If “we need to get on Reddit” hasn’t come up in a marketing meeting yet, give it a week.
Reddit has become one of the most-cited sources by LLMs like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Claude — and B2B marketers are scrambling to figure out what that means for their brand. In a recent episode of SaaS Half Full, host Lindsey Groepper sat down with Sam Perry, Director of Client Relations at PANBlast, to talk through why Reddit matters right now, and more importantly, how to actually do something about it.
Why the algorithm loves Reddit
It’s not complicated: LLMs favor authentic, user-generated content. Real people talking about real frustrations, asking real questions, and offering real recommendations. That’s why corporate marketing language and brand-polished messaging just don’t work on Reddit.
Reddit is where practitioners like developers, HR managers, IT admins, and finance teams get to have transparent conversations. And those communities are bigger than most marketers realize. For example, the r/sysadmin subreddit alone pulls 1 million weekly visitors. r/cybersecurity: 470,000. r/accounting: 424,000. r/humanresources: 117,000.
These subreddits are essentially direct lines to the audiences you’re selling to.
The part where it gets complicated
Here’s the thing you might not know when they say “get on Reddit”: You can’t just show up and start talking about your product. Reddit runs on karma, a reputation currency built through genuine participation over time. This is calculated by upvoting posts, leaving thoughtful comments, and contributing to conversations.
“You have to do it when there’s nothing in it for you, when there are no stakes at all.” — Sam Perry
Skip that step and post something even slightly promotional as a new account, and the mods will notice. Reddit’s moderators are volunteers who are fiercely protective of their communities. They will ban you, sometimes from multiple subreddits at once, with no customer service line to call.
What a Reddit strategy needs to look like
Sam’s recommendation isn’t complicated, but it does require patience:
- Find your people first. Lurk in the subreddits where your buyers hang out by title, vertical, or use case. Search for your brand, your competitors, your category.
- Start personal. Not comfortable with Reddit yet? Engage in communities around your own interests first. Get a feel for the culture before you go anywhere near a professional subreddit.
- Build karma with zero agenda. Upvote. Comment thoughtfully. Post something low-stakes. Even five minutes here and there adds up. That’s all it takes (for now).
- Earn the right to engage. Once you’ve built credibility, you can begin to engage professionally by sharing your perspective, offering to help via DM, and surfacing your company when it’s genuinely relevant.
PANBlast has seen this play out firsthand. A team member with solid karma was able to weigh in on a thread about B2B tech PR agencies — mentioning PANBlast by name, transparently — and that single post now drives referral traffic and surfaces in LLM search results.
You need to play the long game
Sam put it best.
“You don’t just walk to the house five houses down that you’ve never talked to and knock on their door and ask to borrow their cordless drill. You [have to] wave at them when you drive by, chat with them in their yard, …[and] build some relationship currency first.” — Sam Perry
The good news? Getting started is a lighter lift than it sounds. The bad news? There are no shortcuts.
Want to hear the full conversation? Listen to Sam Perry on SaaS Half Full.
And check out our blog on how to incorporate nontraditional media into your PR strategy.
Episode Transcript
This has been generated by AI and optimized by a human.
[00:00:00] Sam Perry: Reddit all of a sudden is now known as. The best place that your brand can be to get cited by a chat GPT or a Google AI overview, or a Claude.
[00:00:10] Sam Perry: And so naturally people are now asking the question, how do we get talked about in this space? What are the rules of engagement in this space? people want that advice. we’re starting to have those conversations with clients and obviously that’s why we’re talking today.
[00:00:26] Lindsey Groepper: Hi, welcome back to SaaS Half Full, the only show serving B2B SaaS marketers. I’m Lindsey Groepper, EVP at PANBlast, and I will be both your host and bartender today. I had a great conversation with my friend and colleague, Sam Perry, who is a director at PANBlast. And Sam and I are talking all things Reddit.
[00:00:46] I know y’all have been talking about Reddit in literally every marketing meeting, how it’s affecting AI visibility. How can you begin to have a presence on Reddit and spoiler, it’s not as easy as you think unless you have something called Karma. So if you care to pour yourself a drink and join me as I speak with Sam about all things Reddit.
