641: The Reddit Strategy That Gets AI to Recommend Your Brand

00:00
Welcome back to the podcast, the show where I cover all the latest strategies and current events related to e-commerce and online business. In this episode, I sit down with Danny Kirk, founder of Reddit Reach, to talk about how e-commerce brands are using Reddit to get recommended by Chachibetee, Claude, and Proplexity. We get into the exact strategy for building up a Reddit presence from scratch, including how long it actually takes and what will get you banned. If you’ve ever wondered whether Reddit is worth your time as a brand, this episode will give you a very clear answer. But before we begin,

00:30
I just wanted to take a second to mention that I have a free ecommerce community that I’m incredibly proud of and would love for you to be a part of. It is a place where real sellers come together to share wins, troubleshoot problems, and support each other through the ups and downs of building an online business. You can join completely free at mywifequitterjob.com slash community and I would love to see you there. That’s mywifequitterjob.com slash community. Now on to the show.

01:01
Welcome to the My Wife Quarter job podcast. Today I am thrilled to have Danny Kirk on the show. Now Danny runs Reda Reach, which is a company that helps e-commerce brands get mentioned on Reddit and in turn get recommended by Chachi BT, Proplexity, Claude and all the other LLMs. This company has been around for eight years, well before AI was mainstream. Danny is also a member of e-commerce fuel. This is where we kind of connected for today’s podcast.

01:29
And in this episode, we’re going to talk about how brands are using Reddit to improve their AI search visibility. And with that, welcome to the show, Danny. How are doing today? pretty well, Steve. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, so I know most of my listeners probably don’t know who you are. How did you get started in e commerce and then Reddit specific? Yeah, absolutely. Backing up even a little bit further than that. I have no um

01:54
No formal education in business. was a music major in college, actually, but that was never going to turn out into anything. Stumbled into some entrepreneurship about 15 years ago, had some swings and misses, had a couple big wins, grew a SaaS company for five years. After that, I took all those lessons learned in marketing and brought them to this agency, which is about a decade old now, having served close to 600 start-ups brands and SMBs to date.

02:22
um The category we’re in as far as Reddit marketing and AI search optimization is huge in e-commerce, of course, with changing buying trends. So that’s kind how we got involved with a lot of e-commerce brands. Okay. And do you have an e-commerce brand yourself? Because I know ECF requires that, right? No, they let me, you know, our mutual friends let me slide under the radar there as long as I agree to do no sales pitches. So I know I am not an operator. I’m just the guy that likes people’s posts. Okay. Okay.

02:51
that I did not know. All well, let’s start with like the basics because uh I don’t think we’ve covered this on the pod before like why is Reddit just important in the first place? Yeah, Reddit is a very interesting place. I think it’s still one of the most obscure parts of the internet. I say that it’s where passionate people hang out. ah I guess which is not also Twitter, uh or x.

03:14
ah But it is a very fascinating place. You have all these incredibly passionate people organizing themselves by topic matter called subreddits. These places are little nation states with all their own rules. They have kings and queens that moderate them. They do whatever they want. They follow rules. They don’t follow rules. And I think it’s important because it’s where humans still hang out. There’s a good number of bots too, but bots are everywhere these days, but still.

03:39
There’s a huge number of humans on there that are going to have true interactions to get true takes on brands. So that’s why I think it’s still a really awesome place. And then kind of um bring that forward. Reddit’s been unprofitable for about two decades. And finally, they created a business model, which was called selling their data to the AI companies. To Google, right? Yeah.

04:01
Google OpenAI also has a partnership as well, and thank goodness because I’m not quite sure they would have lasted any longer. But now that’s why they’re incredibly important and that’s their business model these days. So the AI companies are looking for that human data and that’s what they’re supplying. So is ads like a part of their revenue, a big part of the revenue, or is it mainly just selling to the big companies?

04:24
You know, I haven’t looked at their revenue split recently. Ads, they are pushing really hard these days. I know my Reddit feed is filled with advertisements about advertising. ah I imagine that’s a growing number on there, but uh still, I do think that this scraping and using their data is probably a meaningful portion of their revenue. Do you use Reddit ads at all, or is your strategy purely organic?

04:49
Purely organic and for the main reason that our brands have the top level outcome of wanting AI to recommend their brand, ads do nothing for that. Ads are still great on Reddit. They could work just from an advertising perspective, but AI is not scraping the advertisements. So for our clients and their outcomes, it doesn’t matter so much. So I know in the very beginning, think Reddit, there was a stat I had, it was like 40 % of like, you when it does a whole bunch of searches.

05:18
And then I read recently, maybe as of like two or three months ago, that dropped to like 10%. Have you seen any changes in the mentions and read it in the LLMs? Yeah, absolutely. Citations, they were even as high as 80 % last September, which I think we can all agree that’s way too high, too much consolidation.

05:39
um They I’m getting my data from probably another mutual friend of ours, Jeff Oxford, 180 marketing and visibility labs. He ran a great study on this. It now makes up around 20 % of citations on average. Okay. Okay. And then I used to be a Reddit user way back in the day, I used to promote my blog with it. And I used to get a lot of traffic from it because I had this group of like people with high karma.

06:07
And then one day, think someone complained that I got shadow banned. And then I so I created another account and then that got banned and I actually haven’t been on Reddit since. It’s very easy to get banned now, apparently. Yeah, absolutely. It’s getting stricter all the time. And for good reason, because there’s a lot of um actors on there that are doing unsavory things, in my opinion. So I think it’s good. They’re tightening things down. Most social media platforms are tightening things down in the age of AI.

