This INSPIRERY Feature Interview with Lars Lofgren was conducted September 3, 2026. We spent the bulk of our talk discussing Reddit marketing and how to do it with honesty and integrity, with the long term goal of building a community and ultimately—generating sales and influencing LLM’s.
Background: What Is Reddit Marketing?
Reddit marketing (or Reddit SEO) is the process of commenting and engaging on Reddit.com for the purposes of creating trust, brand awareness, and driving sales.
Successful Reddit marketing does three things for your business:
- Brand mentions on Reddit itself — When people ask for advice related to your industry, mentions of your product or service can drive targeted traffic and leads.
- Influences AI answers — LLM’s like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and others often use Reddit posts when answering questions and making recommendations.
- Google visibility — Reddit threads frequently appear on Google’s first page, giving companies mentioned in them valuable exposure.
Paraphrased Q&A from the interview with Lars Lofgren
EDITOR’S NOTE: I used Rev.com to create a transcript from the video. Then I dumped that transcript into ChatGPT and instructed it to write a concise Q&A that preserved Lars’s original commentary. I hand-edited tChatGPT’s output and that is what you have below, as a companion to the original interview. I hope you find it as educational as I did.
If you were building a Reddit marketing service, would you keep it small for your own products and clients, or try to scale it into an agency service?
I think there’s an opportunity to offer Reddit community management at the agency level. Demand is growing because businesses want visibility in ChatGPT, Claude and other AI platforms, and they see Reddit as part of that strategy.
The problem is that the industry is still immature. Some newer GEO and AEO agencies are using aggressive tactics without fully understanding the long-term risks. That can quickly turn into spam, fake posts and AI-generated activity across different subreddits.
I think the market will mature. Agencies will develop better playbooks for doing Reddit marketing with authenticity while still producing results for clients. Pricing will become more established, and I expect we’ll see more agencies specializing in Reddit community management.
For the client you’re currently doing this for, are you using a Reddit marketing service, your own accounts, or real people?
We’re doing it completely above board. We created a branded subreddit and have several accounts operated by real people. Our primary accounts are branded, so it’s clear that we represent the company.
We don’t fake engagement or pretend to be customers. If we recommend the client’s product, we disclose the relationship. We might even say, “We work with this company and recommend them, but here are several alternatives we also respect.”
That transparency doesn’t guarantee other subreddits will welcome you. Moderators have tremendous control, and some are resistant to anything resembling marketing. You have to respect that because it’s their community.
How many people do you actually need to get a new subreddit started?
Just a few. The important thing to understand is that you’re building a community, not another content channel.
For exampple, a YouTube channel or blog can work with one person publishing content. A community needs conversation. If one person is constantly posting and nobody is responding, it feels like a newsletter rather than a community.
You need a small initial group talking to each other. Those could be employees, contractors or people from an agency. Their job is to create genuine conversations. Once people see an active discussion taking place, they’re more comfortable joining it.
It’s like a campfire. People are more likely to walk over when several people are already sitting around talking than when one person is sitting there yelling by himself.
How do you get a new subreddit from ‘zero’ to having an active community?
Start with useful content and conversations. Then selectively repost good content into relevant subreddits.
You shouldn’t spam those communities. You need to understand each subreddit, its culture and its moderators. Only share something when it genuinely belongs there.
That can generate the initial momentum. After that, consistency matters. Stick with it for six or twelve months and you may be surprised by how much the community grows.
What should a company post about? Should the subreddit focus directly on its product?
I would go broader and focus on the category.
If you’re a CRM company, for example, talk about sales, managing pipelines, how AI is changing lead management ,or how companies are structuring their sales teams. Think about the useful material companies traditionally published on blogs, but make it shorter and more conversational.
Ask people what they’re seeing and encourage discussion. The key to transparent Reddit marketing is almost paradoxical: don’t market. Your objective should be to help people, start interesting conversations and contribute useful perspectives. If something smells like marketing, Reddit communities will shut it down.
Do you need aged Reddit accounts to make this work?
Not if you’re doing it legitimately.
Aged accounts matter much more when people are using aggressive or deceptive tactics. There’s an entire market involving old accounts with histories in particular subjects so that new activity appears authentic.
For a white-hat strategy, I would start fresh. That’s what we did. We created branded accounts specifically for the client and started a branded subreddit. Because we control that subreddit, we’re also the moderators.