[00:01:07] Lindsey Groepper: Hey Sam. Welcome to SaaS Half Full.
[00:01:10] Sam Perry: Hey Lindsey, thanks for having me. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation.
[00:01:13] Lindsey Groepper: I am pumped. I got to talk to Jake from our team a couple of weeks ago, and when I came up with the idea of we gotta talk about Reddit, literally like four people from our team, I said, well, you gotta talk to Sam. You gotta have Sam on. And like, who knew? So I’m excited to talk to you today. Reddit, for those of you listening is, is not a new term.
[00:01:32] Lindsey Groepper: Sam and I were just talking before we hit record that we don’t have to go into what is. Reddit, let’s hope. If you don’t know what Reddit is, I feel like you need to be listening to some other podcasts, uh, to get yourself going. But, definitely a topic that we need to talk about. We’ll probably pass due with it.
[00:01:49] Lindsey Groepper: but before we get into the Reddit factor, want to give our, um, listener, Sam, a little bit about you. what I appreciate already is that it is 11:00 AM on a Wednesday, I poured myself a screwdriver and I wasn’t sure if you were gonna join me for a drink. But you have a full glass of something.
[00:02:08] Sam Perry: I do cheers. I went with,some would call it the whiskey ginger, the Kentucky Mule. Others may know it by ginger ale. Bourbon generous, squeeze of a lime wedge. refreshing and I think good for good on the throat for a, a long conversation like we’re prepared to
[00:02:22] Lindsey Groepper: Absolutely. Well, cheers. Thanks for staying through the process.
[00:02:27] Sam Perry: Cheers. Lindsey. I’m, you know, I, I had to, I had to follow through ’cause it is SaaS Half Full after all.
[00:02:33] Lindsey Groepper: I know Jake almost did not, and then he caved at the last minute. So I guess I have that effect on people. But you know, I have drank alone on this show many a time. I was prepared to do it today, but this will set you up for a great Wednesday.
[00:02:48] Lindsey Groepper: Okay, Sam, tell us a little bit about you, what your history is as a marketer, and then what your role is currently at PANBlast.
[00:02:54] Lindsey Groepper: And then lastly, on top of that, why you wanna talk about Reddit.
[00:02:58] Sam Perry: Yeah, sure. well, again, really happy to be here. I am a director of client Relations here at PANBlast. And, I’ve been with the agency for a little over five years, but before that, for about 20 years of my career, I was in a variety of marketing and communications roles, but primarily on the in-house side.
[00:03:16] Sam Perry: So, in late 2020, I, I made the jump to the agency world and,I now get to talk about and help lots of different brands, not. Not just one brand at a time. And, and I love it. And, and why me for Reddit? Yeah. folks, I talk about Reddit a lot. I talk about things that I’ve seen that, that I thought were fun and, and things that I share with, with the team.
[00:03:36] Sam Perry: And I don’t know, I guess I’ve, you could argue, I might’ve even been linked to the Reddit game. I, but I’ve probably been a, a redditor for 10 years. I love all my fun little communities like the Gibson Guitar Community and the Lord of the Rings community. I’ve got my calendar back there and my eighties music and my nineties grunge communities, and, and then a little bit later got, more engaged in things like the marketing community and the public relations community and places like that where I can engage and have some professional conversations as well.
[00:04:04] Lindsey Groepper: There is indeed a subreddit for pretty much everything and anything so. You mentioned you were feeling a little bit late to the game and you’ve been a redditer for redditer. That’s what we’re saying. A redditer for, for 10 years. So Reddit is not new. Reddit’s been around. It’s always been a community of people talking to people.
[00:04:24] Lindsey Groepper: However, my goodness is Reddit having a moment right now in the age of AI search. It is literally talked about in almost every prospect call that I have. our clients are asking us about it in terms of how can we support, how can we leverage it? so talk to us, Sam, in your opinion, about why Reddit has become so popular here in the last 12 months.
