Reddit Hates Marketers, But It Still Works If You Don’t Act Like One: Interview With Michal Hajtáš, Red-engage

Reddit isn’t just a big social platform. People trust it more than ads; it ranks really well on Google, and AI search tools keep citing it too. So, can a brand get seen there without spending on traditional media buying? Yes, if they catch the vibe and follow the rules.

We interviewed Michal Hajtáš, the founder of Red-engage, to share his insights on how to market on Reddit – without spamming or paid ads, and keeping user trust.

---

Why Is Reddit Worth It?

Briefly: because it’s a source of very high-intent traffic. Here are the main takeaways from Michal:

• High intent. People search for very specific topics on Reddit: the top tools for their tasks, how legitimate a certain brand is, some alternatives to the existing products. There’s no such search behavior on Facebook or Instagram.
• Google-friendly. Reddit threads have great organic rankings, so it’s an extra traffic source beyond the platform itself.
• AI-search visible. LLM actively fetches and cites Reddit content to decide which brands are best to recommend in search results.

And some figures we found on the web:

---

How to Promote On Reddit: Quick Basics

There are two main ways to promote your brand on Reddit. 

• The first is organic: you use real regular accounts, jump into relevant conversations, give genuinely helpful answers, and only mention your brand when it actually fits, with no hard selling. 

• The second is paid: you run ads through Reddit’s official advertising platform, targeting specific subreddits or interests, just like you would on any other ad network.

---

Why Branded Ads Are Not The Strongest Move?

As Michal explained, 

According to Michal’s experience, Reddit Ads don’t work as well as organic promotion does when done right. Both his team’s test results and his colleagues’ were unimpressive: as he puts it, only 3-4 out of 50 people were satisfied with the results.

And it’s not about the service or the ad mechanics: Reddit Ads support cares about advertisers and is always willing to help optimize the campaigns. However, the overall nature and format of Reddit don’t let you fully rely on paid ads.

---

What Organic Content Should Look Like Then?

It seems organic traffic is what fits Reddit best. But how do you create content that attracts real users without repelling them?

In the past, there was an approach that worked well: create an account as a founder or customer success manager, then use it to help users with specific problems – acting as an extra support channel under the brand’s name. Michal says he doesn’t hear good things about this approach anymore. Instead, he recommends splitting the two functions apart: create a branded subreddit as your official support and community hub, and do the actual organic brand mentions through separate, non-branded accounts. 

Here’s how to make those non-branded accounts actually work:

• Be useful first. Answer the question in the appropriate thread properly, add a real insight, give people something of value. Only after that, and only if there’s a natural opening, mention your brand.
• Don’t overpush your brand. Your thread replies shouldn’t contain too many mentions of your brand – as it obviously looks like marketing. Ideally, you bring in two or three different brands and compare them in a single comment.
• Mind the AI-markers. Small details like em-dashes or overly polished phrasing can give away that the text was written by AI, and once people notice, they tune out.
• Text is better than video. Michal noticed that texts tend to rank very well organically – and, overall, work better than video- or image-based posts. And, search engines also prefer texts.
• Use the Ask Me Anything (AMA) Format. You post as, say, the founder of a SaaS company, or someone who’s spent 10 years in fintech, and invite people to ask you anything in the comments. A post looks like ‘I’ve spent 3 years building an AI-visibility tool; ask me anything about GEO.’ The value isn’t in the post itself, but in how you respond: it will make your brand mentions feel like real answers, not ads.
• Stay active once a post goes viral. Every thread gets a few random or off-topic comments. Ignore them, but focus on replying to every serious one. This does double duty: it keeps the discussion alive and works as an extra support layer, as you’re seeing what questions people ask and what they’re struggling with. Later, you can use this as your insights for landing pages, product improvements, or onboarding.

---

Why Does Reddit Ban Accounts, and How to Avoid It?

Reddit is built to catch anything that smells like marketing, and accounts that move too fast or act suspiciously get flagged and banned. Here is how to act to avoid the bans:

• Give 1-2 months for organic growth. As Michal says, you need to really be super strategic and careful when it comes to actually growing and creating your own account – so take your time.

• Use a 9:1 rule. It means your focus on engagement that is not promotional: adding value to specific discussions, answering posts, helping other users. And then, let’s say, once out of ten times, you can answer a post using or promoting your brand name.

• Follow local subreddit rules. Every subreddit sets its own rules – you can find them in the sidebar or the ‘About’ section.

• Keep your login location consistent. If you travel a lot, use a VPN or proxy: logging in from a different country every few days looks like a shared or hacked account, and that’s exactly what gets accounts banned.

---

What’s Next? From Reddit to AI Visibility

After 8 years focused purely on Reddit, Michal has recently rebranded his agency from Reddit marketing to GEO (generative engine optimization). Reddit is still core to what they do, but there’s a shift that came naturally as Google Search evolved: getting brands recommended and cited by AI answers.

As Michal put it:

So, Reddit isn’t just a place to post anymore, but one of the ways to get noticed by AI models. That’s probably worth paying attention to – what do you think?