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How to Market Your Business On Reddit WITHOUT Getting Banned [Endless Customers Podcast Ep. 166]

At a Glance

Can you talk about your business on Reddit without getting banned?

Yes, but only if you earn it first. Reddit's moderators and karma system reward accounts with a real history of contributing value, and they quickly flag or remove anything that looks like promotion from a stranger. The way in is to spend time answering questions with no brand mention at all, then disclose your business openly once you've built enough credibility to be trusted rather than deleted.

Who this episode is for:

  • Content managers and marketing leaders who already publish strong answer-based content and are wondering where else it should show up
  • Business owners who keep hearing that Reddit shapes AI search results and want to know if it's worth the risk
  • Anyone who has watched a business get called out or banned on Reddit and wants to avoid making the same mistake

View the full transcription of this episode.

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This transcript has been generated by AI and not checked for accuracy. 

00;00;00;05 - 00;00;19;21
Bob Ruffolo
At this point, everybody knows. Aliens on Reddit showing up in over 40% of AI answers. So why isn't Reddit part of more marketing plans? Austin mock rant impacts content. For years now he coaches our clients on how to do theirs. We'll show you how to do it the right way without getting thrown out. How it fits into your workweek that's already full and what you get back when it works.

00;00;19;22 - 00;00;22;22
Bob Ruffolo
Let's dig into it.

00;00;22;24 - 00;00;41;11
Stephanie Baiocchi
You're listening to the Endless Customers podcast, brought to you by the team at impact. Endless customers is the proven system to become the most known and trusted brand in your market. If you want to learn the principles of endless customers and how you can implement them in your business, pick up a copy of Endless Customers, a national bestseller wherever books are sold.

00;00;41;13 - 00;01;03;01
Stephanie Baiocchi
Ready to start implementing endless customers in your business? Talk to impact about how our coaching program can help you implement endless customers to success. And if you want to experience endless customers in person, don't miss our upcoming event, Endless Customers Lied in Hartford, Connecticut, October 5th through the seventh, 2026. Registration is now open. And now on to the show.

00;01;03;03 - 00;01;05;15
Stephanie Baiocchi
Here's your host, Bob.

00;01;05;18 - 00;01;15;00
Bob Ruffolo
And welcome back to the Endless Customers podcast. I'm here with somebody that I am just incredibly, incredibly proud of. Austin Mack, endless customers. Coach, welcome to the show.

00;01;15;02 - 00;01;16;17
Austin Mock
Hey thanks five. Good to be here.

00;01;16;18 - 00;01;21;21
Bob Ruffolo
I say I'm incredibly proud of you, Austin. You've been here six years now.

00;01;21;23 - 00;01;23;09
Austin Mock
Almost five. Yeah. Almost five.

00;01;23;10 - 00;01;47;13
Bob Ruffolo
Only feels like a little longer. Okay, so five years. Austin started basically as a videographer role, assisting Alex for a lot of years. Then he was like, Bob, I want to be the content manager. And then you and I worked really hard to help you like take over impacts, content. You just phenomenal job. And then over the last year, you transitioned to working with our clients as an analyst customers coach.

00;01;47;13 - 00;01;48;29
Bob Ruffolo
So what a cool journey that's been.

00;01;49;01 - 00;02;04;03
Austin Mock
Yeah. No, it's been really cool to, you know, be a practitioner and doing the things to be able to move into that coaching role, to say like, hey, here's the things I did when I was doing these things that you're working on and kind of give that insight to. So it's been it's been a fun journey.

00;02;04;05 - 00;02;34;28
Bob Ruffolo
We're going to talk about Reddit today, but before we jump into Reddit, which we're going to get into. Tell me, like what you've been seeing, being like on one side, you are managing impacts content, and you have a CEO breathing down your neck who just like really tough on you all the time. And then then you're transitioning to now working where you're overseeing in a lot of ways, content for 15 different clients at a different time, coaching, training them, seeing what's working inside their businesses, working with Allison on a regular basis.

00;02;35;00 - 00;02;38;25
Bob Ruffolo
How what's changed for you going from one world to another world?

