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Not long ago, B2B brands could safely treat Reddit as a consumer platform and leave it to someone else. That is no longer true. B2B professionals are on Reddit in growing numbers, they are already talking about the tools they use, and those conversations increasingly shape what people see when they ask AI tools for recommendations. The question is no longer whether Reddit for B2B is worth the effort, but how to do it without getting banned.Few people have seen that question from both sides like Evan Hamilton. He spent five years leading community at Reddit, starting just after the 2015 moderator blackout, when many volunteer moderators shut their subreddits down in protest. He later moved to the brand side as Director of Community at HubSpot, where his team set out to make Reddit work for a B2B company. He has since moved on from both, and everything below reflects his own experience and views.
Every subreddit is created and run by its community. Whoever starts it becomes its moderator, and from then on they set the rules, enforce them, keep out spam and drive engagement. Most new subreddits fail (around five percent succeeded when Evan was at Reddit), so the ones that thrive usually have someone pouring real time into them.
Moderators aren’t paid for any of this. They do it because they care deeply about the topic and the people around it. If that seems hard to relate to, think about your own obsession: the sports team, the author, the band or the hobby you’ve spent countless hours on that anyone else would have given up on. That’s the level of passion you’re dealing with, and understanding it is the starting point for everything else.
Subreddits regularly split into more specific spaces as members disagree about what they should focus on. The classic example is Game of Thrones: the original book subreddit banned TV show discussion, so a TV show subreddit appeared, which then banned memes, so a dedicated meme subreddit appeared. The result is many small, focused communities rather than one big channel, and that is where brands should be looking.
The default move for most brands is to find the biggest subreddit about their topic and focus there. It’s usually the wrong choice. The biggest subreddits are the most competitive, and their moderators have their defences up because so many brands are already trying to get attention. A smaller space full of genuinely passionate people will usually serve you better.
If you need to make the case internally, think of it like advertising: a billboard in Times Square reaches your audience, but also a lot of tourists you don’t care about, at a much higher cost. A small ad in a specialist magazine often works harder.
The most valuable communities aren’t always the ones named after your category. Start with the obvious subreddits for the audiences you serve, then ask where those same people spend time for other reasons. A subreddit where people describe symptoms and ask others what might be wrong, for example, is probably full of doctors.
That doesn’t mean spamming those spaces. It means they are worth monitoring to understand your audience, and they may be places to engage with far less competition. In one example shared during the session, a financial services brand that struggled to get into tightly moderated personal finance subreddits found a much better home in a golf subreddit, where more of its real audience was spending time.
Every subreddit has explicit rules, usually in the sidebar on desktop or behind a link on mobile, and you need to know them back to front. Every subreddit also has unwritten norms: things that are technically allowed but frowned upon, or particular ways people talk to each other. In the r/stopdrinking community, for example, members sign off with “I will not drink with you today.”
Picking up on those details is what stops you arriving like an outsider trying too hard to sound like one of the group, and it’s the difference between being welcomed and being ignored.
Reaching out to moderators is a double-edged sword, since many don’t love brands. But it shows you’re not like the brands who turn up and start spamming. The key is to come with an idea that clearly benefits their community, such as an AMA with someone genuinely interesting, and to be fully transparent about it.
Many brands assume they hold the power in that conversation. They don’t. Moderators are organising these spaces, often spending hours a day on them for no money, and a brand turning up can easily look like someone trying to profit from their work. The right tone is admiration for what they’ve built, an offer that might make it even better, and a clear acknowledgement that they are in charge.
Accept that some will say no, and a few may ban you outright. That is a good reason to focus on several niche subreddits rather than putting all your eggs in one basket, because bans are rarely reversed.
At HubSpot, the community team and the brand visibility team became interested in Reddit at around the same time. The community team noticed B2B professionals were already discussing HubSpot there, and recognised that just because they didn’t own that space, it was still part of their community. The brand visibility team, meanwhile, was seeing Reddit content show up heavily in AI answers. Rather than working separately, they partnered: the visibility team brought the analysis, and the community team brought the know-how for engaging in a community without blasting it with content.
The existing subreddit was run by a HubSpot partner, so the team asked to co-moderate rather than take over, making clear it was still his and he could remove them at any time. Once on board, they answered questions quickly and transparently, hosted AMAs, and seeded discussion prompts such as “what was your biggest win this week?” that were useful for members and created the kind of content that shows up in AI answers.
