Use Reddit to Win AI Search in 2026

Tom Rudnai Hello and welcome to another episode of demand genius I'm gonna get straight in and introduce my guest for today who is Danny Kirk Well rather than Danny rather than introducing Danny myself from the let Danny do it and do it for you Danny Kirk Hey, Tom, thanks for having me on. Yeah, my name is Danny Kirk, the founder of Ready Reach. We do AI search optimization and Reddit organic marketing for about 50 different seven to nine figure brands, helping them take advantage of Reddit's incredible organic marketing opportunities and also show up in AI search.

But that's a little bit about me. Tom Rudnai Well, look, thank you for coming on. And I know we reached out to you because I've been really keen for a while to have someone come on and tell us all about Reddit. It's something so we're in the AEO space ourselves.

I'm hearing constantly just how important Reddit is. And I can see it actually in the dashboards. So I know a lot of marketers out there keen to learn more about this. I guess before we get into it, it's always interesting to learn a little bit more about you.

So obviously now running this agency, what kind of led you up to that point? And one thing that I always love to ask guests is if there's like, is there a step in your career? that you would say was the most formative, like one where things seemed to click and you really felt like you started to figure out how the world works. Danny Kirk Yeah, you know, I was my background.

was a music major actually in college from a family of musicians, no, no formal education in business, but stumbled into some startups about 15 years ago, grew a SaaS company for five years, learned a lot of hard lessons from that. would say once I first started turning those hard lessons learned, which felt like failures at the time into standing up and trying again, that's the point at which things really started to click and take off. Tom Rudnai Nice, yeah, it's funny, there's two trends that seem to go through some of the kind really cool people that I've been able to speak to here.

One is none of them just did like an MBA or like studied marketing at university. I don't think I've had anyone yet who said they did a marketing degree. It would actually be fascinating if someone did. Do you think that that background completely out of this world helped you as you come into running a business?

Are there ways in which you think it's been a challenge to overcome or? Danny Kirk Yeah, I think that maybe the learning curve was steep, but I think it's probably steep for everyone. I think that what's unique about it to the people that have taken a path of not formal education, I think that you bring an outsider's perspective to it. So a lot of the times you're able to break through some kind of standard barriers.

just because you're not thinking about them, you're thinking about other things. Now that's not to say you won't run into other barriers. They will exist. They do exist, but the kind of standard, you know, even like the idea of like, don't, you know, don't start your first, don't even try to join a big company for a decade and work for somebody else.

And then, then go take all those lessons learned. It's like, well, if you didn't know any better, you would just go start a company. Tom Rudnai Yeah, I mean, that's my idea of hell. It's just that like the corporate ladder, I just think it sounds like the most scintillatingly boring way to go through your life.

bet it's for some people. Cool. Let's get on and talk about Reddit a little bit, because I want to make sure I want to really get into depth on that. I guess the first question is like, what led you to build an agency specifically around Reddit?

Because it's a very specific thing to choose. Danny Kirk you Yeah, for sure. excuse me. Our agency's been around about a decade now.

We had been doing other marketing, but I've been a long time user myself. So we kind of saw the writing on the walls early on as far as like the power of the platform. And of course, once AI started citing it some years back, that was really powerful. So it was a really easy thing to do for our clients since we already had the agency wheels and system and engine in there.

just adding that to the mix and now that is essentially all we do. But yeah, we were kind of earlier in the game and just knew the power of it from kind of personal use and took that to the business side. Tom Rudnai Nice, and so it sounds like obviously AI Search has been a bit of a disruptor, like does every conversation that you now have, I would imagine, revolve around that? Is that what brings almost all clients to your door?

Is it still a little bit of a mix or? Danny Kirk Yeah, know, Reddit is still incredibly obscure and I'm not sure that will ever change. So I do think that people really and truly mainly care about showing up in AI search. know, as an example, we made a lot of the clients we serve are e-commerce brands.

So they don't necessarily really care about Reddit as a platform. They just know that their buying trends are shifting towards people asking. AI for recommendations and reddit can be a great way to do that. Obviously it's not the whole picture.