00;02;39;01 - 00;03;08;08
Austin Mock
Yeah, I think it's just seeing when you're in one thing and doing the work, you can kind of get caught in just what you know about one industry, one brand. But I think moving to working with a lot of different industries and brands, it's easier to spot some trends that are happening, see things that aren't working super well, that maybe we need to adjust across the board and just learning kind of that more general overall side of things, rather than focusing in and zeroing in on one thing.

00;03;08;11 - 00;03;33;04
Bob Ruffolo
That's very cool. Well, let's jump into our content today. Reddit is, I'm sure, a lot of people's minds in the endless customers community. When we talk a lot about AI visibility, we hear a lot of the same sources of what trains these models. Often you hear it's YouTube, you hear it's Wikipedia. But Reddit is always one of the things that comes up that trains the models.

00;03;33;04 - 00;03;57;20
Bob Ruffolo
And we don't really talk enough about how should the companies in this community, those are using endless customers principles. They ask you to answer principles as their main strategy for generating more customers. How does Reddit fit in? And let's before we even go into that, why is it so important to these large language models?

00;03;57;21 - 00;04;35;23
Austin Mock
Yeah, yeah, Reddit's been around for 20 plus years, and it's something that not a lot of people really were paying attention to, at least in the business world until recently. And so it's kind of confusing, like, why are we actually talking about something that is this strange meme culture place where people are sharing images and, and gifts and all that stuff, but because it is a community forum where people can talk about anything and everything under the sun, there is a subreddit or community there for every single type of person, in any industry, in any location with any problem.

00;04;35;23 - 00;04;52;11
Austin Mock
And so AI, as it's searching the web to find answers to people who are asking questions, it found Reddit and it was like, hey, this is a gold mine of real, honest answers here that people are giving to all these questions, and it's citing it a lot.

00;04;52;12 - 00;05;24;26
Bob Ruffolo
So okay, real honest questions. Let's just go there. It's right. Right before we had this, we started the episode today, you were talking about your college professors telling you, don't use Wikipedia. It's all community driven content. And there could be fake stuff on there could be promotional stuff on there. I don't know if that gets so much into the Wikipedia world, which, but there's a lot of similarities between the Wikipedia world and the Reddit world where you have this giant community, people that protect it and they care so much about it.

00;05;24;29 - 00;05;32;09
Bob Ruffolo
But talk to me about why this is a credible source that large language models use AI companies care about and are using.

00;05;32;10 - 00;06;02;25
Austin Mock
Yeah. So since right, it's been around for 20 years, it built that core community, like you said, that really cares about it and wants to protect it. And so going into that there's each community or subreddit has something called moderators that are just volunteers, but they care a lot. They do who are reading through every post and every comment that's coming through to make sure it doesn't break the culture and rules of that community and subreddit, and deleting anything that spammy or promotional.

00;06;02;28 - 00;06;26;04
Austin Mock
And so they're only letting you know the authentic, real, valuable information come through to be seen. And those those AI models and Google picked up on it. And there was a study that was done by SEMrush that showed that Reddit was actually the second most cited source within both ChatGPT and Google AI overviews.

00;06;26;05 - 00;06;26;19
Bob Ruffolo
Radial.

00;06;26;22 - 00;06;49;02
Austin Mock
Yeah, which is a big deal because your audience doesn't necessarily need to be a user of Reddit to see information either about your business or your industry or something you're answering there. They just need to use Google, which most people use, or even ChatGPT, which I would still say when people are kind of dipping their toes into the water of AI is one of the first places they're kind of going.

00;06;49;03 - 00;06;56;04
Austin Mock
So you're still hitting a big audience using Reddit, who may not be on Reddit, but it's coming through those other sources.

00;06;56;05 - 00;07;12;28
Bob Ruffolo
And, you know, one of the things we talked about the other day to and by the way, we have an expert exchange, shared impact. We do this every Monday afternoon, and different people around the company share what they're learning. What's working keeps us all sharp. And you did a whole training on Reddit for the team, which was really fascinating.

00;07;12;28 - 00;07;26;17
Bob Ruffolo
But we had an interesting conversation around the anonymous component of Reddit where users are posting behind these aliases. How do you think that affects the quality of the data that these large language models are using?