[00:04:47] Sam Perry: Yeah, well, you hit the nail on the head, Lindsey, and it really is all about ai. Search, Google AI overviews ChatGPT search, you name it, and look. B2B conversations were happening on Reddit. Two years ago, and five years ago, and 10 years ago. But you know, I think we would both agree that clients weren’t asking us about this as a channel for their marketing efforts until a year ago when we all learned that Reddit had become.
[00:05:14] Sam Perry: One of, and some even measured as the top cited website by LLMs, like ChatGPT and Claude and Perplexity and so forth. Now we are seeing new rankings come out frequently. I saw a couple months ago that in one measurement, YouTube had slightly eclipsed Reddit. Who knows what we’ll be saying six months from now.
[00:05:37] Sam Perry: But you know, we could have a whole separate conversation about YouTube because that’s probably another channel that B2B marketers are not taking as much advantage of as they need to. But Reddit all of a sudden is now known as. The best place that your brand can be to get cited by a chat GPT or a Google AI overview, or a Claude.
[00:05:58] Sam Perry: And so naturally people are now asking the question, how do we get talked about in this space? What are the rules of engagement in this space? and, people want that advice. we’re starting to have those conversations with clients and obviously that’s why we’re talking today.
[00:06:13] Lindsey Groepper: Yeah.
[00:06:14] Lindsey Groepper: and why are LLMs saying Reddit is so authoritative and what are they. Pulling is this, are they pulling just contextually relevant threads? Are they threads with a lot of comments? I might not even using this the right language, but why Reddit and what type of posts are they pulling?
[00:06:32] Sam Perry: Yeah, good question. I think the biggest reason why. Is because it’s, it’s it’s authentic user-generated content. These are the places where actual practitioners, whether it’s people who work it help desks, or whether it’s developers, or whether it’s content marketers or people who work in banking or picket.
[00:06:54] Sam Perry: They are having the actual conversations about frustrations they’re having, issues they’re having with vendors. my, uh, annoyance of the week thread, a shout out for something that their company did really well or something that they’re proud of, and people are replying and upvoting and engaging, and it is just true, genuine, authentic conversation.
[00:07:16] Sam Perry: And. The LLMs favor that, and they tend to disfavor, if that’s a term, more of that promotional marketing content. you know, you’re not seeing chat GPT pull in, information from companies ad campaigns, let’s say, but you are seeing them pull in citations from Reddit and YouTube and LinkedIn and, and those, and, and those user generated content places.
[00:07:41] Sam Perry: I do think it’s fair to say that they’re prioritizing conversations that are richer and deeper and have more engagement and more replies. Yes, you’re gonna occasionally see a post that. Doesn’t really get any engagement and two people up vote it and nobody replies. And that is not, that’s not content rich in a way that, chat GBT really cares about it.
[00:08:01] Sam Perry: So it is gonna be a, you know, somewhat, conversations that have, have a higher level of engagement that are getting pulled in. The other part of it is that, Google has a licensing agreement with Chad GBT for example. With open ai. So they have like, it’s not just an unofficial relationship where Google is scraping that data to use their official partners.
[00:08:23] Sam Perry: And, and, and Reddit is licensing their information,back to, Google and open AI for their AI overviews and, and AI search. So that has made Reddit an even more powerful source for those two, those tools to pull from.
[00:08:38] Lindsey Groepper: Yeah. And I, I mean, I find myself using the referenced Reddit threads in my own search history. I literally just did it. I was ordering from an online pharmacy that I’d never ordered before, and the first thing I did was right. Go go in and search and say, you know, is this, online pharmacy legit?
[00:08:55] Lindsey Groepper: That’s what I wrote. And there, I mean, there were so many Reddit threads asking the same exact question and responses and. There was not a single one that said, no, it is not. They all said, yes, I ordered this. Yes, here’s my, you know, I ordered it. This is when I arrived. Loved it. I, I’ve been using it for years, whatever.
[00:09:11] Lindsey Groepper: so that to me was in my mind, real people who had the same question and real people who were answering that had experience. It was all about it. And for me, that was like, I was like, okay, I trust it. All these people are saying the same thing. so I experienced that myself on the, from the Google side of it.
