⚠️ Why Brands Get Banned on Reddit

🛑 Why Brands Keep Getting Banned

I keep seeing the same fatal mistake: brands armed with spreadsheets of high-ranking Reddit threads, ready to drop comments like they're checking boxes on a marketing plan. It's a masterclass in missing the point.

Here's what's happening in boardrooms right now. Marketing teams are using AI and SEO tools to identify Reddit threads that rank highly in Google. They're building hit lists of URLs. Then they're instructing agencies or internal teams to go comment on these threads. It feels strategic. It feels data-driven. It's actually a fast track to getting banned. The logic seems sound on paper - if a thread ranks well, commenting on it should capture that visibility.

But this thinking exposes a fundamental misunderstanding of how Reddit works. These tools are excellent at retrospective analysis, telling you what influenced search results last month. They're terrible at predicting what will work tomorrow. By the time your AEO tool identifies a high-ranking thread, that thread is already old. You're showing up as the 57th comment, way below the fold, long after the conversation has moved on.

I've watched this play out repeatedly. The comment gets posted. If it survives initial scrutiny, it gets downvoted when real humans eventually see it. Or it triggers the moderator queue. Or it gets caught by automod filters that are specifically designed to catch exactly this behavior.

Even if none of that happens, the comment sits there doing nothing, invisible to humans, increasingly irrelevant to LLMs as the thread ages. The real problem isn't execution. It's the entire framework. 

This approach treats Reddit like a billboard you can buy space on rather than a community you need to understand. It's SEO thinking applied to a social platform. It optimizes for the wrong metrics: presence instead of influence, visibility instead of trust. You can't game your way into Reddit credibility by commenting on old threads any more than you can build a reputation by showing up late to parties and shouting your pitch. What actually works on Reddit requires a different model entirely. You need to be present when conversations start, not after they've been indexed by Google. 

You need to add value that the community recognizes as valuable, not value that your marketing dashboard says is valuable. You need to understand subreddit culture well enough that your participation feels native, not like an obvious brand insertion. This takes time, attention, and genuine engagement.

Resources that don't scale the way a hit list does. I'm watching for the moment when brands realize their Reddit strategy can't be outsourced to a spreadsheet. The platforms and tools that promise to automate Reddit marketing are selling a fantasy. They're optimizing for metrics that don't correlate with actual influence. 

The brands that figure this out first, that invest in real community participation instead of retroactive comment drops, are going to own the channel while everyone else is still getting banned for following their hit lists.

🔍 This Week in 📰 Reddit

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Reddit becomes the internet's cybersecurity help desk

New research from Google and University College London analyzed 1.5 billion Reddit posts and found help-seeking posts surged 66% in the last year, hitting 100,000+ monthly requests by late 2024. Scams account for 28% of all posts, with users arriving confused (32%) and annoyed (22%) after official support channels fail them. The data suggests Reddit has become the default crisis response platform when things go wrong online.

Cybernews

📈 AI cloud startup hits $120M ARR after VC discovered them on Reddit

Runpod bootstrapped to $24M in revenue before landing a $20M seed round—all because Dell Technologies Capital partner Radhika Malik spotted their Reddit posts. The AI hosting platform started in 2022 when two Comcast developers repurposed their failed Ethereum mining rigs and shared their solution on Reddit. Now they're at $120M annual run rate, proving Reddit remains a legitimate discovery channel for B2B products.

TechCrunch

🛠️ Reddit Answers gets search history on iOS

Reddit rolled out a recent searches feature for Reddit Answers on iOS, letting users revisit past queries from the search bar or profile history section. The update is part of Reddit's push to improve navigation and content discovery, though some users report integration bugs.

Twitter/X

Reddit as Your Buyer Intelligence Engine

Cold email is broken because most sellers write from their own perspective, not the buyer's reality. Josh Braun just outlined a simple framework that flips this: use Reddit to find the exact language frustrated buyers use when no one's selling to them. This isn't about lurking for leads. It's about mining authentic problem language that actually resonates.

The insight here is deceptively simple: people tell the truth on Reddit because there's no sales agenda in the room. When someone posts "this is driving me crazy" in r/salesops or "we're stuck with this" in r/marketingops, they're expressing genuine pain points in their own words. That raw language is gold for cold outreach because it bypasses the corporate jargon filter.

Braun's framework is surgical: ignore advice threads and "best tool" posts. Those attract tire-kickers and window shoppers.

Instead, hunt for frustration signals: workarounds, complaints, edge cases that reveal where existing solutions fail. 

The example he gives, "RevOps teams feel stuck duct-taping reports together because the data lives in five places," didn't come from a marketing deck. It came from someone's actual Wednesday afternoon.

This connects to a broader shift I'm seeing: the best go-to-market intelligence isn't coming from intent data vendors or third-party research. It's sitting in public forums where your buyers congregate to complain. Reddit's value isn't as a prospecting channel. It's as a language laboratory.

Practical Angle: Start narrow. Pick one or two subreddits where your ICP actually hangs out. Search for your product category, the tools they use, or the job titles you're targeting. Then read for pain, not volume.

You're looking for the specific phrases people use when they're genuinely stuck. Capture exact quotes. Build a swipe file of problem statements, frustration language, and workaround descriptions. Use these verbatim in your subject lines and opening hooks.

When your cold email mirrors the exact thought someone had last Tuesday, response rates jump because you're speaking their internal monologue back to them.

🎮 Reddit Software & Tools

The Reddit ecosystem for tools, software, and related apps is particularly underdeveloped for the #3 platform in the world.

I’m tracking the new tools that pop on my radar here:

• GummySearch (my favoriate tool right now): The first dedicated Reddit intel suite I’ve seen, great for monitoring communities, tracking change detection (fast-growing communities at different tiers), tracking keywords, and doing more advanced keyword research.

• NotifyGPT: Not specifically a Reddit tool, but Reddit is one of it’s strongest use cases for social listening.

• KWatch.io: An all-source UGC social listening and monitoring platform, includes Reddit.

• RedditInsights.ai: Found this one, a good way to group and approximate topic interest from Reddit. A super scraper. '

• Pulse: This ones new this week and I haven’t tested it too much, but could be an interesting. More positioned to brands marketing on Reddit (connects via Reddit API).

• Subreddit Traffic Tracker: This is an interesting new find that helps optimize post and engagement timing based on when specific communities are most active on Reddit.

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Need help engaging as a brand on Reddit?

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That’s it for this week!