00;07;26;19 - 00;07;58;18
Austin Mock
Yeah, that's kind of an interesting place because you really don't know who's on the other end, because Reddit user names are generally kind of just anonymous, funny, made up names. That's part of their long standing culture. But then you don't know who's on the other end. Making this recommendation that Google is now citing as a fact. But within Reddit, Reddit has its own kind of rules of engagement and something called karma, which your account builds by sharing value in different communities.

00;07;58;18 - 00;08;17;07
Austin Mock
You're getting up votes from the community as well. And so as you're providing more and more and more value within Reddit, your karma goes up and more karma and more upvotes means your things are going to be better received. And so generally, you have a long standing history of not being spammy or scammy and that kind of thing.

00;08;17;08 - 00;08;34;17
Bob Ruffolo
Reliable source. Even though you're anonymous, you become a reliable source. And I know even like when I was planning my trip to Italy in June, how much I used Reddit to help with the planning of what we should do and all the tips and advice. I would basically just scrape the whole thing, put an AI, synthesize this information for me.

00;08;34;17 - 00;09;01;22
Bob Ruffolo
I trusted it and you know anyone has used Reddit and gets addicted to Reddit, realizes that there's just great information in there. Great. So so here we are. We are doing endless customers in our business. Let's say we are a accountant or roofer or a manufacturer. Is your recommendation that we just, you know, go there and post all of our they ask me answer articles in the platform or is that not the right way to do this?

00;09;01;23 - 00;09;21;02
Austin Mock
Definitely not. Definitely not. It's it's challenging because when you actually look into Reddit and see what kind of opportunity is there, your eyes get really wide as you see this gold mine of someone asking, you know who's the best accountant in Minneapolis, Minnesota? And you're like, let me say it's my business, but you don't want to do that.

00;09;21;03 - 00;09;39;28
Austin Mock
You don't want to just hop in there. If you're making those types of types of comments and recommendations as a new account, like I said, with karma, you have that visibility that the Reddit community sees. This is account that was just built, is immediately coming into one of these conversations to recommend a business and giving like very specific answers.

00;09;39;29 - 00;10;00;06
Austin Mock
This feels fishy, like marketing moderators will see that and delete you, or maybe even ban you from the Minneapolis, Minnesota subreddit, which you really needed. And now you can't get back into it to give actual value that wouldn't get banned. So you really need to learn the platform first and learn the communities within those platforms.

00;10;00;08 - 00;10;11;11
Bob Ruffolo
When you're talking about moderators too, I mean, there's bots, there's AI, there's automation. So so these moderators have a job to do, but they've set up these communities to almost self protect themselves to. So that's that's an important.

00;10;11;16 - 00;10;36;10
Austin Mock
Yeah. There are certain like hate speech or even links. Sometimes if it sees a link a bot will immediately take it down if it breaks one of the rules. Each subreddit has its own rules on the side of the page that you need to go and read and become familiar with. Some subreddits are fine with promotions, some absolutely hate it, and it's clear there in the rules that if you provide any kind of link within your posts, it's going to get removed.

00;10;36;10 - 00;11;06;24
Bob Ruffolo
So it sounds like step one, if I'm hearing this correct, outside of creating a profile without like a ridiculous name, because you're giving really advice to people that are looking for advice for business outside of that, your step one is to really build up your karma and really build that up the right way. Because the more your you have higher karma, the more the humans that are using this platform will believe what you're sharing, and the more AI will also trust you.

00;11;06;24 - 00;11;35;13
Bob Ruffolo
So don't go in there to your point. Guns firing with like read my blog, but just answer the questions that the users are asking in the most honest, transparent way based on probably eat principles. Your experience, your expertise, your authority, your trustworthiness. Back that up and and build up that karma. And then it gives you a little bit more permission to probably share content that you have.

00;11;35;17 - 00;11;36;23
Bob Ruffolo
Is that does that sound right?

00;11;36;24 - 00;11;54;28
Austin Mock
Yeah. Yeah. You nailed it right there. So after you create an account or you can even go on without creating an account to, to just kind of what they call lurk just looking around. Yeah. Find the subreddits that you think are going to be important for your industry or your geographic location and just read through those. Don't even comment yet.