06:35
But yeah, the shadow ban is one of the funniest things because most social media platforms just say, hey, we’re banning you. Reddit doesn’t tell you that. uh Eventually, you go to your URL in an incognito browser and it’s like you’ve been shadowed. Exactly. Yeah, it’s crazy. mean, it’s really popular in the e-commerce circles right now. I’ve chatted with a bunch of people who are, I use the term gaming Reddit because I mean, that’s kind of what it is, right? What we do with SEO and whatnot.

07:05
both black and gray hat techniques. Recently, I think it was like a week ago, Reddit stated that they will require accounts to verify that they are run by a human, which in my opinion is a need for every single social media platform today. Are your methods, how would you classify those? White, gray, black? would say white to gray, and it’s also just depending on other people’s perspective on them too. But yeah, I would say

07:34
Um, what is black, um, in my opinion is, uh, false claims of use. Um, you know, fake testimonials, um, sharing, uh, tracking links, sharing links at all. actually just don’t do that ever. Um, influencing, I don’t like the buying of upvotes that is influencing in my opinion. what is it? Sorry. What was that one? Uh, or buying of upvotes or downvotes. Oh, buying upvotes. Okay.

08:00
Right, right, right. I consider that one a black hat one just because that’s influencing without a disclaimer that you’re influencing. To me, if you’re pasting one comment that mentions a brand, there are so many Reddit accounts, that’s not really influencing, you know. So I consider a self on the white area of the spectrum. Okay. All right. So you are, guess, the first pure white hat person I’m going be talking to.

08:25
All right, so I know you run an agency. Let’s say I’m signing up as a client. Walk me through your strategy. Yeah, absolutely. So a couple different things. There’s two major organic strategies on Reddit. In my opinion, the first one is a branded strategy that’s having your own branded account. It sounds like you may have done that in the past with your blog. Just saying, was that what you did? I did. Yeah, it was it was my wife, quit her job. I had my bio and everything and it was going great for about

08:55
two years, I want to say. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I and I do actually think you probably could have gotten it back. I do know some people that have run branded strategies and sometimes people get mad at them and they, you know, message the moderators and get it back activated. But the branded strategy is a great one. I call it the fairy godmother of the brand. If you’re a big name e commerce company, you probably already have people talking about you on Reddit. And this is just like the

09:23
you know, the friendly customer service that floats in. If somebody mentions the brand, like, hey, thanks for being a customer or like, can I answer your questions or here’s some resources based on like what you mentioned. You’re not trying to sell anything. You’re just being helpful and you’re being transparent about who you are.

09:40
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10:08
And here’s the thing, I wasn’t even ready to sell yet, but knowing what I needed to fix meant that I could actually start preparing and I now had a roadmap. Everyone at Quiet Light has built or sold businesses themselves. So my advisor told me what needed to change, it was actually coming from real experience sitting across from buyers. And by the time I was ready, everything was positioned right and we attracted serious buyers. So if you’ve been thinking about selling someday, even if that day feels way far off, just getting a free valuation from Quiet Light

10:38
will make a huge difference. You’ll learn what you need to fix right now so you’re not scrambling later. And if you’re interested, go over to quietlight.com. Then the non-branded strategies, that is essentially using accounts that don’t have a brand attached to them. A great one for a lot of e-commerce brands, and I gave a big presentation to the ECF community last month about this, I believe is just merely asking your customers if they are active on Reddit.

11:07
And if they are willing to share their story, you you’re already asking them after the checkout, you know, hey, rate us on Google or Amazon or Shopify or whatever, you’re already asking for those reviews. If they’re stoked to do it, and if they’re also an active Redditor, which is important here, ask them to share their story on Reddit as well. So I think that’s huge, putting it as part of your flow. And then finally, obviously you can, and this maybe gets a little bit into the gray area, but you can do…

11:34
Brand mentions from a non-branded strategy, just going out there answering questions from a general use account. But this is where I think we’re on the white hat side of it. No false claims, no fake testimonials or anything like that. Okay, so let’s say I was a customer for Brand and they asked me to do a review on Reddit. I’d probably say no, it sounds risky, right? Like you post something like that, you’re probably gonna get banned or someone’s gonna be like, hey, this is fishy.

12:03
Yeah, would. Yeah, it’s definitely kind of as far as all of the reviews online that you could ask your customers to do. It’s a tricky one for sure. I believe the most important thing is, A, don’t ask all 20,000 of your customers to do it on the same day. know, triple it out to email campaign that’s partitioned each month. But ask the ones that are already active because they will have a higher chance of… Define active actually.