To reach conversations elsewhere on Reddit, Evan’s team tried several approaches. Asking existing customer advocates to join didn’t go well, since most weren’t on Reddit and found it unfamiliar. Bringing in people already talking about HubSpot on Reddit worked better, though some didn’t want to join a formal programme or reveal their identity, so the team simply kept track of their contributions and thanked them with tickets, invites or swag. The biggest success was an employee advocacy programme.
Crucially, employees weren’t asked to go into subreddits and declare HubSpot the best CRM. They were asked to share how they use it, how they solve problems, and tips for people running into issues they recognised. Two practical guardrails kept it safe: employees created new accounts rather than using their personal ones, and they were trained on the rules and asked to be transparent about where they worked.
Subreddits rarely want a CEO AMA unless that CEO is genuinely famous. What they want is the researcher, the engineer, the person who knows about the small feature that will make a real difference to someone’s day. If you can let go of the need to be big and flashy and put your most knowledgeable people forward instead, Reddit will see that you have something of substance to share.
Brands doing this well range from a tree care company in Austin sharing local planting tips, to a security company creating space for people to vent about how hard working in security is, to Keith Nieves at Sonos, whose transparent, in-the-weeds approach made a huge brand feel accessible.
A successful AMA starts with the moderators: pitch what your guest can offer, ask what they’d like to see, and be ready to drop it if it doesn’t fit. Then promote it early (Reddit ads can help here, because people don’t mind seeing ads for something valuable), and ask a few champions to come with questions so nobody has to be the first to raise their hand.
Most importantly, build the promotion around what makes your guest interesting, not their title. “This engineer figured out how to fix a specific bug” wouldn’t work in a broad ad campaign, but on Reddit, everyone who has hit that bug will want to talk to them.
People want human perspectives, whether they are adding “reddit” to a Google search or asking an AI tool for a recommendation. Evan sees recent dips in how often some AI tools cite Reddit as largely down to commercial negotiations, and noted that citations had already started to recover. Reddit shouldn’t be your entire AI visibility strategy, but it should be part of it, and even if AI tools stopped citing it tomorrow, you would still have a massive audience there.
What doesn’t work is trying to game it. Bots, purchased accounts and automated posting break Reddit’s terms, moderators hate them, and Reddit actively hunts them down, as one AI search agency recently found out when all four of its test subreddits were removed. Community can’t be faked or automated, and anything that seems to work for a while will eventually get shut down. It’s a long-term investment, and if you need results tomorrow, community isn’t the right tool.
Both have a place. A company account is useful when you don’t want to attach an individual’s name, for example on a sensitive topic where you want to state the company’s position, and for promoting things like events or AMAs. Employee accounts bring the authentic, expert answers Reddit values most.
Not necessarily more welcoming, but less defensive. Large subreddits are constantly hit by spam and self-promotion, so they often have automatic filters and karma thresholds that stop brands contributing at all. Smaller subreddits get far fewer approaches, so they’re more likely to at least listen, especially if you can offer real value.
There is plenty of scepticism, but from what Evan has heard, they perform well. His suggestion is to use them to promote things that are valuable to your audience, such as an event, an AMA or a useful resource, rather than simply advertising your product.
Start by understanding what motivates them, since not everyone is driven by the same thing. Some already love Reddit, some want to improve their writing, some want internal visibility. Then make it as easy as possible: for example, send them relevant threads automatically through Slack rather than asking them to go looking. Celebrate contributors publicly, including in front of their managers, and start with a handful of genuinely engaged people before trying to scale up.
Avoid getting into a public fight. Instead, create more positive and accurate content so the negative posts aren’t the only thing people (and AI tools) can find. This is also a good moment to point your champions to the thread. A genuine customer saying the information is wrong is far more convincing than the brand itself arguing back.
Yes. Linking out can look self-promotional elsewhere on Reddit, but in science and health discussions, citing sources is appreciated. And if you don’t know the answer, saying so and pointing people to a better next step can earn you real credibility.
They can be a great target. The more local and specific you are, the more useful your content can be, and the less competition you’ll face. Local subreddits are also a natural place to promote local events.
Want to hear it from Evan himself? Watch the full recording here, or catch up on the rest of our Reddit series with Keith Nieves from Sonos and Rachel Duffy from The Times. You can also find more of Evan’s thinking on community at evanhamilton.com.Want help building a Reddit or community strategy for your brand? Find out how we can help.