00;11;54;29 - 00;12;21;11
Austin Mock
Just do one week, just looking, reading through, doing some searches, reading comments. Then the next week you can go in, do some interacting, some commenting without any brand mentions or any links yet. Just see how that goes. See what kind of responses get upvoted. See what gets down, voted, see what works well, and then after that you can slowly kind of start to bring in either brand mentions or comments.

00;12;21;11 - 00;12;42;11
Austin Mock
But even when you're doing that, you still have to be very careful and creative, providing most of the value within the text on Reddit itself and then saying like, hey, full disclosure, you know, I run this company here. We did a study where we did all this and this. Here's the article if you want to check it out at the very bottom of that post.

00;12;42;15 - 00;12;50;13
Austin Mock
Not just coming in hot with like, hey, check out this blog we wrote. Provide all the value within Reddit itself in text, then have your link at the bottom.

00;12;50;14 - 00;13;19;16
Bob Ruffolo
Makes sense. And that being very disclosing that you have this background builds trust, which goes to eat principles, which we often talk about when we talk about obviously for search and AI visibility, but applies here too, because people are still like, why should I trust you? You're coming with that. And if you're biased, say you're I might be a little bit biased, but I think I can still add value to this conversation or another perspective to this conversation.

00;13;19;18 - 00;13;21;17
Bob Ruffolo
I think users would respect that.

00;13;21;20 - 00;13;43;02
Austin Mock
Yeah, yeah. And one of the best to do it is one of our good friends Steve Sheinkopf at Appliance. And he's he does it really well where he comes in and he's not saying hi, I am the CEO owner of Yale Appliance located at X, y, Z. He literally just says, hey, I run an appliance store. And here's what I've seen about your specific question.

00;13;43;02 - 00;13;57;13
Austin Mock
You really don't need to do that. You can just do this. Boom. Actually, here's a list of the most, the least serviced appliances that we've seen in over 35,000 service calls. Check it out and then link that article.

00;13;57;14 - 00;14;14;19
Bob Ruffolo
Let me let me set the tone for people here too. Now if you've read the book Endless Customers, then you know the story. But if you have not read the book, this will probably be new to you. Steve is one of the people in this community that we have a long, long standing relationship he loves. They ask me, answer loves, endless customers.

00;14;14;19 - 00;14;43;28
Bob Ruffolo
He runs his entire business on that. Well, the original story with him that really put his they asked against the story on the map was kind of a marketing story in the map was he took that philosophy of if someone's asking a question, we have to answer it in our content publicly, transparently, honestly. And the most popular question he would get, because when people come to the store buying appliances, it's usually when a previous appliance broke.

00;14;43;29 - 00;15;03;27
Bob Ruffolo
They were so frustrated with it they didn't want to deal with broken appliances ever again. So people come in and say, what is your most reliable appliance like? Watch one will not break down. And of course, Steve had the data right because he also serves the clients, and he was in thousands of homes a year with his staff.

00;15;03;29 - 00;15;29;19
Bob Ruffolo
So this is this is unique. There's a reason why I'm telling this to connect back to it, to Reddit here. And he took the bold move to actually publish the data on his website of all the brands we sell and however many it was, you know, 20, 50 brands, whatever it was. And he ranked them from the one that he had the least service calls on all the way down to the one he had the most service calls on and its original data.

00;15;29;24 - 00;15;54;23
Bob Ruffolo
He still updates this every single year. And sure, there's a lot of brands that were pissed that are on the bottom of the list, but they couldn't say anything about it because it's data. It was the facts. He had the the data to back it up. He's just publishing it and or to help consumers. So that is a great example of a company that takes that so seriously, creating original data and be able to now use that to help people.

00;15;54;23 - 00;16;10;26
Bob Ruffolo
And then that's where you're going with this is taking that same data and other studies that he's doing. Other research, other numbers, other his experience, his authority to talk on this topic and brings the value to the community and the most honest and transparent way.