[00:09:27] Lindsey Groepper: I think one of the. The next steps then is so marketers say, yeah, yeah, Casey, we get it. We all need to be on Reddit. But I think this is where marketers run into a problem where it’s like, okay, let’s get on Reddit, right? This is different than joining another platform. Or like, you know, let’s start contributing LinkedIn content.
[00:09:51] Lindsey Groepper: Get on Reddit is not what you think it is.
[00:09:54] Lindsey Groepper: So talk to us about. If you do not have a presence on Reddit, if you have found out that none of your employees or spokespeople or senior level executives are on Reddit, why? What’s that process and why is it not just an easy life? Let’s get on Reddit. Let’s join Reddit.
[00:10:14] Sam Perry: Yeah. I think the thing to remember about Reddit is that because the conversations are so genuine and authentic, you cannot just jump into a community and, and, and try to start. Essentially selling something. you are, as an account with, with no history, no credibility. What, what Reddit calls.
[00:10:33] Sam Perry: Karma is essentially a reputation currency, and you build karma by being a good member of a community upvoting posts that you think are interesting, replying to things with a thoughtful comment, maybe creating your own posts, posing a question. Sharing a gripe, whatever, but you’re, you’re doing something that is just, you’re just trying to be a good participant of the community and create some interesting conversation, and this is what’s key.
[00:11:02] Sam Perry: You have to do it when there’s nothing in it for you, when there’s no stakes at all, because. If you create enough karma and credibility as a sort of member of the community or what we would call a subreddit, a member of the subreddit in good standing, then you can have an opportunity when an opportunity presents itself that you might say to someone, oh, I see you posted about this challenge, or that you’re looking to find a solution.
[00:11:31] Sam Perry: I am in this capacity at this company and I might be able to help you. Maybe, you know, send me a, a, a DM if you want to talk. You know, that would be a good way that you could engage. And you’re just extending a hand to say, I think I could help you. And if that person looks at your history and says, oh, this person’s been around for a while, I can see they’ve contributed on a bunch of threads.
[00:11:53] Sam Perry: They’re not, they’ve never been salesy about anything. They’re just trying to be helpful or trying to be thoughtful. They are not going to perceive that,in a negative way. You’re not gonna get banned for something like that by a moderator, which I will call a mod or the mods. Who control these communities.
[00:12:11] Sam Perry: If you are a member in good standing who has participated when there was nothing in it for you, but it takes some time to build that up, and you can do it on subreddits that are of personal interest to you. You can do it on subreddits that are of professional interest to you or both. But if you just create your account today and try to jump in there and say, who’s looking for a solution for X, Y, Z, I’ve got one for you.
[00:12:37] Sam Perry: That’s just not gonna
[00:12:38] Lindsey Groepper: Mm-hmm. Or I guess if you, yeah, go in and start replying to a bunch of threads where you’re offering up. Like the same comment saying, oh, we can help, or we do this. And you’re doing that across, you know, across all these different subreddits, seeing as like spam. So the karma is a score that’s detach to every user.
[00:13:02] Sam Perry: Yeah.
[00:13:04] Lindsey Groepper: And who is giving you karma?
[00:13:07] Sam Perry: The platform gives it to you automatically by virtue of your activity. So the more you upvote posts, the more you reply to posts, the more your replies or your own posts get engaged with or get upvoted. The more karma that you are building over time and some communities, uh, in both professional, subreddits as well as just fund subreddits will have guidelines in terms of how much karma or how long your account has to have existed in order to post.
[00:13:39] Sam Perry: They don’t all have those guidelines. It’s gonna vary from subreddit to subreddit, and I think that’s an important thing to note that you know, anything we talk about today. there’s no one universal guide for the best way to engage as a brand on Reddit, because the guidelines do vary from one community to the next.
