In this episode of Retaili$tic, Deborah Weinswig interviews Danny Kirk, founder of ReddiReach, about how brands can leverage Reddit for marketing, customer insights, and AI data sourcing. They explore Reddit's unique community dynamics, best practices for brands, and its growing importance in AI and search strategies.
Key topics
Reddit's evolution and business model
Leveraging Reddit for brand marketing
Reddit's role in AI and LLM citations
Best practices for brand engagement on Reddit
Community dynamics and subreddit management
Chapters
00:00 The Evolution of Reddit
02:17 Reddit vs. LinkedIn: A Comparative Analysis
04:47 Subreddit Dynamics and Brand Engagement
07:32 The Role of Reddit in E-commerce and Marketing
10:31 Leveraging Reddit for AI and SEO Strategies
13:05 Best Practices for Brands on Reddit
16:03 Understanding Customer Insights through Reddit
18:31 The Future of Reddit and Brand Interactions
21:30 Personal Experiences and Community Engagement
23:55 Final Thoughts and Key Takeaways
Deborah Weinswig (00:05.413)
Hello and welcome to another episode of Retaili$tic. We are very excited to have Danny Kirk on the phone. Danny, thank you so much for joining us.
Danny Kirk (00:13.548)
Thanks for having me, Deborah.
Deborah Weinswig (00:15.771)
So Danny, I was just sharing with you as we were doing our prep about how I originally was introduced to Reddit as a channel that's different from what we might think. But can you tell us, how did you kind of get to where you are with thinking about Reddit? And how do you think it's going to change in, let's say, the next six or 12 months? Because that's the question we're getting asked a lot.
Danny Kirk (00:40.814)
I think Reddit has quite the hero's journey. For about two decades now, they've been unprofitable. And honestly, I think they were probably not going to survive. And in the past two years with AI using them as their highest cited source, they now suddenly have an incredible business model sharing human data with the LLMs in order to fulfill citations for what people are asking for. So that's huge there.
It is becoming more mainstream. I still think it's a pretty obscure corner of the internet, but more and more people are hearing about it for a few different reasons. Obviously Reddit users like myself have always used it as a trustful source. People are seeing it on page one of Google now as well. So even if you're not a Reddit user, but you're still looking for 10 blue links, the top three might actually be Reddit links. And then finally, we all know that consumer buying trends are shifting toward your trusty AI assistant.
Deborah Weinswig (01:10.181)
Yes.
Danny Kirk (01:35.651)
and 20 % of all those citations are from Reddit. So it's incredible times. What's going to happen in the next 12 months? We've already started seeing it happen. They're tightening up things on the platform. Reddit's incentive is to provide human data to the LLMs and the LLMs have an incentive to buy human data from Reddit. So what don't they want on the platforms? They don't want bots. They don't want fake accounts. They want humans and human data. So we're already seeing a tightening up on that and I think it's a good thing.
Deborah Weinswig (02:06.065)
I mean, that says a lot about Reddit as a company because in many cases, right, you start to get, you know, kind of big and right, we've seen it from a research perspective, you know, maybe you kind of chase the evergreen dollar versus maybe what's at the core of your company. What do you think is kind of driving them and what is it, you know, as somebody who's followed them for a long time, what do you think that says about
not only the company, but their opportunities for growth.
Danny Kirk (02:38.124)
Yeah, what drives them? I do think that they, all of us Reddit users and probably corporate as well, do find it a beautiful corner of the internet, no matter how obscure it is. We all have these weird subreddits that we're a part of and you have friends on there that you may never meet in person that you interact with. It's kind of an incredible thing and it's still a pretty public forum. There's a reason why Dell alums are scraping it. You don't need a login.
to go scrape that platform. It's not like LinkedIn where you can't see anything or other platforms. So I think that they really do want to keep it still human. They want to keep it quality. They do want to scale up. You can see them pushing advertisements a lot more. But I think they're still excited to keep it quirky and keep it passionate.
Deborah Weinswig (03:25.101)
You mentioned, I think it was interesting, LinkedIn, which to me, I really used to use it a lot for, okay, what's on the top of people's minds? Where are people going that maybe I wasn't aware of? And now I feel like it's just people going to any one of a number of LLMs, right? Like, what are the top 10 things somebody should do to show up on LinkedIn? right, what do I use Claude versus Grok versus blah, blah, blah for?