There's other things you need to be doing, but it's a big part of it. Tom Rudnai So what's, because I'd imagine a lot of people listening to this and actually me to a certain extent as well on avid users of Reddit or at least maybe just in the last year they've started seeing that it pops up in a lot more Google searches and become a little bit familiar. But for people who view Reddit as a social media engine or a forum rather than just a thing that pops up on Google, like explain to us a little bit about how it works, how the threads on Reddit.

work and what's maybe what's a bit unique about that platform versus others that's useful to know as a marketer before you go viewing it as a channel. Danny Kirk Yeah, so what's unique about it, a couple different things. It's an open platform. You actually don't even need an account to go in and view the content and scroll and check out the subreddits, which I think is pretty cool.

Of course, if you want to interact more like uploading and downvoting and commenting, you do need the account. From there, what's really cool is it's organized by subreddits. So each one of these are topically based or sometimes geographically based. And I always think of them as little nation states.

They all have their own rules. They have kings and queens that kind of run the thing for better or for worse. And then they all have kind of an ethos as well, like a societal compact. So that's kind of how it works.

And then of course you, post things based on the subject matter that they're in. They also comment on things as well, up vote, down vote. all that jazz. So it's a cool place to be.

It's still obscure, but there's a lot of value in there. It's where passionate humans hang out. Tom Rudnai Nice, that sounds like it's a line straight out of Reddit's playbook, that last one. Is that a Reddit line or is that a Danny line?

Danny Kirk I haven't heard them say that, but they should. Tom Rudnai Yeah, they need to pay you some money for that one. That's good. I like that description there of it's like nation states.

is there, this is literally just answering my own stupid questions now. Is there overlap between those nation states? It feels like there's often very specific threads. And I think Reddit do monitor it a little bit to avoid there just being a thousand of the same threads.

Danny Kirk There's still a bunch of overlap. Yeah, there's still a bunch of overlap. As an example, there's interesting AF, just interesting stuff. And then there's like, damn, that's interesting.

Those are two different things. It's the exact same content on them. They should just join forces. So there is no moderation or limit to the number of subreds that can be created.

Anybody can go in there and make their own. and you can make your own rules in it. So that's the interesting thing. But I would say for the most part, people do go in and nobody creates new subreddits.

It's a very small number of people. So people go in and search things and then find their kind of best fit subreddit or subreddits. I would say that most people usually have three to five that they really like. Tom Rudnai Yeah, okay, that makes sense.

And is there any benefit to knowing the moderator of a Reddit, right? The creator of a subreddit. I guess it's anonymous, so there's no way to do that. But is there any relational element to figuring out how to do the best, get the most out of Reddit?

Danny Kirk I do, you know, from a standard user perspective, I would say no. From a business perspective, it can sometimes be good to have a relationship with them, but they're also always kind of standoffish. They're kind of trying to be at arm's length with everyone there. So it's a hard thing to do.

I do know a couple of moderators. I can't say that they really helped me in any way. It's just kind of good to know. Tom Rudnai It's not part of the Reddit playbook though.

There's not a kind of, I guess what I'm wondering is if there's like a PR element to it. Danny Kirk No, not really. And actually a couple of days ago, Reddit changed the rules and they're actually becoming more strict on moderators because they realized they were giving too much power to this tiny group of people. kind of, some of them manage, you know, like multi-million person subreddits and it's just like two people doing that and they don't even follow their own rules sometimes, you know.

So Reddit is kind of... starting to go a little bit more in this way of democratizing that and kind of being a little bit stricter on their moderators. Tom Rudnai Okay, interesting. And then the last question that I had, just to kind of understanding it is, I'd imagine there's a bit of a split in terms of the users that end up on Reddit, because obviously now you'll get a lot that just come to Google, and really they're Google users who Reddit happened to have a good answer for the question.

And you get some who go exploring the kind of deepest, darkest recesses of Reddit almost as a social platform. Do you have any sense of like the split between those user groups? Danny Kirk Yeah, would say, yeah, it's very binary. You either use it every day or you don't even have an account and you just follow Google links.

I would say a very small group of people are active users. But then what's really powerful about it is that now everyone is becoming a user, yet again, with AI citing it. That effectively makes everyone that's using AI a user because now they're getting their recommendations from there. So what's the difference between somebody actually reading it on Reddit versus reading what AI said and then Google putting their links on page one.