[00:14:00] Sam Perry: Some are gonna be very explicit to say vendors are welcome if. Engagements are not promotional. others aren’t gonna say anything about that at all. Others are gonna say, vendors welcome if disclosed. And that could mean that to participate in that community, you need to put in your profile. Yeah, I’m the chief marketing officer at a tech company that provides X, Y, Z types of solutions.
[00:14:22] Sam Perry: Other communities don’t care, but they would like, or they want you to disclose it when you post, but it doesn’t have to be in your profile. It’s not as complex as it sounds. The variations from one subreddit to the next are not going to be massive, but you do need to pay attention to the community rules because it’s playing by the community rules that are gonna allow you to build up that karma, that credibility, which opens doors for you down the road.
[00:14:48] Lindsey Groepper: And this is always a brand, or excuse me, individual human being. There’s not like brand accounts.
[00:14:54] Sam Perry: Yeah, I mean there are brand accounts and you typically would see advertising under brand accounts, but the strong, strong recommendation is that you need to be a person. you could be, Sam Perry, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. I could be Sam Perry at, you know, Sam Perry from, or Sam from PANBlast, or I could put in my profile that I’m with an agency.
[00:15:19] Sam Perry: you can choose how forward you want to be with the fact that you’re a, you know that you’re representing a company in the name of your handle. You can choose whether or not you want to do that. but yes, you should be posting as a person. Not as a brand. Now, if you want to have a different Reddit account for your, your personal fund communities that you’re engaged in, from your professional ones, totally up to you, you can do that.
[00:15:43] Sam Perry: But certainly don’t go and upvote each other’s posts or anything like that. If you ever get caught doing that, the mods are absolutely gonna ban you.
[00:15:52] Lindsey Groepper: Yeah. I wanna move on to the, the mods and some of the red flags they look for. But last question on karma. What is like a good Karma score? Acceptable karma score? Who had like, and then what’s like the pinnacle? Like who are the, you know, best redditors out there?
[00:16:07] Sam Perry: Yeah. I wish I could answer that question for you, Lindsey, but the reality is it does vary. I can tell you that the one bad Karma score is, is to have zero. so you know, you gotta start somewhere and you will start to build it up fairly quickly if you can just get engaged in some commun.
[00:16:22] Sam Perry: Again, in a, in a, in a genuine and, and non-promotional way. but there isn’t necessarily one one right answer. You know, in some of the bigger communities, your top 1% posters have 10. They could have tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of karma. but look, I’ve posted in communities where I, you know, I, at some point, maybe I only had a thousand Karma or something like that, and I mean, it was fine.
[00:16:45] Sam Perry: My post showed up, people engaged with me. there was no obstacle there. it is just gonna vary from one community to, to the other. I guess if I had to put a number. I would probably not push my luck and try to, to be promotional or, or offer assistance on a specific solution or something like that by, by offering that I could help if I didn’t have at least a couple hundred Karma.
[00:17:06] Sam Perry: And it wouldn’t take that long to build that up. You know, up votes and posts, reply to some posts, you know, create a post that doesn’t, that’s low stakes. There’s nothing in it for you or your company. You could build up that amount of karma relatively quickly.
[00:17:18] Lindsey Groepper: Okay, that’s helpful.
[00:17:19] Lindsey Groepper: so if a brand wants to get started, it has to start with identifying, number one, why, I guess, why, why would a brand want to get started on Reddit? Let’s talk about that. I mean, there’s, we talked about AI visibility, but like. But specifically like what are we trying to optimize for?
[00:17:40] Lindsey Groepper: You know, what do we wanna be a part of? So like identifying the why, but then you have to identify the who within the org. And what are some of your suggestions on like how to get the who on board? because this requires a person. You or me or someone else going in and personally, not anyone ghost writing on my behalf, but personally going in and interacting.
[00:17:58] Lindsey Groepper: So what are some thoughts around like how to actually do that and identify the people?
[00:18:04] Sam Perry: Sure. I do wanna call, before I answer that question, because we’ve talked so much about these communities, but for listeners who may not be as familiar with some of those B2B communities, I did pull a few numbers that I wanted to share on what I thought was a pretty representative mix of just five or six major subreddits that people who are in B2B Tech might be interested in.
