Community Engagement

AI platforms often draw on community conversations on Reddit, X, and LinkedIn when they answer questions in your market. Community engagement watches those conversations, scores each one for relevance to your brand, and holds the ones worth a reply in the Engagement queue under Actions.

SurfacedBy never posts for you. Every reply is written for you to post yourself, from your own account.

What is watched

• Reddit. You choose the communities (subreddits). SurfacedBy reads each one's new posts and comments, plus anything from the people you choose to watch.
• X. One combined search covers your keywords, your competitor names, and the people you watch.
• LinkedIn. Searches your keywords and competitor names.

Reddit is available from Starter. X and LinkedIn are available from Professional, each switched on in your watch list.

Setting up your watch list

The first time you open the Engagement queue, SurfacedBy builds a suggested watch list for you to review:

• up to six communities, starting with up to four that AI platforms have cited for your tracked prompts in the last 90 days, then communities that fit your niche
• up to six keywords and topics
• up to five competitors to track

You can edit every item before you select Start watching, and at any time later with Manage watch list above the queue. You can also add People to watch. If a suggested list is longer than your plan allows, remove items until it fits before you start.

Each plan caps how much you can watch:

After a downgrade, your items are kept, but those over the new cap stop being watched.

The same screen sets how replies are written:

• Reply style. Conservative (the default), Balanced, or Forward. This sets how forward a reply sounds, and it also sets how relevant a conversation must be to reach your queue. Conservative only surfaces strong matches; Forward surfaces more.
• Brand mentions. When a reply may name your brand: never, only when someone directly asks (the default), conservatively, or proactively.
• Links in replies. Never (the default), only when the thread asks, or when it helps.

How often conversations are checked

Reddit communities are checked every 12 hours on Starter, every hour on Professional, and every 30 minutes on Agency. A long community list takes several checks to cover in full.

X and LinkedIn are searched once a day on every plan. While a large number of X or LinkedIn conversations sit unreviewed in your queue, new searches on that platform pause, and they resume once you work through them or they go stale. Cited threads (see below) do not count toward that backlog.

How a conversation reaches your queue

From your watch list. Every conversation your watch list finds is scored for relevance to your brand and competitors. Conversations that clear the bar set by your reply style land in the queue; the rest are dismissed automatically.

From your citations. Once a day, SurfacedBy also adds up to five community threads per domain that AI platforms cited when answering your tracked prompts. These carry a Cited source badge and get a ranking boost, so they usually sit near the top of the queue, though a strong, fresh conversation can still rank above them. You can add cited threads yourself from the Communities tab on Citations, one at a time with Add to engagement queue, or all at once with Add all to queue.

Reviewing and drafting

1. Open a conversation with Review to read the full thread.
2. If it is worth a reply, select Draft a reply. A draft is only written when you ask for one.
3. Edit the draft, or rewrite it with an optional note or a preset style such as Share an experience or Ask a question. Each rewrite produces a new draft.
4. Select Use this reply to approve it. Undo approval reopens it for more changes.
5. Post it on the platform yourself, then select Mark as posted. Pasting the link to your posted reply is optional, but it lets SurfacedBy read the reply's reactions automatically on X, and on Reddit when your Reddit account is connected.

Until you approve a reply, its conversation can be dismissed, marked Not relevant, or muted with Stop surfacing for that thread, author, or source. Conversations that go cold before you reply move to the Stale filter.

Community posts from your articles

An article from Content Operations with a finished draft, or one you have published, can be turned into an original Reddit post; a project that has only a brief cannot. Select Draft a community post on the article, choose a community, and add an optional note on framing. The post is written for that community's norms and lands in the Engagement queue, where you can edit it, request changes, approve it, and copy it to post yourself.

After you post

SurfacedBy watches each posted reply for signs that it worked. For every reply it reads reactions on the platform, such as upvotes and replies, where it can: on X, and on Reddit when your Reddit account is connected. LinkedIn reactions are not read.

For a reply that names your brand or includes a link, it also looks for:

• the thread showing up as a cited source in later AI answers
• a change in visits from AI platforms in Google Analytics, when it is connected, compared with the same length of time before you posted
• movement in your Brand Coverage and Visibility Score once a Full Check has run after you posted

It checks daily for the first 7 days and weekly until day 30. From day 31 to day 90 it records only what regular checks pick up, and then the watch ends. You can also mark a reply as It landed or No traction yourself, which is useful for a reply whose reactions cannot be read.

Connected accounts

Under Settings > Integrations > Engagement accounts you can connect your Reddit, X, or LinkedIn account. Connecting or disconnecting an account takes the Admin role. SurfacedBy uses the connection to read your standing on that platform, which shapes how forward a reply can be, and a connected Reddit account also lets it read reactions on your posted Reddit replies. It never posts from a connected account.

Browser extension

The SurfacedBy Chrome extension places an approved reply into the platform's own reply box on Reddit, X, and LinkedIn (or copies it when that is not possible), records the posted reply and its link, adds the thread you are viewing to your queue, and drafts on request. You still press submit yourself. See Browser Extension.

What the drafts learn

When you edit a draft before approving it, SurfacedBy keeps the difference. Notes you give when rejecting a draft or asking for changes are kept too, and each platform's habits are summarized weekly. You can review what has been learned under What the drafts have learned, on the same settings screen as your engagement accounts, and move a preference between one brand and all your brands.

Plans and credits

• Starter watches Reddit and links you straight to each conversation, so you can reply in your own words. It does not include drafted replies.
• Professional and Agency add drafted replies, community posts, and X and LinkedIn watching.

Drafts and rewrites use credits. A draft that fails is not charged. Watching, scoring, and outcome tracking do not use credits. See Credits for how credits work.