I feel like it's turned into something that maybe, if we compare LinkedIn to Reddit, Reddit has really kind of stayed true to their cause and LinkedIn has maybe drifted a bit.
Danny Kirk (04:06.977)
Yeah, LinkedIn and I use it every single day. It's a marketing channel for us and I really do love it, but it's incredibly algorithmic. It's in, know, 1 % of people are publishing all the content and all of them are doing the exact same thing. So it's pretty programmatic and algorithmic in my opinion. And then Reddit, mean, so, you know, LinkedIn is governed all by the same rules as a whole. Reddit has subreddits and subreddits are little nation states. You have your queens and kings of these nation states and they make
whatever rules they want to. Some have literally no rules whatsoever and some have incredibly strict rules. So it's in that way, the two are entirely different because LinkedIn is kind of top down. Everything is exactly the same. So of course it's very programmatic, but Reddit is just kind of like the wild, wild West. And you can really find those passionate people in there because they do have their little nation there.
Deborah Weinswig (04:59.281)
And so the difference is they feel like their subreddit is really not only, in some cases could be a mirror, but also pushing them to maybe question some of their beliefs inside of that brought them into that subreddit originally. Can you talk a little bit more for those? I mean, I have my own subreddit that once again, found during the pandemic when you're looking for, because this is before LLMS, you're looking for research, you're looking for more, you're trying to find.
a variety of thought on a topic. Can you talk a little bit more about the, you know, how these subreddits are managed? And then how do you know, how do kind of advertisers and e-commerce brands think about the quality of the data and how to access it?
Danny Kirk (05:47.682)
Yeah, so each subreddit usually has a small handful of moderators, maybe like one to five, just depending on their size really. And Reddit actually rolled out some new rules on this last week, I believe, that are limiting the power of moderators, because they're now realizing maybe two people hold the keys to a million person kingdom and maybe have a little bit too much power. So that was last week that they kind of redid some of the rules on moderators. But yeah, within that, they're able to define
the topics, of the ethos, the ground rules. Usually they have anywhere from one to 10 ground rules in there. And kind of because of those who they attract to them, you know, sometimes there are multiple subreddits that have the exact same content, but the different rules and ethos means they attract different people in there. So that's kind of the cool part. There's not just one place that you could be hanging out.
And then for the brands and e-commerce and whatnot that want to leverage that, of course, you can do it both organically and paid. Reddit ads are relatively inexpensive relative to other types of advertising platforms. Now, of course, whole platform is pseudonymous, so you don't have people's name and whatnot, but you do have affinity information. know, people are organizing themselves based on the things they like. So that's a good thing.
And then on the organic side of things, you also have everyone organizing themselves into their topics. if you're into ultra running, if you're into ultra running too, and you're looking for a new shoe, you go into that group, you don't go into the marathon runners group, that's totally different. You go into the ultra runners group and see what people are talking about, trail shoes versus, you know, kind of more flats and whatnot. So it's a great place in that way.
Deborah Weinswig (07:32.123)
So you do like centuries?
Danny Kirk (07:34.803)
I signed up for my first hundred a mile later this year. So yeah, wish me luck.
Deborah Weinswig (07:41.617)
So I was a big runner my day. I'm more of a cyclist now. I had a friend of mine, would do, I would usually do the last marathon with her. So like the last 26. So I would sleep literally out wherever we were. And it was, it was just, mean, hey, once again, I was only a quarter of a part of it. to the, like, I learned so much. I know we're totally off topic at this point, but I learned so much from being with those.
Danny Kirk (07:52.493)
cool.
Deborah Weinswig (08:11.343)
I mean, really, I mean, these heroes in my opinion, from kind of how they were able to train. And honestly, once you're out there, it's all mental, right? It's not physical because I would see people who were, you know, at the start, I'm like, they're, know, and it really was just a mental game at the end. so if I think about it, bringing it actually back to Reddit is that, you know, when you can find people who are similar to yourself, especially with a sport like that.
Danny Kirk (08:22.625)
Yeah.
Deborah Weinswig (08:39.481)
I mean, that's just a whole different game and you may be able to get one piece of wisdom that gets you over the finish line.