So yeah, it's kind of turning everyone into it more so. Tom Rudnai That's really interesting though, because it means it's almost got the biggest reach of a social platform, because you don't just have to be a user of the social platform. LinkedIn has that a little bit at the moment, because I know that's really permeating through AI responses, but you can put one response on Reddit, and it has almost limitless distribution, because it could just be picked up as a real canonical source for that question.

Danny Kirk Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. I definitely agree. I mean, if Google has a ton of users, which they do, and they're putting the links on page one, that makes distribution a lot higher.

Tom Rudnai Yeah, okay. Well, let's get into, and sorry, I'm kind of just grilling you on how Reddit works here, because I thought it was quite interesting for me to actually understand it a bit better, and I hope it has been for some of the listeners. Let's get into like the playbook then a little bit more of how as a business, and I'm particularly more for B2B businesses here, which is more of our audience. If I'm a B2B business coming to you and I'm like, okay, I know I need to get started with Reddit.

How do I start? What would you typically say to answer that question? Like talk us through how you ramp up in a way that is gonna be effective. Danny Kirk Yeah, there are two different strategies on Reddit to do organic marketing.

There is branded strategy and then there's non-branded strategy. So branded strategy is just making an account with something that looks like your company's name. Usually it's kind of like a cooler version of your company's name, not just the formal version, it's not LinkedIn. And then having your profile optimized for that, like a banner image for your company, your website links in there, a little bit of an about us.

And then just going out and being fully transparent, diving into conversations where you can be helpful answering questions and being fully transparent about who you are and where you're from and just providing great information without being salesy. And then you can also do, that's mainly on the commenting side, you can also do posting and telling stories, telling your story about maybe how you solved a problem. Yet again, not being salesy at all, just being helpful to the community.

So there's that. Then there's the non-branded strategy. So non-branded strategy is just using a standard Reddit account that maybe is just the randomized generated username. And just going in and yet again being helpful in the comments, spreading accurate information, truthful, factually accurate information in there, and maybe it mentions your brand as well.

It's also a great way to get your customers involved too. So if you do have customers, and some of them are like super users and stoked about it, maybe ask them like, hey, if you're already an active Reddit user, do you mind like chiming in on some things and sharing your experience? So those are kind of two ways you can do it. Tom Rudnai Okay, interesting.

what typically would, sounds like generally the strategy is similar though, right? Whether you're doing it branded or non-branded, you're getting involved, you're being helpful and you're not pitching. Like what would decide for me, if I wanted to start with this tomorrow, probably would do it actually, but whether I, which route I go on. Danny Kirk Yeah, for sure.

I would say it just depends on how much time you're willing to put toward it. So branded strategy, really needs to be kind of handled by one person. Maybe it's the founder or a social media person. Reddit doesn't like people changing accounts and giving access to others.

It gets freaked out when IP addresses change and logins like that. having it handled by one person is good. I'm a big believer that you can make a 30 minute daily practice out of it. There's some tools to help you find relevant posts and whatnot.

So subreddit signals is a great one out there, started by a friend of mine named John. So there's ways to make it like a 15 or 30 minute daily practice. So if you have time for that, you're willing to dedicate to it. I think that's a really great thing.

As an example, one of my favorite B2B branded Reddit people is the user YourBizBroker. He's in Utah, he's a business broker. Anybody that has a question about buying, selling, or valuing a business, he chimes in and writes a three paragraph long answer giving his true genuine take. And there's no call to action there.

He's not like, all right, can I sell you something? He's just answering questions. But it's no surprise people are like, wow, who is this guy? That was great.

Then they go to his profile and they see a link that says, oh, free 45 minute consultation. know, yeah, I would love to chat with him more. And that's how, and he gets leads like crazy. Yet again, there's no sales pitch or anything like that.

He's just being helpful. And, oh yeah. And I was going to say, so if you don't have time for that, the non-branded strategy might be the way for you because then you can obviously kind of scale that with other people and whatnot. Tom Rudnai YouTube.

Danny Kirk So that's the kind of answer question that differentiated there. Tom Rudnai Okay, but interestingly, it almost seems converse to how I would understand branded and non-brand because it sounds like actually the branded strategy is the one that gives you a more direct route to monetization because you're kind of being transparent. We're doing this as Demand Genius. In our profile, there's a link and there's a funnel there that exists to actually monetize.