[00:18:26] Sam Perry: And I’m gonna read these so I didn’t have to memorize them. But the biggest one I found was the subreddit. That’s called CIS admin, and this is all things it, IT operations and related. This subreddit has 1 million weekly visitors. That’s not even the total membership of the subreddit, but just people that are active in a weekly basis.
[00:18:47] Sam Perry: The subreddit for cybersecurity has 470,000. The subreddit for accounting. Now, who would’ve thought accounting and Reddit? It has 433,000 weekly visitors. Human resources, all things workforce management, labor and employment, you name it. Benefits administration, 314,000 weekly visitors. So for all of our listeners out there who sell into these and other types of verticals.
[00:19:14] Sam Perry: Reddit is where you need to be. If we hadn’t already convinced you of that, hopefully some of those numbers would. Now you get to the who. So I hope that all of our listeners will, if they don’t already have a a Reddit account, we’ll just go create one today. Right? But in the long term play, where I would probably start is just talking to my team to say, look, I really want us to figure out how we can leverage this.
[00:19:39] Sam Perry: Who here loves Reddit, who is already engaged and there’s got to be someone, if not more than one person, and if that individual will be willing to sort of, be the Guinea pig if they’re not already engaged in a professional. Manner that you just weren’t even aware of because they just enjoy talking to people in that community.
[00:20:01] Sam Perry: see if someone can kind of step up and be willing to say, look, I could dedicate a a half an hour to this a week. checking out the communities that are. Are the verticals that we sell to or that are the disciplines of our decision makers. So that could be, look, there’s a CMO community, there’s a FinTech community.
[00:20:18] Sam Perry: There are multiple styles of marketing communities, from the big marketing to marketing automation to digital marketing, and just. Keep going on from there. So whether it’s a community where your ICP lives by title, or a community where they live by virtue of who they sell to or, or the sector that they’re in, you’ve got a lot of options.
[00:20:39] Sam Perry: So become members of that community. There’s no barrier to joining. And l lurk for a while. get a sense for the vibe of the community. See what kinds of things people are posting about. Look at sort by the top post for this week or this month, or look at what’s hot, what’s rising.
[00:20:55] Sam Perry: There’s a, a bunch of different ways you can filter or search for your brand. Search for your competitors, search for the use case. See what people are saying about these terms in these companies, and then start to report back. this is even pre-engagement. Just sort of the market intelligence opportunity that’s there in Reddit, not unlike your example of when you went to go find some information about an online pharmacy, right?
[00:21:17] Sam Perry: You weren’t looking to engage as much as you were looking to get information. Anybody can do this right now, and maybe a good place to start is by finding somebody who’s already active on Reddit and already familiar, and if no one is, then. Let’s just get somebody to volunteer and say, great. Let’s listen to this podcast from Sam and Lindsey.
[00:21:36] Sam Perry: It’s a good starting point. There’s a million other resources out there that you can look at about where to engage and how to sort of play by the play, by the rules and build up some karma. But let’s see what we can learn about these communities and what our buyers are talking about. And then let’s see.
[00:21:50] Sam Perry: Let’s look for some opportunities to engage and start to become a good member of that community so that when an opportunity comes along where someone says, Hey, I work in banking and we are trying to find a solution to do X, Y, Z, or We’re not happy with the one that we’re currently using, which is this one, what do y’all think about it?
[00:22:07] Sam Perry: You could reach out and say, well, hey, I actually work for so-and-so and I’d be happy to give you some information. Why don’t you DM me? That’s a perfectly fine, action you could take once you’ve built up some credibility in the community.
[00:22:20] Lindsey Groepper: Yeah. And, and what you’re saying to get started is a pretty light lift. You’re saying spend 30 minutes a week and learn. Lurk around, just do some research. Thumbs up, what do you, they’re not thumbs up, what is it? Whatever
[00:22:30] Sam Perry: Up vote.
[00:22:31] Lindsey Groepper: up. Upvote a few posts. and start that way without having to, to take the step of actually like posting or commenting.