Danny Kirk (08:49.747)
Absolutely. And also just for people that understand what you're going through. I had trained for a certification a few years back and I joined a certain subreddit just for that. And it was the most helpful people on planet earth. And I will never meet any of them in person probably, but just, you know, they're, they're all organized on that thing they're excited about. And that's an incredibly cool thing versus like taking it back to LinkedIn. I love LinkedIn, but I mean, there are groups on LinkedIn. Nobody, don't think anybody really uses those. But,
Reddit, the entirety of it is organized into those groups.
Deborah Weinswig (09:21.937)
I always, when I meet someone new, right, and you go to connect, I'm interested to see what groups we have in common. But beyond that, I always had, once again, as a research organization, had great hopes, right, we could set things up by topic or by interest, but it never really, you know, obviously that's just not how LinkedIn kind of rings a cash register. So going back to how Reddit thinks about this, can you take us back in time? Because as I mentioned earlier,
I became familiar with the platform, let's just say at the tail end of the, no pun intended, tail end of the pandemic, I was on the SPAC that bought WAG, the dog walking company, and Garrett, who's the CEO, he talked all about how inexpensive the cost per clicks were. And I was like, people advertise on Reddit? Right? Because it maybe is so subtle on how they do it. I'm like, I'd spend a lot time on there once you enter the pandemic, but I never even noticed. And he was like, it has been our...
not only kind of our most loyal customers, but he said, right, like he was almost like an evangelist for them. And I've never met, I mean, very few people who evangelize for the platforms or the, know, that they're paying to use.
Danny Kirk (10:35.532)
Absolutely. you know, dog and pet owners, that's a huge, huge portion of Reddit. You know, they've got a bunch of fans on there. Yeah, it's, for the brands that are willing to kind of take the dive, and yet again, I think that 95 % of brands, A, have never even heard of Reddit or B, too scared to even touch it. For the ones that do, it's an incredibly powerful time. I liken it
back to everyone that wishes they started SEO 25 years ago and got the snowball going. Those brands that are doing that today on Reddit, think are incredible, whether it's with paid advertising, a branded strategy, having their own branded account and their own subreddit where they can be the king or queen of the castle, and even non-branded strategies, getting their super users, super customers that are also super users of Reddit to go tell their story on the platform.
Deborah Weinswig (11:05.066)
It's really good.
Danny Kirk (11:28.694)
The ones that are pulling all those three levers at once, they're gonna find customers on Reddit. They're gonna be seen in Google on page one, and they're gonna get citations from LLMs. It's an incredible time in the industry.
Deborah Weinswig (11:40.741)
So going back to where we CoreSight spent a lot of time is on companies AI strategies. Why have the LLMs kind of leaned even heavier into Reddit? What was the genesis of that?
Danny Kirk (11:57.453)
You know, I don't own an LLM company, so I'll only speculate here, yeah, so yeah, that's why we're here. I would imagine just looking at like the opportunity of other places, what other platforms have really good information? It's usually social media platforms. Of course, they also cite Quora and Wikipedia, but those are kind of more for historical information versus trending information. So where do you get your trending information from?
Deborah Weinswig (12:02.432)
Thank you, I see.
Danny Kirk (12:25.502)
active social media platforms. Most social media platforms are gated. If you don't have an account, you can't get in. Twitter is a really, or X is a really great one for real-time information, but I'm pretty sure that is proprietary to Croc at this point. So I do think Reddit was the absolute obvious choice for these LLMs because they were agnostic to who's using their information as long as they're paying. And they were also looking for paying customers as well.
Deborah Weinswig (12:53.499)
That's interesting. we are hearing more and more about this continuous shift or ask for help around moving from SEO to geo and AEO. How do you see Reddit continue to play a role there and kind of look out beyond the valley, if you will?
Danny Kirk (13:18.028)
Yeah, so back in September, Reddit made up an insane percentage of citations. At some points, it was 80 % of all citations, which we can all agree was way, way, way too high for any platform to be 80 % of citations. Now it's roughly 20 % as a broad generalization. Sometimes it's much lower, sometimes it's a little higher, depending on the brand. If I had to look out another 12 months, I imagine that settles down, maybe around 10%, maybe even a little later.
Lower, imagine LLMs are always looking for more data, not only more data from the platforms they already source on, but more data from everywhere. So I imagine it settles out a little bit more. Now, does that make it any less powerful? I don't think so. It's just that something we have to be honest about that it probably, the only thing we know will change in the future is that things will change, you know.
Deborah Weinswig (14:08.977)
So when a brand says, they've heard you and they're like, we have to be on Reddit. What's the first thing you tell them to do and what's the first mistake you tell them to avoid?
