Reddit Marketing 101: How to Use Reddit for Your Brand

Reddit isn’t your typical social media platform. Instead of users sharing content to their own personal feeds, they’re diving into communities called subreddits to share topical posts. These posts can be text-only, images, videos, GIFs, and more—the ways to create and consume content are endless.

Structured like a forum over a social network, Reddit is chock full of passionate communities where authenticity matters muuuch more than polish (and users can smell corporate BS from a mile away).

This makes using the platform for marketing and communicating with other users particularly challenging for brands. It’s essential to focus on how valuable and helpful you and your content can be over making any kind of sale.

Throughout this guide, we’re going to walk you through the unique ecosystem that is Reddit marketing. Learn more about how you can use this platform to talk about your brand—while also avoiding getting banned.

Why Reddit marketing is important

Reddit has over 100 million daily active users and over 100,000 active subreddits across its platform. Conversations are happening across thousands of topics, and your brand should try to be a part of the most relevant ones.

So let’s talk a bit more about why Reddit marketing should be a part of your overall marketing strategy.

The audience

Reddit’s user base is highly engaged and influential. These are people who research thoroughly before making decisions (Reddit’s own data shows that 71% of people who discovered a new brand incorporated Reddit into their research), contribute to communities, and influence others through detailed recommendations and reviews.

The average Redditor spends around 34 minutes per day on the platform, and Statista shows that the majority of daily users actually aren’t even logged in. 

This shows that people are accessing topics across the platform through more than their own feeds (more on that in the next section).

But one of the biggest things that sets Reddit’s audience apart from other platforms is that users are organized into hyper-specific communities called subreddits based on interest or industry. 

Whether you sell B2B software, consumer products, or even the nichest of services, there’s almost certainly a community of your exact target audience already having conversations on Reddit.

The SEO/AEO advantage

Reddit content ranks exceptionally well in Google search results. No matter what you search, you’ll probably find at least one Reddit thread towards the top of your search results.

This is especially the case when searching for things like product recommendations or problem solutions.

But the advantage doesn’t stop at SEO. Reddit is also the #1 most cited website across all AI engines. So Reddit posts are appearing in both search engine and AI source results.

This means that building a presence on Reddit doesn’t just reach Reddit users—it reaches anyone searching for topics related to your business. 

And it also explains why more than half of daily Reddit users aren’t signed in. Some people are actively participating in threads while others simply want to see what Redditors have to say.

The word-of-mouth amplifier

Reddit is where people go for honest opinions. When Redditors recommend your product or service, it carries weight because the platform’s culture discourages obvious promotion. 

So a genuine recommendation from a Redditor in a relevant community is worth more than dozens of traditional ads—but building a strategy around increasing that word-of-mouth is sensitive, as you’ll see throughout this article.

The research goldmine

Even if you never post a single piece of content, Reddit is invaluable for market research. You can lurk in relevant subreddits to understand your customers’ pain points, see what they complain about with competitors, discover feature requests, and identify messaging that resonates.

Understanding Reddit’s culture

Here’s the thing about Reddit: It’s simultaneously one of the most powerful marketing channels available and one of the easiest places to completely embarrass your brand.

Finding the right balance is key, and understanding the Reddit culture is a key part of that. This is because Reddit’s culture is fundamentally different from other social platforms, and ignoring these differences is the fastest way to fail.

Authenticity is everything

Redditors value genuine, human interaction over slick marketing. They don’t want to hear you tout your business and its products or services.

In fact, a typo-ridden post from a founder genuinely asking for feedback will outperform a perfectly crafted corporate announcement every time. The community can spot inauthenticity immediately and will call it out publicly. It’s important to remember that.

Community rules > brand goals

Every subreddit has its own rules and guidelines. What works in r/Entrepreneur could get you banned in r/SmallBusiness. So it’s important to pay close attention to the community rules across the board.

Some subreddits prohibit all self-promotion. Others allow it only on specific days or in designated threads. You must follow these rules, no exceptions. Moderators have absolute power in their communities.

Contribution before promotion

The unofficial Reddit rule: For every piece of promotional content, you should contribute 9 pieces of non-promotional value. This is called the 90/10 rule. 

If your entire post history is promoting your product, you’ll be labeled a spammer and banned. You need to contribute genuine value to communities before you’ve earned the right to occasionally mention your business.

Downvotes and karma matter

Reddit uses an upvote/downvote system that determines content visibility. Posts and comments with high upvotes rise to the top; downvoted content disappears. 

