Every other social platform rewards you for talking about yourself until people care.

Reddit is the opposite. If you show up promoting your product, Reddit will quietly make sure no one hears you.

Sometimes that throttling is obvious, like a removed post. More often, it is subtle — your content stays up, but your distribution disappears. Engagement stalls. It feels like you are “posting consistently,” but you are not building reach.

It took us a long time (and more than one burned approach) to understand what was happening. The lesson is simple, but unintuitive:

On Reddit, the fastest way to gain influence is to stop trying to promote yourself at all.

From shadow accounts to trust and transparency

When we first started working on Reddit, we avoided branded accounts. We used anonymous profiles that looked like ordinary users, and when a Thread was relevant to a client, we would mention them casually.

At the time, it seemed like the only way to survive on a platform known for punishing self-promotion. And for a while, it worked.

Then the FTC’s updated rule banning fake reviews and testimonials landed. Suddenly, it was obvious this approach had no future. Anything built on grey-hat methods was not going to compound. The moment enforcement or platform norms shift, the entire investment can evaporate.

So we scrapped it and committed to doing Reddit transparently.

Today, most teams we speak with understand the era of covert Reddit marketing is over. But while transparency is necessary, it's still not sufficient to make Reddit work for businesses.

Status comes before reach

Reddit’s defenses are set up to protect it from accounts with ulterior motives. If it’s obvious you’re there to shill or manipulate, they’ll figure you out pretty quickly.

In this environment, influence and reach can only be unlocked over time by building community trust first.

Every account starts with no status. Young, low-karma accounts are watched more closely and throttled more aggressively. Meanwhile, accounts that consistently contribute value earn higher status over time—their content ranks higher, and they’re trusted more and given more latitude.

To maximize reach, you have to operate within the bounds allowed to an account at your current status level while deliberately building up that status so more powerful actions become available later.

Your account status is determined by two things:

1. Account Karma (how the community responds to your content)
2. Thread and Comment history (how moderators evaluate you)

Every interaction contributes to a running judgment: Is this account giving more value than it’s taking? Only accounts that consistently provide value will raise their status over time.

We’ve compiled our learnings on how to do this into a process we recommend for any brand building an organic Reddit presence. We call it the Karma Ladder.

Climbing the Karma Ladder

The Karma Ladder is a progression toward higher-impact Reddit activity over time, while protecting your account and content from platform risk.

Each step aims to increase reach while managing risk. The key is to operate within the bounds allowed to your account at its current status level, while deliberately building up that status so more powerful actions become available later. Each step only works if the previous step was executed properly.

Here’s how it works:

Step 1: Laying the Foundation

This phase is about looking and behaving like a real human.

Spend 30 days in subreddits completely unrelated to your business—places like r/coffee, r/books, or hobby communities. Participate in conversations and build your account Karma. The only goal is to establish baseline trust and safety with Reddit’s systems.

Most teams try to skip this step. That’s a mistake. Your account needs this foundation before it can effectively reach your target audience.

Advancement criteria:
​✅ 30 days + 100 Karma

Step 2: Building Authority

Now you can start participating in Threads relevant to your target customers in real time, but only through Comments.

Don’t include links or mention yourself, but focus on adding value. Answer questions thoughtfully, share insights, and contribute to discussions without any promotional angle.

Your handle quietly associates your brand with the topic at hand while your content builds authority. This is where the real work happens (and where most competitors give up).

Advancement criteria:
​✅ 60 days + 60 relevant comments

Step 3: Creating Engagement

Only once authority is established do you begin posting your own Threads. Even then, start with low-risk conversation starters designed to get the right people talking and reach as many of them as possible.

Done well, these Threads can spread widely and position your account as a curator of the most important discussions in the space. This phase also builds critical credibility with moderators, which will matter significantly when you reach Step 4.