12:31
Yeah, so they already have an account, they use it every day, they have karma, they have experience probably in your category. So if they’re an active Reddit user and they also bought your product, that means they’re already a part of the subreddit that you want them to mention your product in, in all likelihood. That’s probably a tiny subset of your customers. Yeah, absolutely. Most e-commerce brands have m a lot of customers. So even if it’s a half a percent,

13:00
If you can get some really passionate people talking about it So that’s to answer your question how you de-risk that because I think you’re right You don’t want everyone doing it, but you want those super users that are also reddit users to go out there and do it Interesting. So I guess could you mind these people through AI? Actually, you wouldn’t even know their IDs though. So you’d have to actually ask them right with the black. Okay

13:22
I do believe that yeah, it would probably be in an email, uh email blast or something like that trickled out over the course of a year. So not everyone does it that once something like that, I believe. So let’s say you want to go the founder route that was those option number one, like, I remember back in the day, I had a group of friends, and that’s how I built up my karma because they already had karma, like how what’s the strategy for building up any karma at all these days? Yeah, absolutely. I so

13:50
I’ve got uh kind of a little 12 week strategy, which I’m happy to share with your audience. ah But it really does take probably three to six months to kind of warm up an account in a genuine way. And this is not doing any of these crazy karma hacks, which can get you in trouble. This is just going into those communities that you’re already stoked on. Maybe it’s where your customers are, or maybe it’s just like your favorite sports team and just start commenting on things, answer questions, upvote other things, ask people questions as well.

14:20
Just do it in genuine way. There’s also some kind of tactics that will not get you in trouble, which I always love. One of my favorites is actually AskTO, AskToronto. So, know, Canadians, the friendliest, most helpful people on planet Earth. I went in there one time and I was like, hey, Toronto, what’s the best ramen place in Toronto? And, you know, I had like 100 comments and upvotes and like…

14:48
five minutes because everyone just chimed in and stuff like that. So there are also genuine ways and I believe that’s also helpful to other people that may also have that question that can go in there and see that information. So I think there’s ways to genuinely do it about the topics you’re interested in and also maybe farm some karma in a genuine and helpful way to others as well. I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of. If you are interested in starting your own online store,

15:18
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15:48
So it’s been a while since I’ve been on Reddit, pre pandemic. How do you get like, what gets you karma? Like, do have to post a topic that gets up votes? Just responding to other people’s comments doesn’t really build karma that much, right? Yeah, it’s, yes, it is all about the upvotes. So either um upvotes on the post that you made or upvotes on the comment you made. yeah, responding in and of itself doesn’t do that, but somebody liking your response or your post doesn’t.

16:17
Okay, and so you’re suggesting to go into these ask groups. I don’t know, like if I if I started doing that with zero karma or whatever, like, does that work? Like, how do you it’s hard, like the start problem is hard. Yeah, the start problem is hard. And some subreddits have a minimum amount of karma to even interact with them. I would go I would go and search for your favorite topic areas.

16:41
um And in like super niche, like I just got into bow hunting this last year. So I am new to the bow hunting subreddit, but I’ve gone in there, I’ve posted a couple questions, people have chimed in, the niche aspect of that really helps. So I’ve like asked questions about carrying one on a plane if I was going somewhere and.

17:04
whatnot. I think the niche aspect of it is going to help you a lot versus like going to those mega ones and just trying to be heard in the sea of people. So would you recommend being a brand in doing this? It seems like it’d be easier with like a third party account, so to speak, then then a brand going in there asking questions, right? It is it is easier with a brand or with a third, sorry, with a third party account.

17:29
Brand is definitely a very long game, but let me tell you about my favorite first party or branded strategy Reddit user. His username is um YourBizBroker. So he’s a business broker. He helps people buy, sell, and value their businesses. Anybody, and he’s got 30,000 karma, and uh it’s incredible. uh And anybody…

17:54
that asks a question about buying, selling, or valuing a business, he goes in and makes a three paragraph long comment answer, giving him his genuine free take. And it has no call to action whatsoever. Like no, like, hey, schedule a call time with me. But there’s no surprise people are like, whoa, that was incredible. ah They go to his profile. It has a link to schedule a call with them. And he gets leads like crazy. But yet again, he gets karma from being helpful. So I do think that, uh and he’s been doing this for

18:23
on the order of years now. So obviously it’s a long game. It’s not impossible, but you have to have that long-term mindset. All right, so walk me through those first three to six months then of just building up an account. You said something about a 12-step plan or something like that? Yeah, for sure. I’d be happy to share a link with your audience so they can grab that and whatnot. But yeah, a lot of it, kind of first and foremost, and we’re talking about brand new strategy here is it’s kind of similar to LinkedIn, know, choose a good username.

18:53
ah One thing to note, you cannot change your username once it’s there. So choose wisely. I would have something as part of your brand name, but maybe like founder in front of it. Like if you’re speaking from a founder perspective, make it a little bit cooler than LinkedIn would do it. ah You know, have a banner image, have links to your website, a little bit about a bio section. ah So optimize your profile. That’s the billboard. ah Then from there, just go join into the subreddits. ah

19:21
where your community’s at. So, ah you know, if it’s a uh foot bed sole for running shoes, go enjoy those communities, marathons, ultra running, you know, whatever it might be, first time runners, and just be helpful. Yet again, just like your bismaraproprit does, just answer really good questions. People are probably gonna have a question about their plantar fasciitis and what sole shoe I get. No sales pitch whatsoever, just answer questions.

19:49
for the first month or so, build up that karma, people will like it. And then from there, you can maybe start your marketing efforts, but only once you’ve got some karma built up. What time commitment are we talking about here? How many posts a day? Yeah, I find this like revolt, you know, I hate, would hate doing it, you know, because it seems so contrived. So yeah, what would you recommend? Yeah, I would call it, if you’re willing to dedicate

20:15
uh 15 minutes a day. And there are some tools out there that can help you. So first of all, always be a human. Reddit has an incentive to knock the bots off their platform. So uh I advocate only for humans owning accounts and acting as a human. No automations. But there’s some tools out there. One that I love uh is subreddit signals. I’m a friend with the founder. And you just input your website and it will like populate.