[00:22:38] Lindsey Groepper: And we saw this out to, we had a member of our team. who has, built up karma and there was a literally, I mean, there was a post that was a, a perfect opportunity to surface, like our agency. It was talking about B2B Tech, PR agencies. And, because he built up Karma, he was able to weigh in with some thoughts, but he said, Hey.
[00:23:00] Lindsey Groepper: You know, hi, I’m from PANBlast, weighing in with an agency perspective and now like that post has indexed and is surfacing for us on the LLMs. And then I also just saw that that particular, Reddit post is in our like top 50 traffic refers also to our site in that one post. Now I think he was able to do it because right.
[00:23:23] Lindsey Groepper: He had accumulated some karma. but we saw that play out in real life with us as well. We’re like, I don’t have enough built up. If I went in there and said that I would likely get, I don’t know. Let’s talk about this flagged. Band slapped on the wrist, smacked in the face. What am I, what’s happening within this community?
[00:23:40] Lindsey Groepper: What are the red flags? And then like, what are the consequences?
[00:23:43] Sam Perry: Yeah. And I think your example is a really good one, and my example was a little bit le leaned a little bit more into like getting a sales lead, but having it be visible and that it could be talked about. And I think your example is great because. you’re showing how an en an engagement in a, in a community conversation has led to these positive, traffic referrals and so forth.
[00:24:02] Sam Perry: Which is, which is exactly what you wanna see. The, the whole idea here isn’t really about, can I get one more sales lead a month? But it’s, can I. Engage in a way that that gets people talking about the brand, because that’s, that’s where you’re gonna start to see that referral. But sometimes it is that door opening of somebody looking for a solution that gives you the opportunity to have that conversation.
[00:24:22] Sam Perry: To your question about red flags and, and the mods. I would say that, a, a big red flag is a no, or low karma or low history, redditer. So jumping in with, with something, that seems promotional when you’ve got no credibility or history in the community, or maybe even on Reddit at all,is a big red flag.
[00:24:44] Sam Perry: Any violation of just that subreddits actual community guidelines because they could have a guideline against doing this or that or, or something along those lines. Big red flag, any super overt marketing, promotional, corporate-y jargony type language, red flag. People on Reddit talk extremely casually.
[00:25:02] Sam Perry: Acronyms, T LDRs at the end of a longer post. Things along those lines. I mean, I’m not saying necessarily sloppy, like no capitalization and never bothering to use a period anywhere, but it’s a pretty casual place. certainly less so than someplace like LinkedIn. So that kind of formal corporate marketing jargon is just not gonna fly.
[00:25:23] Sam Perry: The mods are volunteers. They don’t work for Reddit. They have. great intolerance for violations of their community guidelines, and they are very protective of their communities and wanting it to be a place where people can interact in a genuine way and get real information, and vent, and get real answers to their questions from other like-minded.
[00:25:49] Sam Perry: Folks, and they will ban people quick. If they, you know, you might get a warning, you might not, but they will ban you quick if you have made a, a, an egregious violation of the community guidelines and they can ban you from more than one subreddit at a time. And there’s, you don’t really have much recourse.
[00:26:08] Sam Perry: Nobody, you’re not gonna call Reddit customer service and get your way out of this. And if you do something that’s sort of. Triggers other Reddit members to pile on and say, you know what? I used your company five years ago and you guys suck,
[00:26:23] Lindsey Groepper: Yeah.
[00:26:24] Sam Perry: and more people pile on. you can’t get rid of that stuff. and what we’ve talked about in terms of the upside of referrals.
[00:26:32] Sam Perry: From Reddit conversations, there’s a downside too. And if you get, if you get, you know, nailed to the wall because you violated guidelines or you did something overly promotional, those replies are gonna live forever. You could delete your post and the replies remain. so you, you know, it’s, you know, you gotta be careful.
[00:26:49] Sam Perry: You gotta play by the rules. There’s not a shortcut to this.
