The Reddit marketing strategy that holds up is four weeks long and begins with not mentioning your business at all. Week one you read. Weeks two and three you answer questions. In week four you mention what you do, but only when someone asks or when it plainly fits. It takes about 25 minutes a day, from your own account.

That order sounds slow, and it is. It is also the order that keeps accounts alive, because Reddit communities remove promotion quickly and remember who only shows up to sell. What follows is the plan week by week, with numbers, how to judge results at eight weeks, and how to stay in good standing. It is not a paid-ads guide; for that, see Reddit ads for small business vs answering threads yourself.

What Reddit rewards

Reddit is a large set of separate communities, each with its own rules and its own sense of what a good post is. What nearly all of them reward is a specific, useful answer from someone who obviously knows the subject. What they punish is a reply that exists to point at the author.

Reddit's site-wide rules ban spam and vote manipulation, and each subreddit adds more. Moderators are volunteers, and many have seen enough business accounts to spot one in a sentence. The good news is that real expertise stands out. A flooring installer who explains how to tell if a subfloor is flat enough will be noticed for that, long before anyone asks for a quote.

Pick five subreddits

Choose five communities, in these roles: two where your buyers ask questions (a city subreddit and a topic subreddit such as one for home improvement or small business), one where people in your trade talk, one adjacent to your trade, and one broad community in your region. Felix runs a three-person flooring company in Madison, so his five are the city subreddit, a home-improvement community, a first-time-homebuyer community, a DIY community, and one for people who work in flooring.

Larger communities are often stricter about promotion, so expect to lurk longer there. How to find the right subreddits for your business shows how to search by the problem instead of by your product.

Week 1: read the rules and the top posts

About 30 minutes a day, no posting. For each of the five communities, read the sidebar rules and the pinned posts, then sort by Top for the past year and read the top twenty. Note what kinds of questions get long answers, what the best answers have in common, and what moderators remove. Open your own profile, add a plain bio saying what you do, and make sure your username is something a person could say aloud.

Keep a log with one line per community: the three most common questions, anything the rules say about business replies, and who the regular helpers are. By Friday you should be able to predict which questions will appear next week.

Weeks 2 and 3: answer questions

About 25 minutes a day. Answer one or two questions a day where you can add something real: a number, a step, a mistake people make. Don't mention your business and don't link anything. Lead with the answer, then one sentence of reasoning. Skip the questions where you only half know.

Aim for about 10 answers in week two and about 10 in week three, spread over the five communities. In week three, add a note to your log for each answer: was it upvoted, did anyone reply, did anyone ask a follow-up? The answers that draw follow-up questions show you what the community wants from you. How to write a Reddit reply that does not read like an ad has a good and a bad example side by side.

If you want help finding the questions worth your time, Conversations in Rocketship finds threads where people ask for what you sell and drafts a reply and a DM in your voice. You read and edit each draft and post it yourself from your own account. It never posts, votes or messages for you. Reddit keyword alerts covers the by-hand version.

Week 4: mention your business when it fits

Now you may say what you do, in three situations: someone asks for a recommendation for the kind of work you do, someone asks what you do after reading your answers, or the question is one your business solves and the community's rules allow business replies. In each case, say that you own the business in the first or second sentence, answer the question fully, and leave the link out until they ask for it.

Felix's week four reply to someone asking for a Madison flooring installer: "I own a small flooring company here, so I'm biased. For a 400-square-foot living room, the thing that moves the price is the subfloor, not the planks. If you can send me a photo of the floor and the room's size, I'll tell you roughly what it'll take, even if you hire someone else." Send a DM only to people who asked for one or answered you.

One more habit: in week four, keep answering non-business questions at the same pace. If every answer from now on mentions your company, the account reads as an ad.

Measuring results after eight weeks

Eight weeks is a fairer window than four, because the first month builds a history and not leads. Keep a sheet: threads you replied to, replies that got a response, DMs and calls, jobs won. Add "How did you hear about us?" to your intake. How to tell if Reddit brings you customers has a tracking sheet.

A fair example: about 8 hours of work in month one, 20 answers posted, 3 week-four mentions, 2 messages and 1 quote. That is a modest result, not a failure, because the account now has a history and the next month's replies reach more people. If after 8 weeks there are no messages from about 40 answers, either your buyers aren't asking on those communities or the answers aren't specific enough. Change one thing and run four more weeks, or move your time elsewhere.

Staying in good standing

Use one account, and make it yours. Disclose that you own the business whenever you mention it. Follow each community's rules, which differ, and re-read them before posting, since moderators change them. Do not ask anyone to vote for your comments, do not buy accounts or votes, and do not paste the same reply in several places. If a moderator removes something, don't argue, and ask politely which rule it broke. If you suspect a larger problem with the account, the Reddit shadowban guide has a three-test check. The rules are covered in more detail in self-promotion rules for business owners.

Reddit takes patience, and email takes only a list. Rocketship finds the buyers, emails them from your own Gmail, follows up, and books the meeting on its own. Plans that get you customers start at $24.99 a month (Launch), and every monthly plan starts with a 7-day free trial, card required.