00;16;10;28 - 00;16;34;22
Austin Mock
Yeah, yeah. And that's one of the biggest things is the content is valuable. If you're going in and you're sharing a link to your home page or request a call with us, you should not be there yet. Do some more learning. Do a little bit more valuable content first. Reddit will not appreciate a, you know, request an appointment with us kind of link.

00;16;34;25 - 00;16;54;18
Austin Mock
Having that data, that valuable content is huge and actually plays in really well with endless customers because we have what we know as the big five. The five most common topics people are looking for when making a large purchase. And those are the questions that are most, most asks on Reddit as well. It's a goldmine for those questions.

00;16;54;18 - 00;17;20;10
Austin Mock
And if we're already doing, you know, endless customers, we're using the system. We have content that answers those questions already in our hands. And so even if we're not Steve, maybe we're a content manager, social media manager, marketing manager where we don't really know the technical technical side to be able to answer a question, we have that content where we've already talked to our SMEs and gotten that information.

00;17;20;10 - 00;17;30;29
Austin Mock
So if somebody asks, hey, how much does this cost? A marketing manager or content manager can go in and reuse information from the article to still answer that question.

00;17;31;02 - 00;17;47;23
Bob Ruffolo
You know, you're bringing up some some good things. I want to get back to the big five here in a second, because I could see definitely how problems and reviews and comparisons all fit into this. But there's something I was just thinking of to that that needs to be said. How many businesses have we worked with that went through the program?

00;17;47;23 - 00;18;08;24
Bob Ruffolo
And they're like, we're good, we're on our own. And then they stop learning new things. They keep doing the things they always did, and they're not getting the same results anymore. I think there's a lesson that we can learn here from Steve. He is a just one of the most incredible learners I've ever met in my life. And he just loves to learn and apply.

00;18;08;26 - 00;18;25;28
Bob Ruffolo
And he knows that, right? It's important we all know, right? We see the stats shows up anywhere you go to. Like where do you get your information from? It's like read it. It always placed right. So Steve is always like, well how do I do that? And he goes and he does it. And I don't know if he's going to get more sales than he already gets.

00;18;26;04 - 00;18;50;00
Bob Ruffolo
He's already the market leader in the Boston area of selling appliance. He's got five stores. He's got adding more stores. So maybe he can continue to expand that way. But there's such a moat around his business when it comes to SEO, AI, visibility, his brand like you think appliances in that area, you think of his store, but he's not resting on his laurels because he's never, ever going to let somebody beat him out.

00;18;50;01 - 00;19;17;02
Bob Ruffolo
And while he's already got the content game down in lockdown, I'm sure he's using AI and he's finding ways to get written content done faster, reallocate his time, and he is now doing these new things. And the lesson there is things are changing so fast, and it's the value of having a coach continues. Like showing you what things like what Steve's doing this and this is how it's working, and make sure that you're starting to do those things in your business.

00;19;17;08 - 00;19;35;24
Bob Ruffolo
You can't let off the gas at all here. And I think that's something we can't forget. And that's one of the again, Reddit Live companies are still not doing Reddit live. Companies gone through a program, not even touched Reddit. Such a massive opportunity. It might not get traffic from Reddit, but it's going to fuel your AI visibility.

00;19;35;27 - 00;19;55;04
Austin Mock
Yeah, absolutely. And with that point, he's in a place where, you know, he can put step on the gas. But then there are also some companies where this could be a little bit of a shiny object as well, because you look on Reddit and there is a lot of opportunity, but maybe they don't have gas in their tank yet to be stepping on the gas where you got to have your fundamentals down.

00;19;55;04 - 00;20;07;28
Austin Mock
Oh for sure, you don't have your processes down. And so that's part of what we're doing here too, with the endless customer system, is how do we build these processes in a way that gives you that time to then work on these kinds of things.

00;20;07;28 - 00;20;51;22
Bob Ruffolo
That's the most important part is, you know, I think the importance of a content manager in the age of AI, the more I continue to think about this, I think it gets even more important, not less. And this is not a job where you write three articles a week anymore. This is a job where you figure out, how do I make sure my email, my website, all of our articles, Reddit reviews, anywhere else that there could be literally written content on the internet is where they're we're we're doing it well at the highest level, and we're using AI to optimize our time, optimize our effort, and letting us go as far as we possibly can.