Danny Kirk (14:20.948)
Yeah, absolutely. First thing, know, Reddit is a bunch of skeptical people, skeptical user base as a generalization. I would say to understand the subreddits, like don't do any marketing, spend one to three months and just go in, find your tribes on there, find the subreddits they're in, understand how people act, what they post, how they comment, what they talk about, what rules there are, truly understand those and appreciate those.
Start dipping your toes in, just be a general contributor to the community. If that's just from your own kind of personal founder account or from a branded account or from a non-branded account, start just providing helpful information. Do not market whatsoever. Just kind of chime in, see what works, see what doesn't work and kind of take it from there. It's definitely a platform to dip the toes into. It's very much a long game, but I don't know about you, but I'm a fan of long tailed games.
Deborah Weinswig (15:18.955)
Absolutely. And at who do you see is typically the person in the organization who's kind of owning, if you will, the Reddit relationship.
Danny Kirk (15:31.968)
Yeah, assuming this is a big organization, which most of the clients we serve are, it's a social media person. And I always tell them, you know, a lot of clients try to give us their keys to their account. And I'm like, no, no, no, Reda gets really paranoid when you switch logins and stuff, or, you know, when screen sizes change and IP addresses change, that's a quick way to get shadow banned. So I'm like, have this done in-house for your branded accounts, social media person, they're managing all your other accounts. This shouldn't be a big deal, but have them own that process.
have them make a daily practice of it that doesn't take up a huge amount of their time and just let them go from there.
Deborah Weinswig (16:07.953)
And as Reddit is continuing to be very important for the LLMs, do you see this ever moving into, we have some clients who have like an office of AI or chief AI officer. How do you see this evolving in terms of ownership if you do?
Danny Kirk (16:26.863)
I imagine that for the brands that take it seriously, it'll probably end up taking more of their time. And that's also with the assumption that one of my big bets, and it's already coming to fruition, is they're cracking down on automations and bots on the platform. So assuming you can't use automations and bots, it will probably continue to take up more of your team's time. So I imagine...
Yeah, it might not just be one social media person. You have your ads buying person, you have your macro strategy. You know, just on any big social media platform, you have probably a team at some point handling all this.
Deborah Weinswig (17:04.657)
And as you see them cracking down on automation of bots, are you seeing any kind of change in the content or it's just continuing to be genuine?
Danny Kirk (17:15.527)
It is, well, I think the non-genuine content is getting filtered out as it should be. The best actors are having their best day ever because they're being good actors on the platform and being genuine. So yeah, I love it in that way. Sure, it always throws a wrench into things because they always kind of overshoot with tightness and then kind of rein it back in a little bit. But yeah, I think the good actors on the platform are just gonna have their best year ever.
Deborah Weinswig (17:43.825)
And as I hear you speak, what I think is very interesting is about how the brand themselves plays a role in Reddit. Do you think that those brands, and I'm taking a bit of a leap here, that lean heavier into it, do you think they ultimately end up discovering more of where they kind of sit in the ecosystem or where they have permission to sit in the ecosystem?
Danny Kirk (18:08.807)
Absolutely. Reddit is an incredible place to get customer feedback from. mean, people are literally talking about your topic. And that's a great reason to just hang out for three months in there. Don't market, don't do anything, just listen. And maybe you can use some tools to help you listen, because you're not really engaging, and you can compile that with AI and whatnot.
Yeah, absolutely. Those best brands aren't just marketing on the platform. They're listening, gathering feedback, hearing what people have to say, and then making their product or service better.
Deborah Weinswig (18:42.799)
And because I feel like you are quite early in the Reddit journey, what kind of brought you here?
Danny Kirk (18:48.777)
Yeah, our agency is about a decade old now. We've done a little different marketing in the past, but I have been a long time Reddit user myself and seen the power of it. And you could always get customers just from users itself, but now it's a three in one channel with Google sharing the links and then AI citing it. So then once we kind of saw it heading in that direction, it became very obvious to roll it out and really lean into that.
Deborah Weinswig (19:14.053)
And what were you doing before that?
Danny Kirk (19:16.457)
Yeah, we were doing some kind of email marketing. I had a SaaS company that we grew and sold about 15 years ago. So a lot of lessons learned in there, took those onto this agency, help other people avoid the pitfalls that I made at that company.
