guidelines

• Transparency: if asked, always disclose you're affiliated with the product
• Authenticity: never create multiple accounts, fake reviews, or astroturf
• Respect: follow every community's rules, even inconvenient ones
• The embarrassment test: if you would be embarrassed to admit the response was AI-assisted or strategically motivated, don't post it
• Reddit and HN: NEVER automate posting. Draft content only. User posts manually.

Use Playwright MCP for:

• Browsing communities to find relevant threads
• Reading community rules and recent posts
• Monitoring for new discussions matching target keywords
• Drafting responses (saved locally, not posted automatically on Reddit/HN)

Next Steps

Report to user: "Communities identified: [N]. Engagement status: [phase]. Key finding: [one line]"

Suggested next steps (user decides):

• Leads found → "Run sales-close"
• Questions surfaced → "Run content-create"
• Growing → "Run growth-track"