20:41
that would be relevant to you. So that’s gonna save you a huge amount of time just searching for things to comment on. And then it does it every day. So using a tool like that to do the searches and then 10 to 15 minutes a day, go in there, make a really helpful comment, not using AI or anything like that. That’s how you can start that snowball rolling and be consistent about it. Okay, so posting comments won’t get you karma though, right? So you’re just trying to…

21:08
become a member of the community, like a real member of the community at this point? No, there is Comet Karma and there’s Post Karma. So anything that can be upvoted and downvoted, you can have Karma at. And that happens at the post. And they actually divvy it up in your profile. You can see Post Comet and ah Comet Karma. um That person, George Visbroker, he actually has 30,000 Comet Karma and only like 10 Post Karma because he’s only done Comet.

21:37
And he’s built up his business just based on commenting other people’s stuff, right? Yeah, absolutely. And you know, a little bit of a a little bit of a bias there. You know, a biz broker, his ticket sales size is massive. So for an e-commerce brand, it’s it’s a different game. It’s more about brand visibility. It’s very much a long game. And maybe you can have your social media person handle all this. It’s a different kind of calculus with the math. But I do still think it’s.

22:06
So in this beginning, you’re not even mentioning your brand whatsoever. You’re just answering questions and whatnot. when does the marketing part start? How much karma do you recommend before you even think about mentioning anything related to your brand? Boy, it would be nice if you had a thousand karma, which is not impossible to Yeah. That’s hard, actually. Yeah, it’s hard, but I think it’s, I believe in playing long-term games. So it’s good if you’re,

22:34
If you’re of that same mindset as I am, I think it’s worth it because we’re building something that’s compounding here. ah But yeah, that might take some time. I I’ve known people to get a, well, what did I do? I can’t remember what I did. I took a picture of something that was kind of news related and I was the first person to post about it. And I got 2000 Karma in like 10 minutes just because I happened to be the person that posted about it first. ah So it is possible to do instantaneously, but.

23:01
ah It’s harder. Yeah, it is harder to do a little bit on the kind of longer term the slow and steady approach So would you recommend like you mentioned you posted something in like news or whatnot? Like would you mention just bill? Would you recommend just building up your karma like elsewhere not in your targeted subreddits? Yes, my names and stuff or what you know, yeah, I I would say yes, it doesn’t matter whatsoever There’s not a quality of karma, you know, or nobody can see where it was built. So yeah, that’s why I kind of I think I mentioned a bit ago I added in there

23:31
things that you’re excited about outside of business, know, your favorite sports team or your favorite hobby, things like that. And it’ll also make your account look more genuine, which is important in my opinion. Okay. All right. So this clearly is a lot. You might even have to enjoy Reddit in order to do this strategy, right? I think so. It’s in the same way I’m active on LinkedIn uh every single day for a year now. And boy, has it been a slog.

23:58
But now I’ve got this daily practice that’s non-negotiable and I’m able to do it every single day. It feels very similar to Reddit. But to your point, I had to have liked LinkedIn first to do it. If you don’t, it might not be the platform for you. Okay. Well, let’s say you have a thousand Karma now. Then how does the strategy shift? Yeah. Still talking about Branded Strategy. The people that are doing it the best on there,

24:25
ah I really love uh them building in public. So sharing their stories, you know, and this could be for like SaaS founders of new companies like, hey, this is the problem we were having. We built this tool for it in the relative communities. Maybe going back to my bow hunting things, maybe you are a manufacturer of releases for bow hunting and you’re like, hey, we just… uh

24:50
you know, we’re new onto the scene, just built this new thing, wanted to share it with the community. Yet again, no sales pitch or something like that. But building in public is super effective on Reddit. So that’s how you would do it. ah You know, I can see you cringing a little bit. That sounds suspicious to me. That sounds like some that sounds like something that is borderline ban material to me, at least. Yeah, it’s um so certain subreddits will not allow it whatsoever. OK.

25:17
I would say that is a very small portion of all total subreddits, but of course, read the rules first, go into your category subreddits and see if they just like, nobody ever does that, all right, that’s a problem. Or yeah, people mention brands all the time and they tell stories in here and whatnot. ah Having the account be from the founder’s perspective is more important than it just being from the company’s perspective, because then that definitely looks like promotion.

25:44
It’s more of like thought leadership. If we were on LinkedIn, it would be called thought leadership where the founders kind of sharing their story. Would you like not even mention your brand then? Like you spent all this time building up this 1000 karma account, which could be taken away in one fell swoop, which would right. Yep, absolutely. I think that’s a great way to do it. I mean, you can certainly I’ve seen people mention their brand. But yeah, you can make it mysterious at the end, like, hey, this was the problem we’re having. We built the solution.

26:11
happy to share it with any of you um if you are interested in learning more. And then at that point, if you go that route and people say yes, then you can tell the moderator like, hey, these people opted in to me sharing more information with them. That’s provable that people asked for it. So that is kind of how you protect it there. Okay, what are just some gotchas that’ll get you banned?

26:34
Yeah, mean, um sharing links not being helpful, sharing tracking links, for sure. uh Being promotional where you’re not allowed to be. uh Well, what are you allowed to be promotional? I mean, there’s no. Yeah. Yeah.