Deborah Weinswig (19:30.801)
I mean, that's like my whole life, right? It's like, you know, we experienced this, so you don't have to, right? I mean, that I think is always really helpful. And, you know, as I think about it, you know, e-commerce brands, know, early days because, well, let's look at kind of unified commerce or I really don't like the word on me channel never have, but if you have a retailer who has both a physical and let's say dot-com presence.
A lot the .com costs traditionally and continue to be kind of allocated towards the physical. And so I think e-commerce always shows up as a much more higher margin channel, a more efficient channel. As you think about the costs of Reddit and the benefits, do you think they're both online and offline, or how do you think about that?
Danny Kirk (20:28.254)
You know, Reddit is really best for mostly online from what we've seen. Yeah, yet again, anybody can market on there, but is the cost of marketing worth the return on investment? If you live in a, if you've got a brick and mortar in a small town somewhere in the US, you may have a sub Reddit with 20 people on it. That's going to be hard to market into your marketing dollars affect more effectively spend elsewhere.
We have a holding company client that owns the top six millennial matches brand companies in the world. And yeah, their tan is pretty large on Reddit, you know? So juxtaposing those two in that way, it's not to say that the ones that aren't, that are geo-located or brick and mortar can't win on there. I do know some big brands that are e-commerce and brick and mortar, but a non-geographically restricted tan is super helpful.
Deborah Weinswig (21:21.583)
And what separates a brand interaction on Reddit that feels authentic and valuable versus one that gets downvoted, ignored, or flagged immediately?
Danny Kirk (21:31.635)
Yeah, let's talk about, let's inverse the problem as Munger would always say, like, what would you do if you were gonna try to really fail on Reddit? You you would make an account and day one with zero karma, you would go in and blast a bunch of tracking links everywhere. You would not even join the subreddit, you would just like make a comment or a post. You would not follow the rules of each Reddit. You would ignore the ethos. So the brands that are winning on there,
They're spending their time. They're taking both a branded strategy, which is like from an account that has their brand name on it. Going in there, I call it the fairy godmother of the brand being kind of friendly customer service. If anybody mentions them or having a problem sharing good information and then also non branded strategy, you can always ask your customers that are also users on Reddit. Hey, you know, you already reviewed us on Google or on Shopify. Why not on this platform as well? If you're comfortable telling your story. So.
Those are the ones that are really doing well on the platform.
Deborah Weinswig (22:32.859)
That's really interesting. And as you think about kind of best practices, is there a time of day to engage or post? What are some of the best practices that you've seen over time? And once again, as Reddit is evolving in terms of its importance to LLMs, do you see that those best practices changing?
Danny Kirk (22:56.03)
Yeah, there's not really a time of day. It's a pretty international platform. Whereas LinkedIn, what I imagine being like almost entirely English speaking, Reddit does have like other, excuse me, subreddits that are entirely different languages. So kind of around the clock 24 seven. Staying consistent on the platform, always speaking from a consistent voice, consistently following the rules.
Strategies like that are going to compound over time. I, you know, it's very similar to my own LinkedIn practice. I have a daily practice that's very manageable. I'm not trying to spend eight hours a day on there. I'm trying to spend 30 minutes on there, but do that for a decade, you know? Yeah, same thing with this. Whether you're handling it as a founder or your social media person is handling it, just don't try to do everything one day. Try to do a tiny bit every single day.
Deborah Weinswig (23:50.737)
And going back to this idea that the brands can learn, right, it's not just kind of one way. For some of your clients, what have you seen that they've learned about themselves over time and how is that kind of ultimately reflected itself either in product or practice?
Danny Kirk (24:08.766)
Yeah, a lot of them are finding out about some poor aspects of their product. Maybe it's a shoe footbed and they didn't know that, at 100 miles the thing just explodes, you know, or whatever it might be. A lot of them are finding good product feedback on there. And that might even happen before their marketing on there. They're a big name company. They check out Reddit for once and they're like, people are already talking about us. And some of them are saying some critical, but honest, hopefully things about us.
That's how they're doing that.
Deborah Weinswig (24:40.015)
And as you think about yourself, going back to whether it's shoes, et cetera, do you find that you rely more on the brand, the community, right? What's your own kind of discover and kind of benefit process?