[00:26:53] Lindsey Groepper: Yeah. And that’s one of the things that was surprising to me. again, and just like, let’s get on Reddit. And it’s like, oh, well you can, but it’s gonna take. Some time to build, which is right. the whole point of Reddit is that they’re real people and credible people, and it’s not a place to sell. I mean, that’s, you know, why it exists and, why people love it.
[00:27:13] Lindsey Groepper: and from a brand standpoint, I mean, I, if you’re sitting here thinking like, God, we’re not a Reddit. We need to get people on Reddit. Like you are not alone. to Sam’s point, there are just people who are redditors that have personally been on for a while. You mentioned that like the personal subres, that you’re, a part of personal, both professional too.
[00:27:31] Lindsey Groepper: and there are people that have just been members of the community that also may not realize like they have a lot of value now. within their orgs to, start to help with their AI visibility strategy through Reddit, which is pretty wild.
[00:27:44] Lindsey Groepper: Sam, what else haven’t we talked about that you wanna make sure that we cover as it relates to Reddit?
[00:27:50] Sam Perry: Yeah, good question. I think that it’s, as I said before, I do think it’s important to try to get engaged soon, but it may be that if you’re not somebody who’s been on Reddit or you have an account and you don’t really use it much, or you’re gonna try to tag someone from your team in to sort of like lead the charge at your organization. It’s gonna be easier to just engage on a personal level first. So look, I went to iu. I’m in the couple different Hoosier subreddits. I like music. I’m in a lot of different music subreddits and movies and things like that. Everybody’s got hobbies, everybody’s got interests. Go engage with some communities that are just fun.
[00:28:30] Sam Perry: If you just want to get a feel for Reddit before you decide to make this a marketing strategy, spend a month in there or have someone spend a month in there just. Lurking and maybe starting to engage and just things that they find are fun, that’s gonna give you or someone on your team, you’re gonna feel more comfortable than when you decide, okay, now is when I want to engage in the SaaS subreddit.
[00:28:55] Sam Perry: And there’s a big SaaS subreddit, and it’s not just for people who work in SaaS. People are going there to ask about SaaS solutions too, or the startup subreddit or marketing or accounting or whatever is relevant. But if you sort of start on a little bit on a clearly a much lower stakes level of just engaging on a personal level, then you’ll feel more comfortable once you start to engage on a, on a professional level.
[00:29:18] Sam Perry: and I guess I would just reiterate again, you can’t, it, it really does take time. It’s kind of like a neighborhood, you don’t just walk. To the house, five houses down that you’ve never talked to, and just knock on their door and ask to borrow like their cordless drill. Like you need to wave at them when you drive by, chat with them in their yard when you’re on a walk.
[00:29:37] Sam Perry: You gotta build some relationship currency right before you go and make an ask to borrow a power tool. And I think Reddit is a lot like that. You need to take a little bit of time to, to become, you know, you don’t have to be the best known member of the community, but you have to. You have to be a, a known member, and that’s because you’ve got the karma.
[00:29:56] Sam Perry: You’ve got the post history.
[00:29:57] Lindsey Groepper: That’s really good advice.
[00:29:59] Lindsey Groepper: Sam, this has been great. I end every episode the same way, which is I ask my guests if they have a signature or favorite toast to send us out.
[00:30:08] Sam Perry: Hmm.
[00:30:09] Lindsey Groepper: Hmm.
[00:30:09] Sam Perry: Yes. That is a good question. uh, I have given a few toasts in my day, but I don’t know if I have a signature one. I think I would just say, you know, uh, cheers and, and good health. Cheers to you, Lindsey. This was a great conversation. I enjoyed it.
[00:30:21] Lindsey Groepper: Thanks for joining me, Sam. Cheers.
[00:30:24] Sam Perry: Absolutely.
[00:30:25] Thanks again to Sam for joining me on SaaS Half Full. Always love having one of our own on the show and appreciate him joining me for a drink in the am hour on a Wednesday. I hope you all took a couple things away from this on how you can start to become involved on Reddit. It is no easy task. If you find the right person though, you can start to have a strategy around it.
[00:30:46] Thanks again for the listen. Always appreciate it. Until next time, bottoms up.