Whereas the non-branded one, it's a lot more what I would consider a typical brand activity where it's like just spread the word, help, share your content, that kind of stuff. Danny Kirk Yeah, one, yeah, you're right. Branded is more like lead generation. Non-branded is more like SEO, you know, like just like putting the word out there, sharing good information with brand mentions.

Yeah, so the two are kind of different. Tom Rudnai Yeah, okay. What would you, are there particular rules? So, and I'm trying to kind of go through the kind of step by step of how I build a Reddit strategy.

So now I've decided I'm gonna go branded or non-branded. I need to start commenting. I need to start posting. Are there best practices for a comment in terms of length, in terms of tone, style, anything that you would recommend that has the best results?

Danny Kirk Yeah, know, as far as, you know, it really depends. So like, let's talk about posts first. Posts are inherently promotional because you're the one posting, you know. It's hard not to be promotional.

You're kind of waving your hand and saying, everyone look at me. With that in mind, it's really the best to try to be as unpromotional as possible. Just tell stories, no calls to action, just share your experience. And also understand first the ethos of each one of those subreddits.

So going in and understanding what they do, how they do it, things like that. So that's kind of a best practice there. Posts are usually longer than comments. Comments, you know, it's often best to keep them to like two to five sentences type of thing.

Be in the tone of a user. Don't use AI to write or at least edit if you're using AI to write. Yeah, be genuine, be helpful. All those rules apply.

Tom Rudnai And is there on posters, is anything that you've seen, any trends that you've seen in terms of what gets a poster really take off? Danny Kirk There are a ton of things out there. My buddy John, who founded Subreddit Signals, also has another tool called MochiSocial, M-O-C-H-I, social.com.

It helps you make posts based on data from other ones. It also checks the rules of the Subreddit and whatnot to help some kind of go viral. Yeah, too much to explain probably in this conversation, but there are tools out there that can kind of analyze what's currently working well and what topics work well. Tom Rudnai but it tends to be quite topical rather than any like optimization hack or anything like that.

Danny Kirk I would say topical, each subreddit has its own what works well. Something that works well in one won't work well in the other. So there's nothing that you could say that would be overarching with all of them besides the fact that it should be helpful and try not to be promotional. Tom Rudnai Okay, that makes sense.

And then I wanna move on to the kind of evil, evil marketer business person in me is now thinking, okay, like we've built up this habit, we're commenting lots, we're starting to build more engagement. What do you see brands generally do to start monetizing that, right? Because ultimately that's the goal. Danny Kirk Yeah, absolutely.

So, you know, the favorite brands that I'm seeing out there, they're doing that or doing both strategies actually. So they're going out and making their own, their own account. And oftentimes it's just like a customer service almost, you know, if they're a big name, people may already be talking about them. Sometimes they're having issues with their product.

So they can just go out there from that account and be helpful, say, Hey, I'm from the company. How can I help or is there anything I can do? That's a great way. Then also on the non-branded strategy, like I said, having customers go out there.

If you have some super users, if you have some thousand true fans, don't have them all do it at once. That's going to look weird and set off some red flags. you know, just, you know, maybe ask a few every month to, hey, if you are already a user on the platform and you use it a lot. Do you mind sharing your experience or do you mind commenting on some posts that are about us, things like that?

Tom Rudnai Yeah, okay, well, and I did want to come back to that point as well, because I that was really interesting, because that seems to be the key across a lot of things at the moment is somehow trying to kind of incentivize your customers, whether it's G2 reviews, Reddit posts, like there's a lot of stuff we're asking our customers to do. Have you seen anything work really well in terms of activating a customer base and getting them doing this? Danny Kirk You know, I have found, obviously, if your customer base is not active and they're not excited, there's no amount of prodding that's going to do it.

You know, I mean, maybe you could do like a raffle for a giveaway or something. I'm not quite sure. I'm not in that world. Yeah, yeah.

And that has its own issues as well. But if you do have, you know, a thousand true fans or super user base, Tom Rudnai know, pass works, but... Danny Kirk those guys are always happy to go talk about it. So I would say focus on those people.

