OUTREACH.md — [Company Name]

This is your community outreach playbook. AI agents use this to identify opportunities, score threads, and draft replies for human review and posting. No agent ever posts directly. All outreach is human-approved before it goes live.

Target Communities

Subreddit	Why our ICP is here	What they post about	Posting rules
r/[subreddit1]	[reason]	[topic types]	[community rules summary]
r/[subreddit2]	[reason]	[topic types]	[community rules summary]
r/[subreddit3]	[reason]	[topic types]	[community rules summary]

[Group 1]: [Why and what they discuss]
[Group 2]: [Why and what they discuss]

Discord / Slack

[Community 1]: [Why and how to engage]
[Community 2]: [Why and how to engage]

Hacker News

Monitor /newest and /ask daily for [topic keywords]
Engage on Show HN posts related to [your category]
Our ICP looks for: [what they typically search HN for]

Indie Hackers

Monitor: milestones feed, product reviews in [category], "How do you handle X?" threads
Engage: founder-to-founder, not pitch-first

Trigger Keywords

An agent should flag a post for outreach if it contains one or more of these phrases:

High priority (ICP actively looking for a solution):

"[Pain point phrase your ICP uses]"
"[Tool or method they're frustrated with]"
"best [category] tool"
"how do you handle [problem]"
"recommendation for [category]"
"struggling with [problem]"

Medium priority (ICP adjacent, worth monitoring):

"[Broader category term]"
"[Related problem they might have]"

Ignore:

Posts from obvious competitors
Posts that are ads or promotional
Posts in locked or archived threads

What Makes a Good Opportunity

Score each opportunity 1-5 on each dimension:

Dimension	5 (ideal)	1 (skip)
Recency	Posted in last 24 hours	Older than 7 days
Engagement	Active discussion, 5+ comments	No replies
Fit	Exactly the problem we solve	Adjacent but not core
Tone	Seeking genuine help	Venting with no question
Community	Our primary target communities	Off-list

Post a reply if: Total score ≥ 15 Monitor for follow-up if: Total score 10-14 Skip if: Total score < 10

Response Framework

Every outreach reply follows this structure:

Acknowledge the specific situation (1 sentence — show you read the post)
Answer the question directly (1-3 sentences — the genuinely helpful part)
Add your insight or experience (1-2 sentences — founder perspective, not product pitch)
Mention the product only if directly relevant (1 sentence, optional — "this is actually the problem [product] was built for")
Offer to help further (optional — only if you can add more value)

Length: 100-200 words for most replies. Don't write an essay.

Format: Plain prose. No bullet lists. No headers. Sound like a founder, not a blog post.

Example Replies

Example: Someone asking for tool recommendations

Thread: "What's the best tool for [problem]? We've tried [alternative] and it's too [limitation]."

Draft reply:

We had the same frustration with [alternative] — the [specific limitation] gets painful once you're [at the scale they're describing].

A few things that helped us: [1-2 genuine tactics that don't require our product]. The key thing we found was [insight].

We ended up building [product] to solve exactly this — happy to share more if it sounds relevant to your setup.

Example: Someone frustrated with the status quo

Thread: "I can't believe there's no good way to [do the thing we solve]. Every tool I've tried has [problem]."

Draft reply:

The frustrating thing is most [category] tools were built for [different use case], so [problem] is almost always an afterthought. You're not imagining it — it's a real gap.

What's your current setup? Depending on [variable], there are a few different approaches that work better than others.

(Note: this reply doesn't mention our product at all — just establishes presence and invites conversation)

Hard Limits

Never:

Post the same reply (or near-identical reply) in multiple threads — communities detect this immediately
DM someone unprompted after a community interaction
Reply to threads about competitors to defend our product
Post in communities that explicitly ban self-promotion (check sidebar rules)
Create fake accounts or astroturf
Ask for upvotes

Always:

Disclose your affiliation if you mention your product ("we built [product] for exactly this")
Only mention our product when it genuinely solves what they're asking
Let conversations breathe — don't reply to your own reply to keep a thread alive
Honor "no promo" requests from moderators

Follow-Up Rules

If someone replies positively to our outreach:

Respond within 4 hours during business hours
Answer their follow-up questions directly
Offer a trial or demo only if they ask or clearly want to proceed
Don't add them to an email list without explicit permission

If someone replies negatively:

Acknowledge their concern, don't defend
If they have a legitimate criticism, say so
Don't argue or escalate
Flag the exchange for founder review

Reporting

Weekly outreach report should include:

Number of opportunities identified
Number of replies drafted (for human review)
Number of replies posted (after approval)
Any conversations that converted to signups or demos
Any negative reactions worth reviewing

Last updated: [YYYY-MM-DD] Owner: [Name or role]