As those accounts participate, they develop history, karma and credibility. Six months later, you have established accounts with a real track record in the category.
I wouldn’t take an old anonymous personal account that has spent years following unrelated subreddits and suddenly turn it into a business account. The exception would be an established public-facing account already connected to your personal brand.
How does this work differently for someone building a founder-led personal brand?
A personal brand can participate through an individual account when the person is transparent about who they are and they contribute useful information.
But I still think the end game should be owning your own subreddit.
One of the most important things to understand about Reddit is how much power moderators have. Every subreddit is essentially its own little fiefdom. Moderators can remove posts, delete comments and ban users. If you lose access to an important subreddit, there’s little you can do about it.
That’s why having your own subreddit is valuable. You become the moderator and create a community that can’t be taken away from you because another mod changes their mind.
You can still participate in larger communities, but your subreddit becomes your home base and gives you some control over your audience.
Have you been surprised by how quickly your client’s subreddit has grown?
Yes. At first, I resisted doing it because I know Reddit well and understand how difficult community building can be. We decided to try it for three months and see what happened.
I’ve been surprised at how quickly we’re gaining members and seeing genuine participation. Real people who weren’t part of our original group have started posting and commenting. Visibility is increasing, and we’re hitting milestones faster than I expected.
Plus, the client is a niche SaaS company in a category that isn’t super exciting, which makes the early traction even more encouraging.
Are the people managing the subreddit employees of the client?
No, they’re members of my team. We’ve trained them.
When hiring, I look for two things. First, they need some knowledge of the subject they’re discussing. Second, it helps if they’re already experienced Reddit users.
They need to understand how Reddit works, how different communities behave and how to recognize when certain moderators or subreddits should be left alone. Every social platform has its own culture. Someone who doesn’t understand the Reddit culture will struggle.
What happens when your team gets a question they can’t answer?
We go to the client.
That happened recently. Someone asked a question, so I went into the client’s Slack and asked how we should respond. They gave us the correct information, and we used it.
That’s another advantage of having real people involved rather than trying to automate everything.
Can a few people really move the needle?
They can move the needle in terms of building the community, but businesses need realistic expectations about ROI.
If you’re expecting an immediate impact on leads, signups or revenue, I think Reddit could be even slower than SEO.
I look at it more like gardening. You’re building and nurturing a real community that could become valuable over several years.
There are also benefits beyond direct leads. Reddit content can appear prominently in Google. Reddit discussions can influence the information shown by LLMs. We’re already seeing posts from this new subreddit ranking in Google.
So a genuine community can give a brand influence across several different channels.
What do you think about creating dozens of accounts and trying to make them look authentic?
If you’re going to use aggressive tactics, the level of sophistication required is much higher than most people realize.
There are people who have been doing this for years. They have aged accounts with legitimate histories in specific communities and constantly test what Reddit is doing to identify manipulation. Reddit has also become much more aggressive about cracking down on this activity.
Someone who decides today to create 50 or 100 accounts and make them look real is competing against people operating at a very high level.
It’s similar to black-hat SEO. A beginner buying some links isn’t playing the same game as someone who has spent years learning how to manipulate search algorithms.
My view is that you either (1) operate at that sophisticated and risky level or (2) do it the legit way and grow slowly. Or don’t do it at all. Trying to operate somewhere in the middle is difficult.
Do you think Reddit will remain this important, or will Google and AI platforms eventually reduce its visibility?
I think a correction is possible. Reddit’s visibility in Google in 2026 is very high and AI platforms may change how much they rely on Reddit.
People forget that Reddit was already visible in Google before its recent surge. Its search visibility could fall dramatically and Reddit would still be everywhere.
That’s why I look at it as part of a diversified marketing portfolio rather than something dependent on today’s Google rankings or LLM citations.
Building a subreddit also doesn’t have to be expensive. A company could have a couple of contractors working together for less than $5,000 a month, even at premium rates. It could even be done for under $1,000 depending on how you structure it.
The bigger requirement is consistency and being willing to continue when the immediate payoff isn’t obvious.
It reminds me of company blogs 15 years ago. For years, I encouraged companies to start blogs and many resisted. Eventually, everyone started doing it, and by then much of the opportunity had disappeared.
I think Reddit marketing may be at a similar point today. Even if its less visible on Google, Reddit still has a huge audience, and the potential upside compared with the cost makes branded subreddits worth serious consideration for a lot of businesses.