It's not everyone, but focus on those super excited people. Yeah, maybe have some offer or something like that if you can figure it out, but really focus on the true fans of your product and see if there are also users on the platform and then they can take it from there. Tom Rudnai Yeah, okay. I always feel like if you're a power user of any platform and I can't think of many that I would be at the moment Maybe Claude, but I think they've probably got a fair few of them You must just be inundated because I feel like every single marketing team is trying to kind of segment their customer base to figure out who those people are and it's like Get on G2 get on with it.

Like you must it must be this at the moment Danny Kirk Yeah, for sure. I definitely agree. And it may not be possible, but at least having it as part of the flow, know, yet again, like our clients are brands. after checkout or whatever it is the week later after delivery, like, Hey, how'd you like the product?

You know, in your list of links where they can leave a review, maybe mentioned like, are you an active Reddit user? You know, tell your story there. So it's not necessarily, solely focusing on that, but have it as part of your flow at least. Because yet again, not everyone, it's only a very small set of people that are actually active users on there.

So you're not trying to convince everyone, but you're trying to call out those people that are active on there and then also love your product and get them to kind of help out. Tom Rudnai Yeah, okay, well, which I guess brings me on to another thing I want to ask about, is ROI. And I guess there's a few questions. One is like, how do you see brands quantify the ROI on Reddit activities and kind of make the business case?

And I guess it's important because you're competing for budget. Actually, you're also competing for airways, right? You're competing for that space in the asks of a customer versus G2. And you kind of have to make that case as to why trying to get your customers on Reddit is going to make more of an impact than trying to get them doing something else.

How do you see clients build that case? Danny Kirk Yeah, for sure. It can be kind of a hard case to build. think most of the clients that are being successful at it are kind of picking their battles.

They're not trying to overwhelm their customers with everything. Who knows? As an example, maybe they sell products to elderly people. You're not going to ask them to go on Reddit because that demographic is just not on Reddit at all.

So they're kind of picking their battles there. understanding which channels actually work and then kind of focusing that. Tom Rudnai Okay, yeah, I we get the same thing with AI search as you get. I get some clients come to us and they're like, oh, I've been told that I need to get us showing up on AI search.

And I ask, okay, who do you sell to? It's like, 70 year old grandmas. yeah, they don't do it. That's what we do and I don't think you need to do that.

Danny Kirk Yeah, no. Yeah, not all channels are created equal. That's for sure. I certainly agree.

I'm a big believer in telling people know about those sorts of things. I think most companies probably have like, you know, two to three channels that actually move the needle for them. And most everything else could maybe be ignored. Tom Rudnai Yeah, for sure.

I guess probably a way a lot of people are built when like, when people are thinking about the ROI, I'd imagine a lot of it does come back to the AI search thing now though, because that's what's kind of given this recent surge in interest. Is that what you see for clients or? Danny Kirk Yeah, absolutely. yet again, with our clients being brands, the reason why it's so important for them is we're getting into kind of a zero click environment where people are no longer, it's not true, people are still going onto Google, but we're having this growing trend of people just, know, I have this problem, chat, GPT, how should I solve it?

And then eventually the solution is actually a product and it's like, here are three products that I recommend and they just buy natively in the app versus like 10 top links on Google. Three of them are sponsored with paid advertising. The other 10 are, you know, great SEO. That is mattering less today.

And imagine 10 years from now or 20 years from now, that may not matter at all. I still think Google wins because they have the largest incentive to figure out the problem. But my point being is that the buyer behaviors are shifting. So that's why it's important to go to where people are kind of more searching for things that you could solve for.

Tom Rudnai Yeah, I think it's interesting. I we don't need to get into the overall AI search trends today because I think we we covered a lot here, but I think it's all starting to shift back, right? Google was starting to lose market share. What interesting, the overall market was growing.

So everyone, like it was the case study for a rising tide lifts all boats, but they were losing market share. But the second they launched AI mode, I think the habit is so entrenched that when they get a level of parity on that use case, then I think so many people will come back. Danny Kirk Yeah. Yeah, they have the biggest incentive.

They're the greatest money printing machine of all time is Google. So they're not going to lose. Maybe they're not the best at AI, but they're certainly not going to lose the search race. Yeah, but yet again, that's an AI overview.

So how do you get their AI to kind of talk about you? So yeah, either way, it's important to kind of be looking at those trends. Tom Rudnai Sure, cool. And then the last question before we move on to a couple of quick fires and let you get on with your day is just whether like, so I've, and for context, I've been thinking about Reddit a little bit recently and implementing our own strategy.