Danny Kirk (24:55.048)
Yeah, absolutely. You know, for myself personally and professionally on there, it's a combination of joining subreddits I'm incredibly passionate about, ones that I'm passionate about in business. I'm a top 1 % contributor in small business. I just really love helping other business owners. So yet again, just going in there, answering questions, not being promotional, being helpful, joining that community. So it's kind of a blended approach. I do enjoy also just using it for personal use.
Feed is 80 % cat videos at this point, but it's great for business too. I've got a Norwegian forest cat, so we like the fluffy ones.
Deborah Weinswig (25:29.617)
It's not a cat.
Deborah Weinswig (25:35.995)
So true being completely honest here because I feel that's what this is about is we have two aging dogs. So one's 12 and a half, one's 13 and a half. And we had a bit of a mouse problem in our co-op. And so I talked to the super and he's like, the best thing you can do is get a cat. And I'm like, that was just, I've always been highly allergic to cats, both of our dogs are whatever hypoallergenic.
So did a bunch of research, found the hypoallergenic cats and we ended up with a Russian blue kitten that we rescued. I live in New York that we rescued from Texas from Lone Star Paws. And the whole journey, I mean, just getting the kitten and what the people who went through. So donate to Lone Star Paws because they're amazing. They drove up 50 animals and they had 13 stops. I literally show up with like a bag of food for them because I think they had been through so much.
but she was just, mean, and she's now, she was born June 14th, so, you know, getting close to being a year. It has been, I mean, it's, first of all, she thinks she's a dog. And so it's hilarious. She tries to lay in the dog beds with them and everything, but it's been such, I never knew that there was this like kind of cat fascination, but I was like, and it's an-
Danny Kirk (26:44.059)
Yeah.
Deborah Weinswig (26:54.787)
every day, because she's going from like a kitten to a cat, it's been fascinating to watch. So I can understand the passion around cat videos and kind of like understand, right? Because it's like nothing. I mean, I was like, I just didn't know that there were, you know, and she, and what's fascinating with her versus dogs is she engages with each of us completely differently, right? I mean, it's like the best social media strategy in the world, right? She understands who we are, what's important to us.
And she leans into that. it's been, as we totally digress, it's been fascinating. So if you think about your own behavior, has that changed since the beginning? And do you find, going back to your kind of 30 minute discipline on LinkedIn, how do you kind of keep yourself disciplined on the platform and able to, you know, just, guess, have the highest ROI?
Danny Kirk (27:44.402)
Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, from the beginning, you know, like most users on the platform, I lurked for a few years before even making an account because you can go on there and read it without making an account. You can't interact with it, but you can still read it. That's most people. If they don't create an account day one, most of them, most of us are just lurkers for a while. And then from there, kind of like how that has changed over time. I try to dive in more. know how
valuable, I find other people's comments when I have a question. I was wondering about if I should change toe socks at mile 50 halfway through the race. And somebody was like, well, your calf's probably going to be cramping, so it's going to be impossible to put toe socks back on. So use regular socks for mile 51 through 100, you know? But that's such a nuanced thing. I found that stuff like that incredibly helpful for all these niches. So these days, I'm just trying to add more value to the platform.
be more human. I like to say that our agency focuses on trying to make the platform better, not worse. And we're also trying to do a tiny bit of marketing too. But we are generally, we want to leave it better than we came with.
Deborah Weinswig (28:53.777)
So before we get to the lightning round questions, maybe just tell us the name of your agency, how people can find you, and what you hope the rest of 26 looks like for you.
Danny Kirk (29:06.183)
Yeah, our agency is ready, R-E-D-D-I-R-E-A-C-H, readyreach.com. You can find us going to the website. I'm also active on LinkedIn. Daniel P. Kirk is my handle or Danny Kirk Ready Reach. Yeah, you know, we serve about 45 different seven to nine figure e-commerce stores at any one time. We also serve some other businesses, some SaaS and services as well, but e-commerce has the biggest pain and the biggest opportunity right now.
You know, what I hope to see for the coming year, I hope to see more brands, and this is not a pitch for us, but more branch get involved on the platform. I truly do believe this was SEO 25 years ago. Everyone that was kicking themselves for not starting the compounding back then, I think that's today again. So we're super excited to help some of those companies get that snowball going, and I hope to see more brands doing it.
