How to Advertise on Reddit for Free

Co-authored by Christine Michel Carter and Sam Browning

Last Updated: January 13, 2022

While Reddit offers a paid advertising service, there are many ways brands can use the site to build their presence for free. In particular, the site contains millions of communities known as subreddits that focus on specific interests. You can engage with these subreddits to advertise your brand to people in your target audience. This wikiHow article will teach you how to promote your business for free on Reddit.

1

Create a Reddit account for your business.

Make a profile to begin posting content and growing your brand’s presence. When creating your profile, use your company name rather than your own name to maintain transparency. This will also help build connections between posts you create with informative, helpful content and your brand.

2

Find your target audience.

Select a few subreddits that will likely overlap with your target audience. Use the Search Reddit search bar at the top of the page to look up interests that align with your products, then pick a few subreddits from the list that appears. You can also use tools like http://redditlist.com to check how active a subreddit is, how quickly it is growing, and the size of its user base.

3

Read the rules.

Familiarize yourself with Reddit’s overall rules and the rules of your chosen subreddits. Reading pages like Reddit’s rules on spam will help you ensure you are posting acceptable content. The rules of specific subreddits are always listed on each subreddit’s home page.
- If you have any questions about what you should or should not post, consider reaching out to the moderators of that subreddit.

4

Post engaging and valuable content.

Create informative posts that help members of a subreddit rather than directly promoting your business. Offer solutions to a problem and provide valuable information to grow your reputation in a community. You can reference or include items related to your company, such as a link to your website, but those inclusions should always be integrated into the post, not simply self-promotion.

5

Interact with the community of each subreddit.

Upvote posts, reply to comments, and more to create connections in a subreddit. If you only post links or content about a business you own, that is considered spam.^{[1]
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6

Engage consistently.

Interact with content posted by others and create helpful, informative posts regularly. While you should be careful of posting too often, consistency is key in building an online presence. Try to post and engage on a regular basis to create familiarity with your profile and company for regular users of a subreddit.

7

Offer exclusive deals and hold contests.

Create posts that give Reddit users unique shopping opportunities with your company. Before publishing these posts, reach out to the moderators of the subreddit to check that your post will not break any rules. While these posts can draw customers, there is often a fine line between acceptable contests and spam.

8

Post an Ask Me Anything.

Create a post where users can ask questions about you and your company to generate interest. Ask Me Anythings, or AMAs, are particularly effective if you have an interesting story to tell. Consider creating a post on https://www.reddit.com/r/AMA/ with your job or something interesting about your company in the title, then answer questions as they appear.