00;20;51;23 - 00;21;17;06
Bob Ruffolo
And again, Steve is the shining example that he's able to be everywhere as one person. He doesn't have anyone that's doing written confirm he's running this $150 million enterprise, and he's the main content manager, but he's optimized his time with the AI so much that he could be everywhere. And that's what you guys are helping our clients do is be further and do more.

00;21;17;10 - 00;21;35;07
Austin Mock
Yeah. And you bring something interesting enough with AI too. And it makes me want to kind of mention AI and Reddit. How can we use those things? Because I think a lot of people will jump to like, oh, I could use AI to just comment on all these posts. But Reddit is one of the most savvy communities for catching AI slop.

00;21;35;08 - 00;21;59;18
Austin Mock
I'm not saying what people are doing is AI slop, but if they catch any too many dashes, let me explain this to you in plain English. They have. Yeah, they catch one of those things. You could be done. And so you want to use AI in a way that's going to give you the time to use Reddit in an authentic way, the way I tell people if they want to use AI for a Reddit response.

00;21;59;21 - 00;22;18;07
Austin Mock
There's a prompt that I gave in a webinar this week which is going to be on our website. You can watch it for free and get the prompt there, but if you want to take the original question, you put it into AI. You take either your article link or if it's a video you have, you can take the transcript from YouTube and put that into AI as well.

00;22;18;09 - 00;22;42;20
Austin Mock
And then it'll have some like, here's what you should and shouldn't do. It's still going to spit something out that you should not put on Reddit. You should then read that, check it with the article, and then literally type out with your own fingers your response within to read it in a way that a real person within that subreddit would say something, because people are very good at catching AI, so there's ways to use it in this process.

00;22;42;20 - 00;22;46;18
Austin Mock
But do not ever just copy and paste what you're what you're getting from there.

00;22;46;19 - 00;23;15;14
Bob Ruffolo
Yeah. Now, I actually haven't looked into this. I'm not sure if you have any answers on this, so I might be putting you on the spot here. I know LinkedIn there rules around AI tools and connect them to the AI platform are so strict. And you can get banned from LinkedIn like that if you screw around. If you have somebody scraping LinkedIn content or automatically publishing for you, or I'm actually replying to your messages as so against our guidelines, you can get in trouble.

00;23;15;16 - 00;23;19;28
Bob Ruffolo
I have to imagine it's probably very similar based on their values of that community.

00;23;20;00 - 00;23;27;17
Austin Mock
Yeah, yeah. And I think they even have set up things within their website that won't let some AI tools come in to even browse on their own.

00;23;27;17 - 00;23;35;12
Bob Ruffolo
Yeah, because some, some AI platforms will train the model. But when you're a user and you're like, it's like I can't access, right?

00;23;35;16 - 00;23;53;20
Austin Mock
Yeah. I did ask cloud a while back. I was like, hey, can you find some good subreddits for x, y, z? And it was like, I can't actually get into Reddit, but here's a guess. And so it's one of those things where there may be some like super huge workaround that people could figure out, but just in general, it's just not the best use case for.

00;23;53;20 - 00;24;01;16
Bob Ruffolo
The Chrome. Could probably do some things, but you still have to be adhering to their guidelines and not pushing to the point where you get banned.

00;24;01;17 - 00;24;01;27
Austin Mock
Yeah.

00;24;01;28 - 00;24;25;27
Bob Ruffolo
Yeah yeah. Good weather advice would you have for people? Okay, so I think the most important thing I heard you say is like, get your foundations right, get a content manager in place, have the right content manager who is driven to figure things out, AI savvy and cares, right? Get the base foundation of your content in place. The core stuff that's answering the most important questions people are asked.

00;24;25;28 - 00;24;40;16
Bob Ruffolo
Get that pricing page right and then start stacking on top of that stack. On top of that, put things in place and make efficiencies here so you can go further here. And Reddit should be a spot that you should highly be considering once you get past the foundation. Do I say that right? Yeah.