Deborah Weinswig (30:00.817)
And guess one, because as a researcher, ask questions all day long for a living. Do you think that companies can ultimately bring down their total marketing spend as they lean more into Reddit because of the higher ROI? Because I know how many dollars that they feel they're not able to measure the ROI. How does somebody think about their total marketing spend? And what does that look like after they start to work with Reddit?
Danny Kirk (30:28.529)
I think that if they are doing both a paid approach and an organic approach, so paid is very kind of one-to-one. You you pay X number dollars and then you get a click, hopefully. So that's very one-to-one. But organic is a long-tailed strategy. You know, you make one interaction and hopefully people see that for 30 more years, you know, and it just compounds and compounds and gets scraped more by the LLMs. So I do think that if you're running both strategies,
you will get a better ROI over time. And of course, if you're willing to play that long-term game as well.
Deborah Weinswig (31:02.989)
makes sense. All right, so we go into my favorite part of this and you can pass. People do. So don't feel like you have to answer anything that you don't, but this is where it gets fun. Okay, number one, post your comments.
Danny Kirk (31:18.08)
Yeah, 99 % comments. Posts. You want to be helpful on the platform. Posts are inherently promotional because you're just waving your hand and saying, look at me. Comments, you're helping other people. So always be helpful.
Deborah Weinswig (31:30.681)
Number two, most underrated Reddit tactic for brands.
Danny Kirk (31:35.401)
Yeah, I would say probably asking your customers that are also super users of Reddit and that is important. You don't want them to say, you want them to share their story, but you don't want them to go create an account with zero karma and then blast a link about your company. So the people that are customers, fans of your product and also super users of Reddit, get them to tell their story on the platform. That's just free marketing.
Deborah Weinswig (32:03.707)
Nice. Number three, biggest Reddit mistake brands make in one sentence.
Danny Kirk (32:10.76)
going out too hard, too fast.
Deborah Weinswig (32:12.869)
Nice.
Perfect. All right, number four. One metric brand should watch more closely on Reddit.
Danny Kirk (32:21.392)
Yeah, associated with Reddit, but post sales survey, how do you hear about us Reddit being an answer? We recommend our clients don't use links in their content because people are link shy, links can get deleted. That's not to say you can't use them, but if you believe in long tailed strategies, you want the highest chance of it sticking forever. So the question is, how do you have attribution? Post sales survey helps with that.
Deborah Weinswig (32:48.827)
Nice. All right, number five, one type of content that consistently works.
Danny Kirk (32:54.482)
comments.
Deborah Weinswig (32:56.049)
Perfect. All right, number six, one type of content that almost always fails.
Danny Kirk (33:01.704)
links or tracking links, certainly tracking links.
Deborah Weinswig (33:06.641)
All right, number seven, SEO or geo, which are brands still underestimating more?
Danny Kirk (33:13.906)
Gotta be GEO because they're spending most of their money on SEO still currently. So I would imagine just in relative terms GEO still.
Deborah Weinswig (33:22.737)
Perfect. Number eight, is Reddit more valuable for customer acquisition or customer insight? It can be both.
Danny Kirk (33:30.76)
I'm gonna say both.
Deborah Weinswig (33:32.089)
Okay, great. Number nine, one word to describe the future of search.
Danny Kirk (33:38.918)
Wild.
Deborah Weinswig (33:40.209)
That's awesome. All right. And number 10. What should every e-commerce CMO do tomorrow morning after hearing this conversation?
Danny Kirk (33:49.737)
Yeah, if you're not a Reddit user already, just go in there, dive in, type your brand in. If you're a CMO, that means your company is probably pretty big. People are probably already talking about your company on Reddit. So dive in, search your name or search on Google, your brand name plus Reddit, and that'll bring it up a little more quickly. Just go in there and see what people are saying. I think the weirdest thing of all is LLMs being sycophantic.
will give answers about your brand, whether or not they are true. And we see this all the time, they just have wrong information about brands. They're recommending a brand, but they're like, oh no, the product's totally wrong. You gotta find out what information it's sharing about your brand.
Deborah Weinswig (34:29.481)
that, okay. That's like the cliffhanger at the end. So we'll have to have you on again. I literally took like tons of notes. So I thought this was great. Danny, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for helping everybody think if they haven't started why they should start a Reddit journey and what they can do if they're already on the path. Thanks so much. And we look forward to having you again soon. Thanks.
Danny Kirk (34:32.242)
Yes.
Danny Kirk (34:48.047)
Yeah, thanks, Debra.