# Engagement Playbook

A daily practice for growing your audience by showing up authentically in other people's conversations.

## Table of Contents
1. [Philosophy](#philosophy)
2. [The 10-Thread Rule](#the-10-thread-rule)
3. [Finding Threads](#finding-threads)
4. [Crafting Replies](#crafting-replies)
5. [Platform-Specific Tone](#platform-specific-tone)
6. [Anti-Spam Safeguards](#anti-spam-safeguards)
7. [Approval Workflow](#approval-workflow)
8. [Measuring Impact](#measuring-impact)

---

## Philosophy

Audience growth doesn't come from broadcasting — it comes from being genuinely useful in conversations that already have an audience. When you consistently leave thoughtful replies in active threads, people notice, click your profile, and follow.

The key word is **genuinely useful**. Comments that smell like promotion get ignored or downvoted. Comments that add a real perspective, a data point, a relevant question — those get upvoted, and the upvotes drive profile visits.

---

## The 10-Thread Rule

For each platform, find **10 active threads** related to your topics and leave a thoughtful reply. That's 10 per platform, not 10 total.

Typical daily engagement session:
- X/Twitter: 10 replies
- Reddit: 10 replies (spaced 5-10 min apart)
- LinkedIn: 10 replies
- Threads: 10 replies
- dev.to: 5 replies (fewer active threads)

This takes time but compounds. After a month of daily engagement, you'll see a measurable uptick in followers, profile visits, and post reach.

---

## Finding Threads

### Search Strategy

1. **Topic keywords**: Search for terms related to your latest post
2. **Adjacent topics**: Related but not identical subjects where your expertise applies
3. **Industry news**: Breaking stories everyone's discussing
4. **Questions**: People asking questions you can answer

### Filtering Criteria

Look for threads that are:
- **Active** — posted in the last 24-48 hours with recent comments
- **Engaged** — has likes/comments but isn't overwhelmed (10-100 comments is ideal)
- **Relevant** — your reply would genuinely add something
- **Not dead** — skip threads where the conversation has clearly ended

Skip threads that are:
- Too old (>48 hours, conversation moved on)
- Too crowded (500+ comments, yours will be buried)
- Off-topic for your expertise
- Clearly controversial/toxic (don't wade into flamewars)

### Platform-Specific Search

- **X/Twitter**: Search tab → filter by "Latest" → look for tweets with replies
- **Reddit**: Search subreddits → sort by "Hot" or "New" → look for rising posts
- **LinkedIn**: Search posts → filter by "Past 24 hours" → look for posts with comments
- **Threads**: Browse feed → look for posts from accounts in your niche
- **dev.to**: Browse tags → sort by "Latest" or "Rising" → look for articles with discussion

---

## Crafting Replies

### The Value Test

Before writing a reply, ask: "Would someone who reads this learn something, think differently, or smile?" If no, don't post it.

### Reply Structure

Keep it short — 1-3 sentences max. The best replies follow one of these patterns:

1. **Add a data point**: "The 16M queries number tracks with Anthropic's published distillation research. Their paper showed even 500K queries could extract meaningful capabilities."

2. **Share experience**: "We ran into this exact issue when building our verification pipeline. Ended up using content hashing to detect the drift."

3. **Ask a smart question**: "Interesting take. Do you think this changes anything for enterprise buyers, or is this more of a research community concern?"

4. **Offer a different angle**: "Everyone's focused on the detection side, but the real story here is how this affects the economics of training. If distillation gets this cheap..."

5. **Genuine appreciation + build**: "This is a great breakdown of the technical side. One thing I'd add — the latency numbers change significantly when you factor in cold starts."

### What Makes a Bad Reply

- Generic praise: "Great post!" / "So true!" / "Agree 100%"
- Forced self-promotion: "This is exactly why I built [product]..."
- Repeating what the post already said
- Being contrarian just to be contrarian
- Walls of text nobody will read
- Anything with em dashes (they read as AI-generated)
- Copy-paste identical replies across threads

### Self-Promotion Guidelines

Out of 10 replies, maybe 1-2 can naturally reference your project or website. The key word is **naturally**. If you have to force it, don't.

Good: "Interesting. We built a verification system at [site] after seeing similar supply chain risks. The 36% flaw rate Snyk reported is concerning."

Bad: "Check out [site] where we solve this exact problem!"

The difference: the good version adds context and is responding to the conversation. The bad version is just an ad.

---

## Platform-Specific Tone

### X/Twitter
- Casual, punchy, direct
- Hot takes welcome (but back them up)
- Threads of 2-3 tweets are fine for longer thoughts
- Use "ratio" culture awareness — don't accidentally dunk on someone bigger

### Reddit
- Match the subreddit's culture closely
- r/technology: informative, slightly skeptical
- r/programming: technical, no fluff
- r/ClaudeAI: helpful, excited but grounded
- Never sound like marketing. Reddit detects and punishes it.

### LinkedIn
- Professional but not corporate-speak
- Industry insights, implications, strategic thinking
- "I" statements about your experience are fine
- Don't be salesy — LinkedIn users are sophisticated about that

### Threads
- Most casual of all platforms
- Conversational, like texting a friend
- Short, off-the-cuff reactions work well
- Humor appreciated

### dev.to
- Technical depth expected
- Share code snippets when relevant
- Reference documentation or papers
- Be helpful to less experienced developers

---

## Anti-Spam Safeguards

These aren't guidelines — they're hard limits. Violating them risks account suspension, which can delete all your posts and destroy months of built-up presence.

### Reddit (Most Strict)
- Max 3 comments per thread per hour
- Max 5 comments total in 30 minutes
- Space comments 5-10 minutes apart
- Never reply to your own post multiple times
- One top-level comment per thread
- If rate-limited, STOP. Come back later.

### X/Twitter
- Max 5 replies in 10 minutes
- Vary reply length and style
- Don't use identical phrasing across replies
- Don't reply to the same account multiple times rapidly

### LinkedIn
- Max 5-7 comments per hour
- Don't post the same comment on different posts
- Vary your sentence structure

### General
- If you see a CAPTCHA, stop everything and report it
- If you get a "slow down" warning, stop for at least 30 minutes
- Never post identical text across platforms — adapt each reply

---

## Approval Workflow

All engagement replies must be approved before posting:

1. Present all 10 replies for a platform as a batch
2. Format each with the thread link and your drafted reply
3. Wait for explicit approval (can be "all good" or selective edits)
4. Post approved replies, respecting rate limits
5. Report back with links to each posted reply

```
Platform: Reddit
Thread 1: [link]
  Subreddit: r/ClaudeAI
  Reply: "The memory persistence question is interesting..."

Thread 2: [link]
  Subreddit: r/artificial
  Reply: "This benchmark methodology has a sampling bias..."

...

Approve all / edit specific ones / skip?
```

---

## Measuring Impact

Track these weekly:
- New followers per platform
- Profile visits (where available)
- Reply engagement (likes/upvotes on your replies)
- Inbound follows from specific threads

The goal isn't virality — it's consistent, compounding growth from being visibly helpful in your niche.
