5 Reasons to Create a Dedicated Subreddit

This is exactly how I made Reddit work for my company 👇

Reddit is one of the most influential digital channels these days. It influences LLM training data, and it ranks everywhere, including for most branded queries that directly impact your bottom line.

And yet, most businesses have no idea how to navigate this challenging channel to be able to influence the (mostly negative) narrative that exists on Reddit.

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The answer is straightforward, yet not too easy: You need your own channel (pretty much like you do on any influential channel, only here there is no better answer).

Getting a subreddit off the ground is hard work but it comes with so many benefits, it’s a great investment, if you do it right:

1. Control the context

One of the biggest challenges of Reddit is that you cannot just respond to a comment without fear that it will go dangerously wrong. Your account can be banned from an important subreddit, suspended from the whole Reddit, attacked by negative comments, etc. It is very hard to engage with relevant and important discussions on Reddit as a business entity.

If you have a well-established subreddit, you can:

• Invite your customers and brand ambassadors to participate and help

• Curate detailed reviews that are helpful and tell a well-balanced story

• Announce new features and milestones

• Showcase your trustworthiness by featuring your partners, sharing your awards, etc.

• Feature employees, etc.

It’s your space inside Reddit where you can (and should) be real while being able to balance the sentiment.

2. Make your own rules

All the subreddits have their own rules that you can clearly see in the sidebar.

And yet, once you start participating, you quickly find out there are more rules that are not immediately obvious. They may hate certain brands or certain terms. They may allow cross-posts or video posts, but posting either may get you penalized.

Some behaviors are acceptable on some subreddits and hated on others.

Navigating this is time-consuming, stressful, and risky (because you always risk losing your business account).

Creating your own subreddit means creating your own rules, not just official rules. You can be encouraging to newbies and helpful to anyone. You can ban hate speech or attacking other members. You can create a community around your brand that represents your brand’s style and voice.

3. Direct all the reviews to your own space

Here’s a big problem just about any brand experiences when trying to reply to negative or positive reviews on Reddit: It is next to impossible.

Brand’s replies can fuel fires even more. A branded account may be banned from the subreddit in an attempt to add a reply to someone discussing their brand.

So do all you can to direct all Reddit comments (positive and negative) to the space that you can control and where you can safely reply.

Again, don’t just allow positive reviews there. You need both. Negative reviews are already floating around. In your own subreddit, you can reply to them and turn that unhappy customer into a thankful member of your Reddit community.

4. Create a community

A brand-owned community is always the best asset you can think of.

Active communities keep your brand visible through any Google updates. Managing a community means growing your own brand ambassadors who will protect your brand name in other subreddits. It’s the word of mouth in its best form because it is also on Reddit (which ranks and impacts LLMs).

If there is one advice I give most of my clients, it is to invest in creating your own community. It takes time but that’s how business will survive any loss of traffic or visibility.

5. Own your branded search and long-tails

Reddit ranks for just about anything these days. Whether it is ever going to change, now is a good time to leverage that. Your community is likely to rank, so you can generate additional visibility and control your branded search better.

It is neither easy, nor fast. But if you do it right, it’s the best investment you can make! Reach out if you need help or guidelines (free!)