Your account also has karma (a score based on your upvotes minus downvotes). Low karma or heavily downvoted content signals you’re not contributing value. This means your posts and comments won’t be seen as easily, and you’re much more likely to be banned.

Transparency is essential

If you work for a brand and you’re participating in discussions about that brand or industry, disclose it. Redditors respect transparency and will destroy you for astroturfing (pretending to be an unbiased user when you’re actually affiliated with a company).

How to find your audience on Reddit

Reddit is organized into subreddits—individual communities focused on specific topics. Finding the right subreddits to join, participate in, and monitor is your first step.

Start with the obvious

Search for subreddits directly related to your industry, product/service category, or target audience. If you sell project management software, some good places to start include r/ProjectManagement, r/Kanban, or r/Entrepreneur.

Look at adjacent communities

Don’t limit yourself to subreddits specifically related to your product or service. Think about adjacent problems and interests as well. 

For example, a meal kit company shouldn’t just focus on r/Cooking—they should also look at r/EatCheapAndHealthy, r/MealPrepSunday, r/Fitness (for people interested in nutrition), and r/Parenting.

Check competitor mentions

Search Reddit for mentions of your competitors. Where are people talking about them? What subreddits show up? These are communities where your target audience already hangs out. You should join them.

Use Reddit search and tools

Use Reddit’s search function with your industry keywords. You can easily type in any keyword and filter your search results for Communities to see top subreddits alongside data like weekly visitors and contributions.

This can help you make sure you’re only joining active subreddits so you can make the most of your Reddit marketing efforts.

Evaluate subreddit quality

Not all subreddits are worth your time. Look for:

• Active daily posts and comments (don’t waste time on dead communities)
• Engaged moderators who enforce rules
• Relevant discussions about topics in your wheelhouse
• Reasonable size (10,000-500,000 members is often a sweet spot—big enough to matter, small enough to build relationships)

Lurk first

Before participating anywhere, spend time lurking. Read the rules, observe the tone, understand what content gets upvoted, see what gets downvoted, and identify the active community members. Every subreddit has its own personality.

How to build your Reddit presence

Once you’ve identified the right communities, it’s time to start participating. Here’s how to do it right.

Create the right account

You have two main options to choose from when starting your Reddit presence.

Personal account

Use your real name (or a professional username) and identify yourself as working for your company. This works well for founders, executives, or subject matter experts who can contribute expertise.

Here’s an example of a clearly labeled brand representative on Reddit:

Brand account

Use your company name and be completely transparent about being a business. This works if you’re planning to do official company updates, AMAs, or customer support.

Here’s an example of what this could look like:

However, most successful brands use both—personal accounts for executives/employees to participate authentically, plus an official brand account for announcements and support.

Build karma before promoting anything

You need to establish credibility first. Here’s how:

• Answer questions in your area of expertise. Don’t mention your product—just be helpful.
• Share interesting content from others. Curate valuable resources for the community.
• Participate in discussions. Add thoughtful comments to popular threads.
• Contribute to non-industry subreddits too. Show you’re a real person with interests beyond your business.

Aim for at least 100-500 karma before you even think about mentioning your company.

This is harder for an actual brand account. Focus on building karma for each team member’s personal accounts first. Your brand account will likely only be used for things like AMAs (like the Klaviyo example above) and ads, so it’s less important to build karma separately.

Start promoting…strategically

When you’ve established yourself as a contributing member, you can carefully introduce promotional content:

• Be transparent: For example, “Hey r/Entrepreneur, I’m the founder of [Company]. We just launched [Thing] and I’d love feedback from this community.”
• Lead with value: Don’t just promote—teach. Something like, “I spent 3 years solving [Problem]. Here’s what I learned [detailed post with insights]. We built [Product] to solve this—happy to answer questions.”
• Follow community rules: If a subreddit only allows promotion on “Self-Promotion Saturday,” respect that.
• Make it worth their time: If you’re going to promote, make the post so valuable that people upvote it despite knowing you’re promoting something. Case studies, behind-the-scenes looks, and free resources work well.
• Respond to every comment: When you make a promotional post, commit to engaging with everyone who comments. Answer questions, address concerns, thank people for feedback.

Focus on content that works on Reddit

Reddit is not the same as the other platforms you’re marketing on. You need to be particular about the content that you share—and you need to make sure it’s hardly ever promotional in nature.

