Reddit rewards relevance over volume. Most brands miss that. They show up with links, get labeled promotional, and conclude the platform doesn’t work.
This case study is the opposite. One business tools publisher focused on one product page for 28 days, participated like a real person, and measured impact with discipline.
No big team. No massive research project. No attempt to blanket dozens of subreddits.
Just a tight relevance strategy, steady participation, and clean measurement.
Results in 28 days
- +239% AI traffic to the target page
- 6,250 total users to that page
- +195.8% overall traffic to that page
What you’ll learn
- How we used an expert account to build credibility without looking like marketing
- How we found subreddits and conversations with keyword-led discovery, without forcing posts
- The comment format that worked best for trust and visibility
- The attribution caveats you need to understand before judging results
The setup
The client was a business tools publisher. The goal was simple: validate whether Reddit participation could lift discovery for a specific, high-intent product page, then expand only after we had proof.
We isolated one page to reduce noise. When you spread effort across many assets, attribution becomes muddy and learning slows down. One page gives you a cleaner signal.
The hypothesis
If we show up in the conversations buyers already use to compare tools, we can earn trust signals that compound.
Some of that compounding shows up as direct Reddit referral behavior, some shows up as broader discovery from AI sources, and some shows up as improved search visibility. The key is that participation has to look and behave like participation, not distribution.
The method we used
We have a go-to playbook, and it’s always built with the same philosophy. Nobody likes a spammer. Nobody wants to chat with bots. So we focus on human interactions, providing real value, and being up-front with the communities where we interact.
Reddit is a conversation platform
Reddit tests motives quickly and publicly. The only sustainable approach is to participate as a person who happens to represent a brand, optimize for usefulness, and treat reputation as an asset built over months.
A simple internal rule guided everything: if wouldn’t say it in a room full of informed skeptics, don’t post it on Reddit.
The rules that mattered most
Two layers of rules always apply:
- Sitewide platform rules
- Subreddit-specific rules, which are often stricter
Before participating, we read the sidebar rules, read pinned posts and FAQs, skimmed top posts from the last month to learn tone, then searched the subreddit for brand and competitor mentions to understand sentiment.
We also avoided the patterns that get brands rejected fast:
- Drive-by promotion
- Copy and paste replies across threads or subreddits
- Fake customer behavior or hidden advocacy
- Vote manipulation, brigading, asking for upvotes
- DMing users to sell after they comment
- Dodging criticism, or arguing like you are trying to win instead of help
This is all the same stuff we’d use if we walked into a convention hall and started talking with people.
How we executed in 28 days
Account strategy: expert account
We used a named expert account, run by a real person, with an honest interest in the niche. That was key.
The account built credibility the old-fashioned way: consistent post history, genuine curiosity, and participation that made sense even if you removed the client entirely.
We didn’t treat the account like a brand megaphone. We treated it like a person who belongs in the room.
But we also didn’t want our team to spend all day on the platform, scrolling for mentions and opportunities. They have other work to do. That’s where Karmatic first shined.
Finding the right subreddits: keyword-led discovery with strict qualification
We used Karmatic to find relevant subreddits and conversations around target keywords. We leaned toward general tracking at first to see more opportunities, then filtered down manually. After a week, we had a good idea of what kinds of things people talked about (and where, and how).
The qualification criterion stayed simple:
Can we add something useful to the conversation?
- If no, we didn’t post.
- If yes, we commented.
We shortlisted five subreddits and focused on offering solutions relating to, but far beyond, the specific landing page. That mattered. If your only goal is to push one URL, your behavior starts to look transactional. Reddit punishes that.
If you want to replicate the discovery workflow, you can get started here.
Comment format: short, useful, and source-aware
For this specific niche, most of our comments were intentionally concise, often one or two sentences.
The structure was consistent:
- Direct answer immediately
- No forced call to action
- No link drop unless the thread clearly called for it and the rules allowed it
- When needed, we cited external sources by name to keep the comment grounded without turning it into a lecture
This worked because it fit Reddit’s reading style. People skim. They reward clarity. They also have little patience for anything viewed as useless.
Week-by-week timeline
Week 1: learn
The team observed, read rules, and mapped recurring questions. They also set up the “listen” column in Karmatic.
Key learning: The niche had a lot of legitimate, high-intent questions, and the subreddit culture was more welcoming than expected, as long as you showed up to help.
Week 2: comment, without self-reference
The team started commenting only where we could add real value. We still hadn’t posted anything self-referential. The goal was to build behavioral credibility, not announce ourselves. We also had a week’s worth of insights from the “understand” column in Karmatic.
Key learning: There was plenty of room to contribute without mentioning the client at all.
Week 3: organic self-mention in comments
The first self-mention happened naturally inside comments, not in a top-level post designed to promote a link. It felt organic, and the result was a brand mention people actually found helpful.
That distinction matters. Threads already had context. The mention felt like clarification, not advertising.
Key learning: Self-mention is safest when it follows usefulness, not when it leads with it.
Week 4: lift appears across AI and search
By week four, organic traffic began improving from AI sources like ChatGPT and Copilot. The page also increased in the SERPs. We didn’t expect an immediate uptick in traffic, but it only took about a week for our first mentions to start garnering attention.
This pattern is common when the work is relevance-driven. You often see a blend of effects rather than one clean traffic source spike.
Measurement and attribution caveats
We tracked LLM traffic directly, but we also kept an eye on Ahrefs, Google Search Console, and direct traffic from Reddit.
Two caveats shaped how we interpreted results:
- Reddit tracking changed in summer 2025. Google Analytics stopped providing attribution the same way it had before, and some Reddit-driven visits can appear as Direct or Unassigned.
- We used UTMs sparingly. Adding
?utm_source=reddithelped track moving forward, but it can also make links look like marketing, which increases moderation risk. During the test, compliance and trust came first, measurement came second.
That means the results reflect what we could measure confidently, not the absolute ceiling of impact.
Results recap
In 28 days, focusing on one page:
- AI traffic to that page increased 239%
- The page reached 6,250 total users
- Overall traffic to the page increased 195.8%
The bigger takeaway is how we got there. This was a strategic play. We won by posting only when we could improve the conversation. And Karmatic was key to helping us do that efficiently. Without it, the process would have taken ten times as long.
Why this worked
- One page reduced noise and sped up learning.
- An expert account with real post history created believability.
- Keyword-led discovery found conversations with real intent.
- A strict usefulness filter prevented the “marketer smell.”
- Short comments fit Reddit’s norms and earned engagement without friction.
- UTMs were used carefully, protecting credibility and reducing removals.
How to replicate this proof sprint
- Isolate one page with clear intent.
- Define what “AI traffic” means in your analytics, track it consistently.
- Use keyword-led discovery to find relevant subreddits and threads.
- Comment first for 2 to 4 weeks.
- Post only when you can add something useful.
- If you share a resource, summarize the value in the post so the link stays optional.
- Measure for 28 days, then expand from evidence, not assumptions.
Next step
If you want to apply this to your site, start by picking the single page you would most like to lift. Then build a shortlist of five subreddits where that page’s buyers already ask questions.
From there, the rule stays the same: if you can add something useful, post. If you cannot, do not.