26:51
So some subreddits don’t care whatsoever. They don’t have a rule against promotion. So some of them you can totally be. There’s a couple of SaaS ones actually, and I’ve known a couple SaaS companies to grow that way. And everyone’s just sharing what they built and you’re totally allowed to be promotional. there are places where you can. Yeah, mean, promotion on the kind of other sides of things.

27:14
It’s a little bit trickier. is about storytelling. It is about being helpful and then hopefully people go check out your page and your solution. Here’s a question for you. There’s a million subreddits on Reddit, Is there a tool that will help you find all of the subreddits where you could potentially be marketing in? Yeah, absolutely. Subreddit Signals is definitely one of those. Oh, okay. Yeah, for sure. That’s a really good one. ah

27:41
Mochi Social is a great one for posting. Actually, it will identify the subreddit. It’s very similar to subreddit signals. um It will then um read the rules of the subreddit and help you draft posts that aren’t going to get you in trouble based on those rules. Yeah, we live in an incredible age, don’t we? mean, the fact that all these tools exist means it’s already gamified. You know what saying? Yeah, it’s uh

28:07
It’s yeah, there was definitely a period of time and probably when you were doing it, ah you know, it’s like pay per click ads, you know, reading like, uh for our work week where he talks about pay per click ads, you know, 20 years ago, it’s like, boy, those were the days. Yeah, actually, back in my day, there was really everyone was pretty much a human but like the promotional was very obvious, right? Like you the link or you’d say go here or whatever and then you get away with it a couple of times but yeah, totally.

28:37
All right, so this sounds like a lot of work, right? So using these tools and you’re posting for 15 minutes, what does 15 minutes get you a day? Like, yeah, I think that that gets you maybe, you know, assuming the TAM is large, I feel like you could do five really great comments if you’re focusing on comments. And we always like the ratio of like way less posts to comments. So like 20 comments for every post yet again,

29:05
Posts are inherently promotional. You’re waving your hand and saying, hey, this is me. Comments are helpful. So always do way more comments than posts. Yeah, I think that if it were me, like one post a week, try to do 20 comments a week and use some of these tools to make it real easy to do. And for all your big e-commerce listeners out there, this is a job for your social media person. Yeah, it’s not the CEO. The goal, though, is to get your brand mentioned, right? Yep.

29:35
So do you just, the problem is like there’s an investment to get started here and then there’s always in the back of your mind like this, that you could get banned. uh What’s a safe way to mention your brand? Yeah, absolutely. So I think that this is kind of where more of the non-branded strategy comes in. having super customers and super users of Reddit. um

30:01
that are already in those communities, go in and tell their story or provide some feedback on your product. ah Also non-branded strategy, just sharing information about your brand that’s actually accurate and truthful with no misrepresentations in relevant posts. I think that’s where you really pour gas on the of AI search side of things, because those are direct brand mentions. It’s also hopefully distributed across other accounts too, so there’s less account risk. So the first part you said, get other big Redditors, like how do you meet these people?

30:31
Oh, yeah. Excuse me. I meant from your customer list. trying to have them… list. Yeah. yeah, trying to get those testimonials. Yeah, like we talked about, it’s going to be a tiny fraction of your customers, but it should go a long way because if you do allow them to self-select as a super user of Reddit, which means they’re already in those communities, they’re trusted, which means their information and their say will go a longer way.

31:00
You know, one thing I totally forgot to ask you in the very beginning of this, Danny, is can you just give me some demonstrable impacts of doing this? Yeah, absolutely. So, um yeah, we had one protein bar company that was pretty small, seven-figure protein bar company, but they were going up against the eight-figure incumbent who had already just sold a nine-figure protein bar brand that probably everyone already knows. And ah yeah, the other company wasn’t doing much on Reddit, wasn’t doing much on AI search.

31:30
So we were, they had a really great niche, which is always important, know, protein bars for X, Y, and Z. So we were able to go in there, provide really helpful information. know, imagine you’re somebody that has like a gut issue that can only eat a certain type of things. you also like Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu or something, you know, like all of these things tied together. That’s a great niche. You know, going in there and providing really great information that’s mentioning the brand. They were getting customers directly from Reddit and then saw a huge upswing.

31:59
In AI search traffic some of our clients. We’ve seen 900 % increase in AI search traffic Recently using some of these tactics so it can have a big impact. What are you using to measure AI search visibility? Just what tools? Yeah a couple different tools out there AI peekaboo.com is one of them. Okay, those guys friends with the founders as well and full disclaimer have no financial relationship to them just good good dudes

32:28
Also, Peak AI is a really great one. the person I respect most in the industry who’s very technical likes that one. I think that’s probably a great one. Profound is a big name, although I think they probably just poured some VC gas money on it. So given that, like even the measurement methods for being visible in AI, I think are just kind of in its infancy right now.

32:55
And the fact that a lot of times they you might do your research on AI, but then do like a Google search for the brand. How is how are these sales being correlated? Yeah, a couple different ways. So I think the kind of most causal thing with Reddit um is having a post sales survey. So just how do you hear about us? Reddit being an answer. You know, not everyone’s going to answer that question, but that’s pretty causal about if you heard about us or AI. um

33:23
AI is a little bit tricky, a little bit trickier. There are these great tools out there. I think we can all acknowledge that the data is as bad as it’s ever gonna be today. And then tomorrow it’s gonna get better and better. So those tools will help you track traffic and mentions and referrals. ah So I think those are some of the kind of best methods on it. But yeah, we’re early on in the game. They’re only gonna get better from here. I guess from like an agency perspective, right? You have to show your customers.