00;24;40;17 - 00;25;00;04
Austin Mock
No, that that sounds absolutely right. Because your people from your service area looking for your exact offering are there answering questions. And I think one of the biggest things is, you know, one of our pillars is be more human than others in your space are willing to be. When a lot of people see that, like I said, their eyes get big.

00;25;00;05 - 00;25;27;20
Austin Mock
They jump in with a promotional link. But really, like, why did we get into this business in a first in the first place? Money is obviously always going to be a part of it, but we want to help people. We want to be a human, we want to be part of the community. And, you know, there's a value to just providing that information to people, to our customers and helping them in their life's journey outside of even, you know, just getting those brand mentions or people coming into our links.

00;25;27;20 - 00;25;42;02
Austin Mock
If you take that mindset in that approach, it's going to work out better for you than if you come in with kind of the hacks and in the spam and just trying to just get referenced right away. It's going to work better for you in the long run.

00;25;42;04 - 00;26;01;14
Bob Ruffolo
The answer to this question is going to be go to impacts website. Go hit that talk to Us button and fill it out and ask for me. Yeah Austin this is great. Today Reddit is again hot and a lot of minds. I think we just put a lot of things in perspective for people. You did such a great job in this episode.

00;26;01;16 - 00;26;19;24
Bob Ruffolo
You've been working with a handful of clients. I know you can take a few more. You've been doing an amazing job. Really, really proud of the work that you're doing. And if somebody is sitting here saying like, hey, Austin, like, I want to talk to you about our content program. I want you to help me get my foundation right, and then I want to build on top of that so I can be on Reddit.

00;26;19;24 - 00;26;22;24
Bob Ruffolo
I can be doing other things. How somebody get in touch with you.

00;26;22;25 - 00;26;27;23
Austin Mock
Yeah, well, thanks for saying that. I do appreciate that, Bob. It means it means a lot coming from you, if you're interested.

00;26;27;24 - 00;26;28;14
Bob Ruffolo
I mean, I did train.

00;26;28;14 - 00;26;32;24
Austin Mock
You, so that's true. That's true. I learned from the best. I learned from the best.

00;26;32;26 - 00;26;35;21
Bob Ruffolo
You're so driven, dude. I'm so proud of you. No idea.

00;26;35;22 - 00;26;54;11
Austin Mock
Yeah, I'll appreciate it. But, yeah, if you want to get in touch, I am on LinkedIn. Or you can come to our website and learn a little bit about our coaching program, what that actually looks like, and talk to us about it there. If you're just interested in what we're talking about today with the Reddit side of things, I do have a webinar on our webinars page that you know will be on demand.

00;26;54;12 - 00;27;06;08
Austin Mock
So all you have to do is fill out the form and you can get the recording. And that provides a little bit of the visual how to get set up and do some of this stuff. And it was a little more tactical on being able to see it, so I'd recommend that on the Reddit side.

00;27;06;09 - 00;27;08;14
Bob Ruffolo
Look at him. He's got a conversion path.

00;27;08;16 - 00;27;15;06
Austin Mock
Exactly. No, but yeah, feel free to reach out to us. I'd love to work with any kind of business on getting their content up to speed.

00;27;15;14 - 00;27;24;06
Bob Ruffolo
If you go to our Talk to Us page and you fill that out and you want to talk to Austin, request to talk to Austin, we'll make sure you connect. You guys, this is great today. Thank you so much bud.

00;27;24;07 - 00;27;25;29
Austin Mock
Thanks. Good to be here Bob I appreciate it.

00;27;25;29 - 00;27;32;05
Bob Ruffolo
All right. Let's spend another episode the Endless Customers podcast. Until next time. We'll see you at the next episode.

00;27;32;07 - 00;27;38;15
Stephanie Baiocchi
If you liked this episode, please take a minute to leave us a review. Thanks for checking out the Endless Customers podcast.

Reddit shows up in more than 40% of AI answers, making it one of the most influential sources shaping what people see when they ask AI for information. So why isn't Reddit part of more marketing plans? The answer isn't as simple as creating an account and sharing your best content.

Reddit has its own rules, moderators, and culture, and if you show up looking like you're there to promote your business, you'll probably get called out or banned.

