Note: I’m looking for your feedback! Newsletter too long? Too boring? Too something else? Respond and let me know your thoughts so far or just say hi 🙋🏻‍♀️

By now, you know Reddit matters. You read the Reddit for AI search issue, you understand the AI search visibility piece (obviously, because you're a genius), and you're sold on why your brand needs to pay attention to Reddit.

But here's the question I get more than any other: "Okay, but should WE actually be on Reddit? Like, us, specifically?"

And then the follow-up: "And if yes, what the hell do we do and how do we know it’s working?"

This issue is for every single marketing leader who's asked some version of those questions. We're going to skip the generic advice ("just be authentic!" "add value!") and actually talk about what organic Reddit engagement looks like in practice for brands who want to do it right.

(Although FYI you should be authentic and you should add value, but you know what I mean.)

Let's get into it 👇

Here's the honest answer: Reddit isn't the right channel for every brand. And I'd rather tell you that upfront than watch you pour three months into it and come back to me confused about why nothing happened.

The brands that tend to get real ROI from organic Reddit are those whose audience is already there, already talking, and already making decisions based on what they find.

So before you commit a single hour of effort to this, do this quick diagnostic:

Go to Reddit and search for the problems your product solves. Not just generic mentions of your brand name! Search the problems. "Best project management tool for remote teams." "Is Figma worth it?" "How do people do bookkeeping for a small business?"

If you're finding active threads — posts from the past 6-12 months with real engagement, actual back-and-forth in the comments — then your audience is here.

If you're only finding dusty posts from 2019 with three replies? Reddit might not be your richest hunting ground for now.

Go into ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini and ask the questions your prospects are asking. The ones they'd Google at 11pm when they're trying to solve something. Now look at the citations.

Is Reddit showing up? Are specific subreddits getting pulled into the answers? If yes, you just found where your brand's reputation is being built without you.

Okay, nowww search for generic mentions of your brand name. What comes up? Is it positive? Negative? Crickets? Either way, this tells you something.

After you run through the above, ask yourself these three questions:

If you answered yes to all three: you're a great Reddit candidate. If you answered no to one: proceed with adjusted expectations. If you answered no to two or more: Reddit organic might be hard to pull off right now, and that's a completely valid conclusion.

If you know your audience is on Reddit + have the patience and willingness to be consistent, but lack the in-house/external resources to execute, let’s chat because that’s kind of my whole thing. 🤝

For those of you who passed the gut check (or want to eventually), let's talk about what you're actually building toward. Because the brands that stick with Reddit long enough to do it right end up with some compounding advantages that are hard to replicate anywhere else.

Think about this: a blog post gets traffic for maybe a few months if you're lucky, then it decays and needs revamping. A tweet disappears in 24 hours. A Reddit comment you wrote in a relevant thread two years ago can still be showing up in AI search answers today. It can still get upvotes. It can still get replies.

The content you create on Reddit doesn't expire the way it does elsewhere. Good threads have long tails. And as AI search continues to pull from Reddit as a primary source, those long tails are only getting longer.

Here's something most marketers skip over: by the time someone's comparing you to your competitors in a Reddit thread, the trust window is almost closed. They've made up their mind about 80% already.

But if your brand has been helpful in that subreddit for months—i.e. answering questions, adding nuance, being a real presence—you've already earned some of that trust. You're not a cold option they're reading about for the first time. You're that brand that actually knows what they're talking about.

That's a very different position to be in when the comparison moment happens.

Honestly? Some of the best market research I've ever seen has come from brands who just paid attention to what was being said in their relevant subreddits. The exact words people use to describe their pain. The features they wish existed. The competitors they're actually comparing you to (not the ones you assume).

This isn't just useful for marketing. It's useful for product, sales, and customer success too. Reddit will tell you things your own users won't say in a survey.

I'll say this a lot because it keeps being true: AI search is increasingly where buyers are forming opinions before they ever click anywhere. Reddit feeds that. Your organic presence, and more importantly, your reputation is what gets pulled into those answers.

You can either be intentional about what's there, or you can leave it to chance (and hope your competitors don't figure this out before you do).

Okay, this is the section I have the most feelings about. Because the bad advice out there on "how to market on Reddit" is genuinely embarrassing, and I've watched brands absolutely torch their reputations by following it.

Let's do the don'ts first, because they're more fun 😈

Don't create fake accounts or buy karma.

I know I've said this before but I'll keep saying it. Anonymous fake accounts, karma farming, astroturfing, etc…Reddit's community is extremely good at sniffing this out. The ban is the least of your problems. The screenshot going viral is the actual problem. Not worth it.

Don't parachute in just to promote yourself.

You know the person who shows up at a party, immediately starts pitching their MLM, and leaves? Don't be that brand. Joining a subreddit for the first time and immediately posting about your product is the surest way to get downvoted into oblivion and banned by mods, making sure you never earn your proverbial pink cadillac.

Don't delete negative comments about your brand.