33:51
that what you’re doing actually is leading to sales. And that’s why I’m asking you, how do you show to them that it’s worth the money? Yeah, it really is. ah It really is those two things. Post-sales survey, ah because there’s two different aspects of it, like the AI search optimization and Reddit. So does Reddit really matter? It’s like, oh yeah, post-sales survey, AI search optimization using a peak or peekaboo or profile on the other end of it. OK. Yeah, it seems like a hard

34:21
thing for you to, like a post-sales survey, maybe like one or 2 % might fill that out, right? So. Yeah, for sure. It definitely is. And, um you know, we are a sister agency of Visibility Labs, which is a Jeff Oxford brand. um So we do the full AI search optimization. So just speaking briefly about that, Reddit is one of four pillars. It’s the largest piece, but then you have uh content that AI loves to read in a format it likes, optimizations to the website.

34:51
And also brand mentions broadly across the internet are the highest correlation thing to AI recommended brand. So those other things are important too. And obviously if you’re doing those other channels too, you’re going to have other metrics to measure as well. But I just thought I’d mention that. All right. So I actually want to talk about how your agency operates. So let’s say I hire you and I want to build up my karma. I assume that you have a whole bunch of huge accounts.

35:19
that can quickly accelerate that? what’s your MO? Yeah, for sure. So we focus kind of on the non-branded strategy on our side of things for building up your karma. I’m going to give you the bad news that I think that needs to be done on your end genuinely and whatnot. And I just say this, I say this as a white hat person. Sure. Because

35:44
um If I use my network to help you, I call that influencing and that gets into FTC rules, which yet again, oh it’s all anonymous, but I actually do care about being on the correct side of those rules. um So that’s why we don’t do any of this web of upvoting or anything like that. We try to just genuinely build it by being helpful. Okay. So what is your service then? Like what do you provide?

36:12
Yeah, for sure. um We consult people and help them on the first party strategy, the branded strategy, getting them set up, getting them going those first 12 weeks. And then we also help them kind of pour gas on their brand awareness through a third party strategy using general use accounts, spreading factually accurate and truthful information with their brand name in it. So you are posting on the brand’s behalf? Oh, no, that’s on a non branded strategy. Sorry. So

36:40
uh Yeah, just sharing information in the comments on relevant posts that mentions their brand in a factually accurate way. Okay, right. So like, I would post with my brand and then you’d use your accounts to post comments on that, right? You know, uh we can do that. We also do it kind of more broadly across different topics that are not brand related. uh So just problem and solution, like the person with the gut issue looking for a protein bar for their ultra race coming up.

37:10
We’ll go in there and kind of bring the brand into that from a non-branded strategy. ah So yeah, we don’t usually interact with the brand’s posts yet again, that feels a little bit too much like influencing to me because we know it’s happening, but we’re just trying to help the other humans point them in the direction of the brand and then they can go find out more information about them. Give me an example of that because to me it all, like the line between influencing is very fine here, right? Yeah.

37:38
Yeah, absolutely. And this is obviously just my opinion. I’m not a lawyer. Yeah, of course. But yeah, I think that so yeah, what would be influencing um since Reddit is run off of karma, anything that influences karma, up voting and down voting is a no no to me because that is actually influencing the quality and the ranking and things like that. accounts will never up vote or down vote anything.

38:06
Nope, yeah, we are very much on the content side of things. So just providing helpful comments. Our goal is to provide helpful comments on things that spread accurate information about our clients brand and mention them. And then our comments are so helpful that the community upvotes us. We don’t need to do that. Other people can do that. So that’s our goal. Stay away from the actual influencing itself. uh If you were me,

38:33
And then, yeah, just focus on really great content that you don’t need to have focus other people will. Give me an example of an unbranded comment that one of your accounts would post that moves people towards the brand. Yeah, absolutely. it would, you know, as an example, we did have a foot foot bed or shoe bed company that was well known in the ultra running space. So going in there, somebody asking about

39:01
Yeah, maybe they have a plantar issue or they’re training for their next race and their sole bed didn’t work from their last shoe, but they do like the shoe itself. We would go in there and say like, hey, heard great things about X brand. They do X, Y, and Z, which is all- but you are mentioning the brand in that case, right? Yep, exactly. Yeah. All right. Yeah, sorry if there was confusion. We do mention the brand in those comments. We just try to share really helpful information. The goal is to be helpful first.

39:30
and mention the brand as part of being helpful, but not the other way around. Okay. Okay. All right. So that makes more sense. Okay. So you, you know a lot about the brand. You probably have a collection of testimonials. You know what information is relevant to that particular brand. And then you go around putting, putting comments strategically on all these various subreddits for people that have whatever issue the brand solves. Yep. Exactly. Okay. Yeah.

39:54
that side of things. then yeah, consulting and helping brands stand up their first party branded strategy, which is also important, but obviously kind of a longer time horizon. do you take a hold of the brands account also and post comments on their behalf to? We do not. And I, and for the main reason that Reddit gets very freaked out about username or

40:18
passwords being shared on different screens and IP addresses and stuff like that. That’s like a really quick way to get your account banned. So you can do it a couple times, you know, like share it with your social media person, but it really should live on like a couple people’s devices versus like, oh, it logged in from New York and now it’s in Tucson. Like what’s going on here? uh They are very suspicious of that. ah So yeah, we don’t want to jeopardize those accounts. So it’s best handled by a social media person that we can give a daily.