So we have found some, I think quite cool ways to start doing it quite efficiently. Are there any like really smart AI hacks that you've seen people do recently to really like. turbocharger reddit strategy, or allow them to get started even if they can't dedicate the resources that someone might ideally want to. Danny Kirk Yeah, I think the if you don't have the resources, actually in resources being time or money, I actually like the customer hack the best.

Just ask your super users that are on there as well to go share their story because it's probably five minutes of your time to ask them. And then it's totally free and they're excited to tell people. So that's probably the best hack that gets you. brand mentions on the platform in relevant places from excited people that are also factually accurate.

So I think that that's kind of the easiest hack on there. Tom Rudnai You mean instead of using AI, I need to actually talk to my customers. That's meant. Danny Kirk Yeah, someday it may change, we still do it today.

Tom Rudnai Okay, cool. That's been really interesting. Thank you. I it's been a little bit of a grilling on Reddit, I know it's very topical for people.

So it's really interesting to just go quite deep on it. Before I let you go, we always finish up with a couple of little quickfire questions. So first one that I've got for you is just not Reddit specific, but an AI use case that you absolutely love, one that's just blown your mind. Danny Kirk Cool.

You know, I'm a non-technical person and I have Cloud Code in my terminal now and I am able to build internal tools in a matter of minutes. It's, yeah, incredible day and age. I wouldn't say that's unique. Plenty of people are doing that right now, but I think for people that are good at sales and marketing naturally, now is the time because they can also be a builder too.

Tom Rudnai for sure, yeah, what's your favorite tool that you've built? Danny Kirk Um, you know, I actually, wasn't even for work. Um, my wife and I were designing a house and, um, there's just a lot of bad floor plan tools out there. Um, yeah, and it was just like AI, you know, go research all these tools and like build me one.

And, know, the version one wasn't that good, but within like half an hour, you can give it feedback and, know, it's like pretty good. I, that's. Things like that are incredible to me. And the fact that also people in other countries with way less resources can be doing that too, I find that incredibly awesome.

Tom Rudnai Yeah, find it incredibly awesome, incredibly addictive as well. I was up until like stupid o'clock last night. Cause it gets you so far so quickly that you're like, oh, I'm so nearly there. And then it like tantalizes you with like the last 10%, which is like all of the debugging and that's where the time is.

Danny Kirk Yeah, I'm in a private forum with a thousand e-commerce store owners and there is this huge mega thread about burnout from AI right now, which is, I'm glad to see other people are experiencing it too. I've actually been trying to pump the brakes a little bit on my own usage lately and be like, you know, don't fall for the FOMO. It'll all get done if it needs to. Just because you can't do it doesn't mean you have to.

Tom Rudnai Yeah, for sure. helps. Claude are cutting me off a lot earlier than they used to. So I think they've, they've, they've, there's a bit of shrink flation happening there, but it forces me to, to, to leave it alone.

cool. And then, last question is just whether you have any recommendations for our audience, whether it's like a book, a podcast, a thought leader that they should check out. Danny Kirk Yeah, of course. Yeah, absolutely.

Big fan of David's podcast founders and then David's syndrome. yeah, just the best business podcast out there. reads biographies of the greatest founders and leaders of all time and interviews, big business leaders. And, yeah, if you haven't used AI, would say just start diving in, you know, check it out a little bit.

use it five minutes a day. Any questions you are going to ask a human, just start asking it. Just dip the toes in. I think that's always a great way to start.

Tom Rudnai answer it much better. And then just quickly before I go anything that you'd like to plug that you guys are doing at the moment or that you're doing at the moment. Danny Kirk Yeah, I would say that if any of this was interesting to you, but you need more information, I'm always here to chat. I'm sure I'll be in the show notes.

Our website is reddireachreadyreach.com. You can find me on LinkedIn, Danny Kirk Ready Reach. My username is Daniel P.

Kirk. So I'm active on both. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions. Tom Rudnai Look Danny, thank you very much.

I think if you're patients with my my endless questions about reddit and for taking me through it And I hope that this has been helpful for everyone who's listening as well Danny Kirk Awesome. Well, yeah, thanks very much, Tom, for having me on. Tom Rudnai Cheers.