You can't, actually, but I've seen brands try to get mods to remove them by claiming they're spam. It almost always backfires. Negative comments are an opportunity to thoughtfully address a painpoint, or at minimum acknowledge them. Trying to hide them is the Reddit equivalent of the Streisand Effect.

Don't send unsolicited DMs.

If someone posts about a problem your product solves, sliding into their DMs with a sales pitch is a violation of trust that Reddit users find genuinely creepy. It will get screenshotted and posted publicly. I have seen this happen. Do not.

Don't treat every post as a content opportunity.

Not every thread needs your brand's voice. In fact, most don't. Knowing when NOT to comment is a skill, and brands that haven't developed it yet tend to over-comment in ways that feel desperate and spammy, even when the individual comments are fine.

Do disclose your affiliation when talking about your brand or a competitor.

This is non-negotiable. If you're representing a brand, say so. "Full disclosure, I work at [Brand X], but in my experience..." Redditors respect honesty. They despise astroturfing. Disclosure is your baseline of trust.

Do start with comments, not posts.

Spend your first few months just... being helpful. Answer questions. Add context. Share your genuine expertise. Let people get used to your presence before you start initiating conversations. Comments are where you earn the credibility to eventually post.

Do read the room in each subreddit.

Every subreddit has its own culture, rules, and tolerance for brand participation. r/entrepreneur is very different from r/personalfinance is very different from r/malelivingspaces. Lurk before you leap. Read the pinned posts. Check what gets the mod's hammer.

Do be genuinely, embarrassingly helpful.

The bar on Reddit is: are you actually helping someone, or are you marketing at them? If you lead with real help—detailed answers, honest comparisons, admitting when a competitor is actually better for a specific use case—you'll build a reputation that no ad spend can replicate.

Do respond to criticism like a human being.

If someone posts something negative about your brand, the best move is usually to show up, acknowledge it, and offer to help without being defensive, without corporate-speak, and without trying to spin it.

"Hey, I saw this and wanted to reach out. Sounds like we really let you down here. Would you be open to chatting?" goes further than any PR statement.

Do engage with threads even when your brand isn't mentioned.

Some of the best Reddit presence-building happens in threads that have nothing to do with you directly. Answering a general question about your industry with real expertise (not brand-forward, just expert-forward) is how you become a trusted voice in a subreddit before you ever need to mention your product.

💡 Quick rule of thumb: 

Before you post or comment, ask yourself: "If I removed all mention of my brand from this, would this still be worth reading?" If yes, you're probably good. If no, rethink it.

This is the part where most brands get tripped up, because they come to Reddit expecting the same metrics dashboard they have for paid social. Impressions. CPCs. ROAS. Neat rows of numbers.

That's not how this works. Organic Reddit is slower, fuzzier, and more human than that. But it is absolutely measurable, you just need to know what to look for.

Upvotes and engagement on your comments

Yes, upvotes count. Not as a vanity metric, but as a signal. A comment with 50 upvotes is a comment that Reddit's community has validated as helpful or interesting. That validation is also a signal that AI search engines weight when deciding what to surface. Track which of your comments and posts get genuine engagement, then study why.

Keyword and brand mentions in subreddits

Set up Reddit Pro and a Google alert for your brand name + Reddit. Use a tool like Mention, Brand24, or even just a saved Reddit search to track when your brand name comes up. This tells you: what are people saying, in which subreddits, and is the sentiment shifting over time?

AI search citation tracking

Every 2-4 weeks, run your core customer prompts through ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. Screenshot the results. Are Reddit threads from your target subreddits showing up? Are your comments or threads getting cited or paraphrased? This is the clearest signal that your Reddit activity is influencing AI search.

Traffic from Reddit (for when you're further along)

If you're linking to any external content from Reddit, track the referral traffic in Google Analytics or whatever you're using.

🚨 Be patient here. You generally shouldn’t include links in your content until you’ve built up enough trust within your ideal subreddits. My honest advice is to not try and link to your own content for at least 3-6 months.

It’s also worth noting that Reddit referrals are usually spiky (one good thread can send a lot of traffic all at once) rather than a steady trickle, unless that thread is consistently getting served in search.

Qualitative brand sentiment over time

This one requires a human, not a dashboard. Every month, do a 20-minute audit. Read the most recent threads mentioning your brand or category in your target subreddits. Does the tone feel different than it did 3 months ago? Are people recommending you more? Fewer complaints? This stuff matters even when it's not in a spreadsheet.

Here's a realistic progression for a brand doing this right:

That's not a quick win. But the brands that make it past that 6-month mark and on to compounding results? They're really hard to displace.

And, yes, it takes a lot of consistency and intentionality! And, again, that’s kind of my whole thing 😌 Let’s chat if you’re looking to build a world-class Reddit program.

I know this was a meaty one, but organic Reddit is genuinely complex enough to earn it. If you made it this far, you're already more prepared than 90% of brands trying to figure this out right now. 🥇

Next week, we're going into Reddit for social listening, aka how to use Reddit as a research goldmine for ICP insights, competitive intel, and copy that actually sounds like your customers. That one is going to be really fun.

See you there 🫶

Talk soon,

KD