40:48
You know what’s funny about Reddit is like if you get one ban account, like every account that you own gets banned. At least that’s been my experience. Yeah, that’s why people put them on and we don’t do any of this. um But yeah, people with like networks of accounts on different devices, know, the IP addresses are all different. uh It’s a crazy world out there. Well, I’m trying to what I’m trying to say, Dan, sell me on this because it sounds like

41:15
it would give me paranoia because I’m putting, spent all this time building up this account that could in theory get banned in every account that I ever create by being overly promotional by accident even, right? Yeah, yeah. And that’s why I’m a, that could happen. That’s why I’m a bigger fan of non-branded strategy because you can get brand mentions in it. You’re distributing the risk across other accounts. Now this could just be your,

41:44
customers that are also super users of Reddit, you’re distributing that risk that is high trust. It’s factually accurate and truthful information. ah So that’s why I’m kind of a bigger fan of that. You’re distributing that risk and you’re getting good brand mentions out there. Yeah, it is tricky with uh the first party strategy. I guess why should anybody care? Reddit is still the largest single source of citations. There are strong partnerships in place. uh Buying trends are heading toward AI.

42:11
More and more people are trusting their AI companion to recommend brands to them ah So it’s gonna be a very small portion of your traffic today But I do think this is SEO 20 years ago and you want to get on the compounding train Yeah, even if it’s a little bit painful And then if you’re cuss if you don’t have any customers that have seasoned ready accounts What what can you do? Yeah, you can go out there. There’s platforms like crowd reply is one of them

42:39
that has a network of accounts that people do various things with. So there are networks of Reddit accounts out there that are non-branded. Yeah, I mean, I know I’m asking all these probing questions. And to be fair, my business is built upon all these social media platforms that I have no control over also. I guess the difference is with Reddit, in my opinion, is that Reddit is much quicker to the banhammer.

43:09
Yeah, absolutely. I definitely think they are, which to me, and this is the tough part, I think it’s a good thing because it’s gotten kind of overrun lately with um unsavory black hat actors and that needs to be cleaned up. Like you said, every social media platform is having that issue. I imagine they will overshoot it and then have to reverse back on how strict they are, like most platforms do.

43:33
But I uh think it’s a good thing. It kind of forces people to try to be good actors, try to be genuine on there. um But yeah, it is tricky. It kind of forces you to understand the ethos of the communities, which is important. yeah, a bit of a non-answer for you there, Steve. No, no, no. Again, I’m in my mind. I’m weighing in my mind, like, do I want to try this? You know, like if I post content on LinkedIn,

44:01
which is something you’ve mentioned and some I just started doing within like the last three months I post every day. Like there’s very little risk of all the work that I’m doing getting flushed down the drain. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, and that’s why I do love that. um Going back to your biz broker. I mean, that guy’s been doing it for years now. People love him. That’s just a great example of how to do it well. And he has told me that he’s run into some issues sometimes, but

44:29
he is such a staple of the community that like he’s able to reach out to the moderators and be like, oh, hey, somebody didn’t like this. And, you know, I got in trouble, like, what can I do? And they’re always being helpful. So I think being a staple of the community, yet again, being helpful, ah you know, to people out there is huge. Which brings me actually to my final question. Is there like a certain point where you have immunity? um I don’t think so. I heard that, um,

44:57
Paul McCartney, think, or no, since one of the Beatles, somebody went on there the other day and did like an AMA and got banned like accidentally. For an AMA? I think it was an accident, but like clearly there was like not immunity there somehow. I don’t know what happened, but I saw an article about that. um I imagine obviously relative to an account that has one karma, an account that has 100,000 karma is a lot better, but. um

45:23
Yeah, I think you kind of got to play it safe forever, especially in this age with bots just becoming incredibly human-like. All of these social media platforms are just cracking down. I I see it on LinkedIn all the time. They’ve banned multiple automation tools actually, and they’re founders. I’m not quite sure if you’ve seen that, but they’ve literally kicked the founders of these tools off the platform. So like I said before this, I’ve talked to other people who do Reddit. And so one of the strategies that I talked about is creating your own subreddit.

45:53
or taking over a dead subreddit. I mean, is that part of what you do also? Because then you have full immunity over whatever you want to do, right? Yeah, creating a good, your own subreddit can work. I’ve seen it work best um if the tribe is strong, if there’s active users in your category on there. And it also really helps if you also have a large customer base that you can just be like, hey, are you on Reddit as well?

46:20
we have our own subreddit. And yeah, that’s certainly where you can make those posts that we talked about in kind of a bit of a promotional way or sharing product updates without them getting banned. Because you’re the king of the castle there. Yeah. So is that like the ultimate goal? I know you a certain amount of karma to even put up a subreddit, right? But if you’re posting all this great content, why not have it be under your own subreddit? Yeah, you certainly can. Talk about a long game, though. So like your subreddit,

46:48
has one member in it to start and your whole tribe is over in the subreddit or subreddit with 500,000 members. That’s a long game, kind of getting them over to your side. I think it’s totally worth it if you’re willing to play that long game, but it is just, if karma is hard to build, convincing humans to come to your little nation state can be tricky as well. So you will, in order to convince those people, you will have to do things in their nation state in order to tell them about yours.