This is often the hardest step. Getting 5-10 Threads to go viral takes skill, timing, and sometimes a bit of luck. Don’t rush it—quality matters more than speed here.

Advancement criteria:
​✅ 5-10 viral Threads (100k+ impressions for consumer, 25k+ for B2B)

Step 4: Direct Intent

At this point, you’ve earned the ability to selectively direct attention. Even still, you’ll want to manage risk appropriately.

By now, you should have 500+ Karma and meaningful relationships with Subreddit moderators. Before you post anything promotional, reach out to moderators directly. Share what you’re thinking about posting and ask for their input. Most will appreciate the courtesy and give you guidance on how to do it in a way that benefits the community.

Think of this as insurance for the riskier swings you’re about to take.

Start by adapting existing thought leadership into a Reddit Thread, progress to making a company announcement, and eventually host an AMA with founders or domain experts. With moderator support, they may even sticky your AMA announcement at the top of their subreddit.

Time investment:
​✅ Each step requires 2-4 hours per week of consistent engagement

Why you can’t skip steps

Everyone wants to jump straight to posting Threads. They’re visible, quantifiable, and easy to report on.

Others try shortcuts: enlisting customers to post for them, coordinating upvotes, or dropping links to track attribution. These tactics usually violate Reddit’s terms and always damage long-term reach.

Don’t take the bait.

Without a foundation of valuable Comments, your Threads are fragile. They get removed more easily, attract moderator scrutiny, and cap your future reach in ways that are hard to reverse.

Commenting is the unglamorous foundation that makes everything else work. It’s how moderators learn to trust you and how you build a defensible position. Skip it, and you’ll be treated exactly as you are: an outsider trying to extract value rather than provide it.

How to measure progress

Reddit is a dark-social channel in a link-hostile environment. That makes measurement harder, but also creates opportunity.

Track two things:

• Platform signals: Karma, impressions, and organic mentions by other users (we call these “Seeded Mentions”)
• Customer signals: Ask leads and purchasers where they heard about you, and include Reddit as an option

Some brands also track secondary signals like search visibility and LLM citations. No single metric tells the full story, so watch leading indicators while compounding effects build in the background.

Build a system, not a campaign

Successful Reddit programs are built on repeatable processes over time.

Identify the Threads your brand should join. Map the community’s recurring debates. Optimize for Reddit’s native signals, not clicks.

Most of this happens in unowned subreddits—communities you don’t control, but where trust and audiences already exist. Creating a branded subreddit can work, but takes much longer. Most teams need to prove traction first.

The Reddit organic payoff

Done right, Reddit can become one of the most powerful compounding assets in a brand’s stack.

You expand your SEO and AEO surface area by participating in (and later creating) Threads likely to rank in search and get cited by answer engines. Over time, your brand becomes familiar enough that others mention it without prompting, compounding the effect.

Engagement Threads extend your reach across the platform. Your brand name shows up next to genuinely valuable content, providing a trust halo effect. Eventually, you build an audience that knows, likes, and trusts you, who are more likely to recommend and defend you in conversations you’re not even part of.

At that point, you’ve built Reddit into a PR megaphone you can leverage when it matters.

What Reddit rewards (and what it doesn’t)

Most social platforms reward you for talking about yourself until people care. Reddit is the opposite.

On Reddit, the community supplies the context. Your job is to show up in the right places, add real value, and let that context associate you with the ideas that matter to your customers.

The brands that win on Reddit are the ones that resist the urge to promote and focus instead on earning trust through consistent contribution.

Do that well, and Reddit will give you something most platforms won’t: influence that compounds over time, reach that doesn’t require paid support, and an audience that recommends you without prompting.

It takes longer to validate than running ads. It’s harder to measure than social channels that allow links. But it’s one of the only truly compounding organic channels left.

Want to learn more? Read Karmic’s entire Ultimate Guide to Reddit Organic​

​Colin James Belyea
Co-Founder at Karmic Reddit Agency