Let’s go over some examples of different types of content that you can typically share and see success on Reddit.

Educational posts

Before you ever start trying to sell or promote your business, you first need to focus on value and education. This type of content does well on Reddit because people are going to this platform to learn.

Here’s an example of an educational post from web hosting platform Bluehost on the Bluehost Official subreddit:

The brand account created a useful post on how to avoid email deliverability issues with a new domain name. But they also made it a more conversational post by asking “Any we’re missing?” at the end.

Using tactics like this make people want to hop on the thread and start adding their own tips and insights, making posts like these even more valuable and boosting reach and performance.

Educational posts like how-tos, guides, frameworks, and lessons learned consistently perform well. But you need to make them genuinely useful.

Data and research

If your business publishes original data and research, Reddit is the perfect platform to be sharing it to. Users want to see unique insights while they browse the platform—plus this kind of information is gold for AI responses.

Time tracking software Hubstaff did a good job of this with their recent post sharing 2026 global work trends and benchmarks on the official Hubstaff subreddit:

They introduce the new study, share key takeaways, and more, alongside a link to their website to see the full report.

So not only is Hubstaff providing actual value to its subreddit members, but it’s also taking advantage of the unique opportunity to send users to their website, increasing both traffic and the chance that someone decides to sign up for their software.

Behind-the-scenes

We’ve already talked about how important authenticity is in your Reddit marketing strategy, and here’s a great chance for you to incorporate that. 

Create posts that share things like:

• Authentic and transparent looks at your business
• Behind-the-scenes in product development
• Your brand’s decision-making process

The messier and more human, the better.

Here’s a really fantastic example from email marketing platform MailerLite. Their product marketing manager wrote up a transparent behind-the-scenes look at one of the brand’s recent feature launches and how they figured out why their users weren’t really taking advantage of it.

The post talks about how they polled their users about the feature, then goes on to share the improvements those findings helped them make.

Posts like these are the perfect way to fit into the Reddit community.

Asking for or sharing customer feedback

Reddit is also the perfect platform for crowdsourcing customer feedback, or just general feedback from people in your industry. However, you can also share decisions your brand has made based on past feedback it’s received.

The latter option is exactly what 3D printing company Bambu Labs did with this recent post:

Bambu Labs recently made a change to its filament tape, received some complaints from customers, and created an in-depth post filled with pictures to explain its decision-making process behind the new changes.

This level of transparency and being open to receiving feedback from customers is exactly what Redditors want to see from brands.

Case studies

Showcase real stories with specific numbers and outcomes. Highlight customer case studies that actually share tangible insights on things that worked for them—and what didn’t.

Here’s a light example of a case study shared to Reddit from Upwork:

While an even better way to do this would be to write out the story within a Reddit post, this is still an option for sharing a case study and working to generate website traffic from Reddit.

AMAs (ask me anything)

An AMA is an amazing way to engage the Reddit community with actual value. Find someone on your team who has a lot of industry knowledge and would be willing to answer questions from Redditors.

Then plan a day and time for the AMA to happen and promote it across relevant subreddits.

This type of content can be incredibly effective, but it takes proper planning and promotion to make them work. Don’t do a drive-by AMA—commit several hours to answering questions thoroughly.

Email marketing platform Klaviyo had their CEO host an AMA, using this post to announce it:

The AMA got a ton of comments, generating a really awesome response for Klaviyo. Consider adding regular AMAs into your Reddit strategy to solidify your place on the platform.

Avoid getting banned

The most important thing to remember is that you can—and you will—get banned easily if you don’t follow Reddit posting guidelines.

Here are some major sins that you need to avoid if you don’t want to lose your Reddit account or access to key subreddits in your niche:

• Posting the same promotional content across multiple subreddits (this is spam and just an all around bad practice)
• Using clickbait titles or misleading headlines
• Buying upvotes or using vote manipulation
• Creating fake accounts to praise your own product (the astroturfing we talked about)
• Arguing with people who criticize your brand
• Deleting posts or comments when they get downvoted
• DMing people to promote your product
• Ignoring subreddit rules because you think they don’t apply to you (trust us, they do)

Community building: Creating your own subreddit

Once you’ve established yourself in existing communities, you might consider creating your own branded subreddit. This can be a great way to create conversations specifically around your own brand. 

Plus, it lets you create your own subreddit rules around what can be posted, which can be a great way for you to start baking more promotional content into your strategy.

