Communities: replying where people ask for what you offer
· 3 min read · MAALI team
Every day, people ask strangers online for exactly what you sell: "what do you use for…", "any alternative to…", "how do I fix…". A helpful, honest answer in those threads keeps working for months, because people keep finding it in search and AI assistants quote it. The Communities agent finds those conversations and drafts the reply. You post it.
Find conversations
Open Marketing → Communities and click Find conversations. MAALI uses your MAALI Brain (who your customers are, what you offer, your competitors) to search the web for recent threads where people:
- ask for a recommendation in your category,
- compare options, including your competitors,
- describe the problem you solve, or are unhappy with an alternative.
A search finds up to 10 conversations on Reddit, Hacker News, Stack Exchange sites and other public forums and Q&A sites, and skips ones you've already seen. Add a focus to steer it, like "people looking for a sourdough class in Ljubljana" or "unhappy with Competitor X". Each result shows the community, the date, what the person asks and why you can help. MAALI only shows links its search actually returned.
A search uses 2 credits, even when it finds nothing new, because the web searches behind it cost the same either way. If your searches keep coming back empty, add a focus or update your MAALI Brain before searching again.
Draft a reply
Click Draft a reply on a conversation worth answering.
- Reddit: MAALI doesn't read Reddit itself; Reddit's rules require written approval for that. Open the thread, copy the post (and any replies that matter) and paste it in. Without it, MAALI drafts from the short search snippet, which works for simple questions only.
- Hacker News and Stack Exchange: MAALI reads the question through the sites' official APIs, so pasting is optional.
- Other forums: MAALI reads the page if the site allows it. If it's behind a login, paste the post.
MAALI writes a reply that answers the question first, with advice that's useful even if the person never becomes your customer. It mentions your business at most once, only where it fits, and says plainly who you are ("I run…"). It matches the community: casual on Reddit, plain and precise on Hacker News, a complete answer on Stack Exchange. It never invents experiences, customers or results.
A reply uses 1 credit, and you always get a reply for it. If posting it looks risky (the thread is old or closed, the community doesn't welcome promotion, or your business is a weak fit), MAALI still writes the most helpful reply it can and adds a Before you post warning with what to do, like leaving the link out or skipping the thread. Threads more than a year old are flagged before you spend the credit.
Post it yourself
Read the draft, edit anything that doesn't sound like you, then Copy reply, Open thread and post it from your own account. Click Mark as posted so your list stays tidy. MAALI never posts, comments, votes or sends messages.
How to reply without being the spammer
- Help first. If you'd be embarrassed to post the reply without the mention of your business, don't post it.
- Say who you are. Keep the disclosure line. Communities forgive an honest "I run X"; they don't forgive hidden promotion, and Reddit and Stack Exchange both require it.
- Read the rules. Many subreddits limit or forbid self-promotion. Check the sidebar before posting.
- Once per thread, never copy-paste. Posting the same text in several places is spam, and it gets accounts banned.
- Use your own, established account. New accounts that only post about one business get filtered.
Replies that help get upvoted, and upvoted answers are what people, Google and AI assistants find later.
Keep reading
How MAALI writes new page titles and meta descriptions for your site, and how to apply them in one click on WordPress, Ghost and Webflow, or paste them in.
How MAALI checks whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude recommend your business, how to read the results, and how to use the action plan.
Give MAALI read-only access to Google Search Console and Google Analytics 4, so you can see what's working and get article ideas from real searches.
Connect your blog once, then send any MAALI article to it as a draft or live. Step by step for WordPress, Ghost, Webflow and GitHub-based sites.