47:18
I guess the question is, is does it matter for LLM visibility? I would say it matters less than all other things on Reddit. you can more easily mention your brand in your own subreddit because you’re making the rules, but AI is looking for human signal.

47:41
So if there’s not many humans in your subreddit, like engaging on things or upvoting it, that’s less signal for AI. So even though you can mention your brand a lot, you’re still going to have to convince humans to come over to your island there. ah I would probably underweight it at the moment, but over time, it could be good. It’s just a very long game. I see. So you’re saying that in order to get mentioned, AI takes into account how lively the subreddit is.

48:09
um Yes, from what we see, and I’ll make the disclaimer that I don’t own an LLM and I have no knowledge of I know, it’s just what you see in the changes every day, of course. Yeah, for sure. The greatest black box of all time. ah But yeah, from what we see, that does appear to have an influence over it. And how would you rate this strategy versus just content creation for the sake of

48:34
Like there’s a lot of methods which we didn’t even get into, right? For getting mentioned the LLMs outside this Reddit strategy. Like how would you weight all of those? I would weight it at 20 % because that’s what it is. Well, I, yeah, I, and that’s a very broad answer. You know, for some, for some companies it’s much higher for some it’s 1%.

48:55
Yeah, we for a lot of our clients these days, we’re doing the full AI search optimization because yeah, their only outcome they want is to consistently be recommended on AI. So they need to be doing 100 % of things. But uh yeah, I would rate weight it as a heavy 20%. Let me ask the question in a different way. What are some great candidates for your service? Yeah, so um companies that have um a large TAN, Total Addressable Market, um

49:24
We’re US based. would say any consumer good is usually large, which is almost all e-commerce brands. I would say that almost all e-commerce brands fit this. And then a really good niche with passionate people is helpful because the passionate people will help you uh kind of build.

49:46
build on that momentum. Yet again, we’re trying to share content that the community lives up. So if there’s passionate people in your market and the TAM is large, it’s usually- Can we cite numbers to this? Like what is a good size community? Oh, usually a lot of the individual subreddits that are the best or, you know, at least kind of 10,000, 50,000 people, which is seems like a lot, but it’s not that.

50:14
large, you know, it’s not small on Reddit, but it’s also like nowhere near that big. I mean, the closest analogy that I can think of is like a Facebook group, right? A Facebook group with 100,000. I mean, I’ve had people in this podcast that build entire businesses off of just marketing on Facebook groups. see Reddit is kind of something similar. Maybe not exactly because the LLMs tie into it. But sounds like 10,000 isn’t that big actually.

50:38
Yeah, no, not that big. Yeah, I definitely like that Facebook metaphor. We have a client that’s in leather goods and they have like a Facebook group with 250,000 customers in it. And boy, talk about being a great opportunity to go on Facebook and say, hey, are any of y’all Reddit users? ah You they’re already active on social media, maybe 10 % or 5 % are. And oh, we have a subreddit now. Go like our page, you know, go join it.

51:05
Interesting. Yeah. So when you onboard someone, I imagine you have your own requirements too, because you obviously don’t want your clients to fail. What are your requirements to even work with somebody? Yeah. First and foremost, are they a good person? I like their like their work with you, Darian? So I mean, yeah, oh for sure. I made an exception once. ah Yeah, I there’s so much business out there that I do try to be picky. ah You know,

51:32
Bad clients are the worst and I’m sure they probably say the same thing about me sometimes, but a good fit is always the best. And then yeah, back to those other items. I was talking to somebody the other day, there was a super niche they were making. They had a new platform to help uh cosmetic chemists create new formulas. And I just told them flat out, we can’t help you that Tam is too small. There’s like two people on the platform talking about this.

52:00
I’m sure I could take your money, but we’re not going to have any outcomes for you. So something like that is probably the opposite of what we’re looking for. I see. So you basically look at Reddit and you figure out there’s a minimum number of clients in that audience, and that’s how you make the determination. Yep, exactly. Just like an SEO agency would look at search traffic for key phrases and all that jazz. Yeah, kind of reverse engineering it a bit. Okay.

52:25
Well, Danny, I apologize for grilling you. I’m very curious about this topic. like any question that comes to my head, but like if anyone needs help with their Reddit strategy, where can they find you? Yeah, thanks, Steve. Yeah, go to our website. It’s ready. R E D D I reach R E A C H ready reach dot com. I’m also very active on LinkedIn. You can find me at my handle is Daniel P Kirk. If you type in Danny Kirk ready reach also find me there. Shoot me a note. Always happy to offer my free advice. Cool.

52:55
And then based on the questions I’ve asked you, think anyone who does contact you is pre-qualified, I think at this point for listening to this episode. Absolutely, yeah. And if any of your listeners want that 12-week free cycle, kind of getting you onboarded on there, happy to give you my document for free. Yeah, I’ll link that up in the notes, just send me that link after. But thank you for coming on, Danny, I appreciate it. All right, thanks, Steve.

53:23
Hope you enjoyed this episode and let me know if you decide to give Reddit marketing a try, because I know for a fact that it works. For more information and resources, go over to mywifequaterjob.com slash episode 641. And once again, if you’re interested in starting your own eCommerce store, head on over to mywifequaterjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.