When to create a brand subreddit

The first thing to think about is: Are you ready to create and moderate a branded subreddit?

If these criteria apply to your brand, it might be time:

• You have an active user base that wants to connect with each other
• You need a central place for support, feature requests, and community discussion
• You want to build a community around your product category, not just your brand
• You can commit to actively moderating and participating

Consider this, though: Creating/building up a subreddit and working to keep it active is a lot of work. You don’t want to take on this project unless you have the time or manpower to dedicate to doing it right.

But if you’ve already spent a lot of time building up your Reddit presence and making a name for yourself/your brand in relevant subreddits, the natural next step often is creating your own official subreddit.

How to build a successful brand subreddit

These best practices can help you start your branded subreddit off on the right foot:

• Make it about the community, not the brand: r/Peloton isn’t just Peloton ads—it’s where Peloton users share workouts, support each other, and build friendships. The brand facilitates but doesn’t dominate.
• Have clear rules and active moderation: Set expectations for behavior, promotion, and content quality. Enforce rules consistently.
• Provide value beyond support: Don’t make it just a support forum. Create weekly threads, share interesting content, celebrate community members, run events, and whatever else makes sense for your product/service or industry.
• Participate as humans: Have employees participate as themselves, not just official brand accounts. Show the humans behind the company.
• Cross-promote thoughtfully: Mention your subreddit in relevant external communities, but only when contextually appropriate. Don’t spam other subreddits promoting your own.

Examples of brand subreddits done right

Let’s look at a few brand subreddits that have done a good job of creating a community, not just another promotional platform.

r/Notion

The r/Notion community provides a great example of a branded community that’s actually all about the users, not the brand. Notion in general has created an amazing online community because its platform is so flexible.

So people flock to the r/Notion subreddit to share templates, get tips for building out dashboards, and talk to other Notion users. In fact, the Notion team isn’t anywhere in sight. (They used to participate a few years ago, but have since stepped back—but the community is still wildly active.)

While this isn’t necessarily a brand-moderated subreddit, it’s still an incredible example of what your community can build if you give them the tools for it.

r/Spotify

You can find both r/Spotify and r/truespotify for sharing playlists and talking about the streaming platform. While this is a branded subreddit that was not created by the brand, you’ll still see u/ThisIsSpotify (the Spotify team’s official Reddit account) participate in the subreddits.

Honestly, this is a best case scenario: Pay attention to whether your brand has become so well-loved that your customers have actually created a subreddit for you. Then you can participate without having to moderate.

r/Comcast_Xfinity

We all know how terrible it can be trying to communicate with Comcast customer service. The brand heard this and decided to make itself more accessible by creating customer service-focused subreddit r/Comcast_Xfinity.

This way, customers can easily create or find threads with their issues, and the Comcast team is always moderating so they can help find solutions. This is a great way to use Reddit for your brand, especially if you have a dedicated social media support team.

Measuring Reddit marketing success

Yes, we’ve said this a million times, but it bears repeating: Reddit is not like any other platform. And that means Reddit metrics and what success looks like is different from other platforms as well.

Let’s look at what you’ll want to track to measure your performance.

Engagement metrics

• Upvote ratio on your posts
• Comment volume and quality
• Karma gained over time
• Comments per post

Community metrics

• Mentions of your brand across Reddit
• Sentiment of those mentions
• Growth of your subreddit (if you have one)
• Active community members

Business metrics

• Traffic from Reddit to your website (check Google Analytics)
• Conversions from Reddit traffic
• Support tickets reduced by community self-help
• Product feedback and insights gathered

Other measures of success

• Are people asking for your product by name in recommendation threads?
• Are community members defending your brand without prompting?
• Are you learning valuable insights about your market?
• Are relationships forming between your team and community members?

How to track Reddit marketing success

Vista Social offers Reddit analytics that can help you track data like:

• Posts
• Followers
• Karma
• Likes (upvotes in Reddit)
• Comments
• Shares
• Awards

Connect your Reddit account to start analyzing your growth in your social media and post performance reports:

Build out your own Reddit marketing strategy

Ready to start reaching your target audience on Reddit? Use this guide to help you build out a Reddit marketing strategy that works. Start engaging with the right subreddits, share educational value, and build up to your own brand subreddit.

Vista Social can help. From Reddit DM management and analytics to post scheduling and other key features, you’ll be able to easily manage your Reddit presence.

Create your Vista Social account and explore just how much you can do to ramp up your online growth.