Learn how to build a Reddit brand strategy for AI search. Victory Umurhurhu explains how to navigate Reddit communities to boost visibility and build audience trust.

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Hello. My name is Victory, and I am the marketing consultant and founder at Contenticore. Today, I'll be talking to you about Reddit brand strategy for AI search. I'm going to be sharing three modes of brand engagement and how you, as a brand, can thrive and win on the platform.

Let's start with the trust gap. Right now, AI is creating more content than ever before. It's easier, it's faster, and it's easily available. But what your audience is looking for is not just more content. They are looking for, and they're asking the question, "Can I trust you? Can I trust your content?"

So visibility is no longer just about comments or just keywords. It's about trust. And humans trust humans. I had research where I found out that 90% of audiences are looking for branded authentic before actually purchasing from those brands.

And also, people are looking for real conversations from real people who have real lived experiences. And Reddit is one of those platforms where you can find those real conversations. 

Let's look at why now and examine the Reddit AI deals.

So Reddit has 166 million daily users as well as over 100k active communities. What this means is your audience is already engaging on the platform.

In 2024, Reddit closed some deals. They closed a Google AI deal worth over $60 million per annum. This actually made Reddit to be surfaced by Google in search engine results. They also had a partnership with OpenAI in 2024.

This made Reddit's API content be ingested and surfaced by ChatGPT.

I'm going to be sharing three modes of brand engagement and how you, as a brand, can thrive and win on the platform. 

The first one is what I call the insight-gathering mode. Like the name implies, you're actually gathering insights.

Build your insights list

One of the first ways to do that is by building your insight list. I strongly encourage my clients and whoever I work with that you have to have your insight list, and what this is, it's like your insight dashboard, where you're getting what is working for people who are already existing on the platform. So your goal here is to get 10 to 20 subreddit communities where you are going to be gathering your insight from. 

The first one is your particular industry. So go to the Reddit search bar, type your industry. For example, if you are a B2B SaaS brand, you could actually search for founders. You could search out for sales, products. Put those phrases and keywords in the search bar, and it's going to surface subreddit communities and subreddit groups for you. Take note of them and write them out on your list. 

Next, you could also do what I call checking out adjacent communities. For example, if you are payroll HR02, your adjacent communities could be freelancers, small businesses, advertisers, and all of that. 

Next, you could also check out your particular audience and the particular phrases they're using or other conversations they're having. So go on there, type it out in the search bar. 

You could also search for your competitors. What are your competitors doing? Look at their Reddit page and observe how they're going about it. 

Read the room

Secondly, when you're gathering insight, it's very important for you to read the room. Read what is being upvoted. Read what is being downvoted. Read what is being banned and read what is being blocked. By this, you're able to understand and see how you will not fall into the same trap, or you could also ace your content. 

Understand subreddit rules

On Reddit, you are not posting to the platform itself. You are posting to the subreddit group, and every subreddit group has its own ecosystem of itself. The rules or the activities that work in a particular subreddit group would not possibly work in another group because the norms and the rules are different. So it's very important that you understand the rules and take note of them. 

Observe subreddit activities

The next is to observe subreddit activities. Some subreddit groups have activities that they do. They have, for example, self-promo Sunday, fix it Friday. So your goal as a brand is to get to understand the particular intent of those activities and use those intents to align to those activities. 

Use the Reddit AI answers tools

Fifth, you could also use the Reddit AI answers tool. This is a tool that you could just go into as a Redditor, type your particular phrase, a question that you have, and what it does, it surfaces answers from Reddit itself, and it gives you the link to the sources that it got the conversation from, the sources, the AI overviews, the insight where it got it from. So take note of that. 

By doing all of these five steps you should already have 10 to 20 subreddit groups that you believe you could enter and engage in or you could get insight from. 

Secondly is what I call this contextual contribution. So you're basically contributing inside existing conversations.

The goal here is for you to build value first. Don't jump into the Reddit groups to go ahead to promote your brand yet. You are building credibility. People are trying to understand you, getting to know you. So it's very important that you contribute to these existing conversations because it's also going to help you to know how to play properly when it comes to the next step that I call the conversation catalyst.

Now you've actually gotten insights, now you've gotten context, and you're contributing to already existing conversations. The goal of the conversation catalyst is for you to now kick-start those conversations yourself, and this is where you are going to need the key copywriting tools, the AIDA (Attention-Interest-Desire-Action), the FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). These are the places you're going to need it.

So you could start with asking open-ended questions, questions like what, why, how, when. Those questions actually invite conversations and participation. Also, you could also do big numbers with a compelling hook. One of the biggest ways to actually get credibility and to get people to take action on what you're doing is by bringing out big numbers, and big numbers are the really key way to show credibility.

You could also do the Ask Me Anything sessions. This is very useful because a lot of celebrities get to do it, and brands who also get to engage in it find it very useful as well, because this time you're flipping the script. You're inviting your audience to come engage with you and ask you questions. So that boosts your brand as an expert in that area. 

So now that you have done all of these brand modes of engagement, what really happens is you have gotten insights from your audience. Right now, you know the phrases they use when they are looking out for particular things. So they looked at your industry. Right now, you know their pain points, you know their concerns, and you know what they are looking out for to be solved. So those insights help you.

Also, it helps you to get visibility. With all the brand deals that Reddit has closed with AI, it shows that there is even so much more to come. If your brand is not being ingested and surfaced by these AI Overviews, you might be lost from being considered in your audience joining. I also have a zero-to-scale checklist that I personally use.

You could also try it out to help support your Reddit brand strategy. I hope you found that helpful. Thank you so much, and happy to connect with you on LinkedIn or have a chat later.