In this episode, I sat down with Austin Mock, an Endless Customers Coach here at IMPACT. Austin went from videographer to managing our content and now spends his time coaching clients across industries. He's also spent the last several months digging into how businesses can use Reddit effectively without getting thrown out.

We talk about how to know when Reddit is worth your time, how to build credibility before promoting anything, and how to use the content you're already creating to become a more valuable contributor to the communities your buyers are already using.

Why AI trusts Reddit so much

Reddit has been building communities for more than 20 years, with volunteer moderators protecting the culture and rules of individual subreddits. That creates a huge collection of real people answering real questions, and AI platforms have taken notice.

A SEMrush study found Reddit was the second most cited source in both ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews. That means your audience doesn't necessarily need to use Reddit themselves to encounter information from it. They may see it through Google or ChatGPT instead.

The way in: Lurk, contribute, then disclose

Austin's advice is to resist the temptation to jump into Reddit with your best blog posts and links.

  1. Start by lurking. Spend about a week finding the subreddits relevant to your industry or location and reading the conversations, comments, and rules.
  2. Contribute without promoting. Start answering questions without mentioning your brand or linking to your website. Pay attention to what gets upvoted and how each community responds.
  3. Add your expertise and disclose. Once you've built some history and karma, you can start bringing in relevant brand knowledge. But the value needs to live in your Reddit response first. If you have a relevant resource, disclose your connection to the business and put the link at the bottom.

The goal isn't to figure out how to sneak your business into Reddit. It's to become a genuinely useful member of the community.

What gets you banned fast

Austin was blunt about what not to do: showing up with a link and no context, making a highly specific business recommendation from a brand-new account, or ignoring a subreddit's rules can make you look like a marketer immediately. Some communities even have bots that automatically remove posts or comments containing links.

We also talk about why The Big 5 are such a natural fit for Reddit. The questions people ask on Reddit often overlap with the questions buyers are already asking about problems, pricing, comparisons, and other major purchase decisions. If you've already created content answering those questions, you have a foundation you can draw from.

Steve Sheinkopf from Yale Appliance is a great example. Rather than simply promoting his business, he brings original data and firsthand expertise into conversations,  giving people genuinely useful information and then, when appropriate, pointing them toward the deeper resource. That's the kind of value-first approach that works on Reddit.

Don't let Reddit become another shiny object

There's an important caveat here: Reddit shouldn't come before your fundamentals.

If your content processes aren't working, you don't have the right content manager in place, or you haven't built the foundational content your buyers need, Reddit is probably not the next thing to pile onto your team's plate. Get the foundation right first, then use Reddit and other emerging opportunities to extend the reach of the work you're already doing.

How to use AI without getting caught

We also got into AI because Reddit may be one of the worst places to simply copy and paste an AI-generated response.

Austin recommends using AI to help with the research process. For example, analyzing a Reddit question alongside an article or video transcript you already have. But the final response should be written by a real person, in their own voice, and tailored to the specific community. Reddit users are particularly good at spotting AI-generated content, and one bad response can undermine the credibility you've worked to build.

Reddit isn't about finding a hack to get your company mentioned. It's about showing up, being useful, and earning the right to be part of the conversation.

Watch the full episode above or listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your podcast platform of choice.

Connect with Austin

Austin Mock has spent nearly five years at IMPACT, starting on the video team, moving into managing IMPACT's own content, and now coaching a roster of Endless Customers clients as an analyst and content strategist. He's the one who ran IMPACT's internal training on Reddit and has a webinar breaking down the exact prompt he uses to prep a Reddit response the right way.


Keep Learning

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Endless Customers is a podcast for business owners/leaders, marketers, creatives, and sales teams who want to build trust, attract the right buyers, and drive sustainable revenue growth. 

Produced by IMPACT, a sales and marketing training organization, we help companies implement The Endless Customers System by focusing on the right strategies and actions that build trust, educate buyers, and generate more leads.

Interested in sponsorship opportunities or joining us as a guest? Email brand@impactplus.com.

Facing a challenge in your sales and marketing? Schedule a free coaching session with one of our experts and take the step toward business growth.

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