Creating Business-Ready Accounts

You have three main options when picking a username on Reddit. Each has its own strengths and tradeoffs:

1. Brand Name Account

Example: Nordstrom

Brand names make it immediately clear who you represent. This approach works best if you're primarily providing customer support, making official announcements, or answering product questions.

Note: Users will view everything you post as coming directly from your company, so this approach works best when that's exactly what you want.

2. Random Username

Example: u/YuriCodesBot from Supabase

Random usernames let you naturally blend in and participate in communities. You can mention your company when it's relevant, and people take it better because you're not obviously selling something.

Tradeoff: It takes longer to build trust, and some might think you're hiding something if they find out that your affiliated with your company later.

3. Personal Name

Example: u/marclouv

Personal profiles work well if you're a small bootstrapped startup or if you represent your company. People like talking to a real person, and you can be open about your role while still participating in discussions.

Remember: You're mixing your personal and business presence - anything you say reflects on your company.

Building Relevant Karma

What Karma Actually Is

Karma is like points you get when people upvote your content on Reddit. When someone likes what you post or comment, they upvote it, which increases your karma. When they dislike it, they downvote, which decreases karma.

There are two kinds: posting karma from making posts, and comment karma from leaving comments. Posting can get you karma quickly, but comment karma is actually more valuable for businesses.

Why? Because comment karma proves you're having real conversations with people. Anyone can post content even if it's spam, but taking time to join discussions and contribute to the community shows you're genuinely part of it.

The Problem With Easy Karma

You can get 1000+ karma in a day posting cat pictures in r/cats. Seems good, but it backfires.
People call this “karma farming”. It means posting lots of easy, irrelevant content just to get upvotes quickly. When others look at your profile and see it's full of random cat photos, then suddenly you're promoting a business, they'll ignore you. Many Reddit communities even have tools to check if you got your karma this way.

Karma Requirements That Matter

Many business subreddits have their own karma rules. For example, r/Entrepreneur needs 10 comment karma from their own subreddit before you can post.

r/startups also has similar rules. You can only get this karma by commenting helpful comments that get upvotes within the community first.

Building The Right Karma

Getting karma in business communities takes time but it's worth it. Build karma in business subreddits by following these steps:

• Go to the big business subreddits that have karma rules
• Filter posts by “New” to be one of the first commenters
• Leave thoughtful, detailed comments that add value to the discussion
• Focus on being helpful about topics you know, not promoting anything

Profile Optimization for Business

Profile Settings That Matter

Go to your profile, settings, edit profile and check your NSFW setting under “Mark as mature (18+)”. Make sure it's turned off. If it's on, your entire profile gets a warning page that notifies people that your profile is NSFW. Some business subreddits also automatically remove anything from NSFW accounts.

Custom Social Links

Social links are sort of like the “link in bio” section of Reddit. It's a feature that allows you to add other social links to your profile (Instagram, X, etc). A simple trick is to go to add social links and press on “Custom” and then add your own website URL with the keywords in the display text. That way people who are interested in your posts that visit your profile can easily find your website.

Pinned Posts Strategy

You can pin up to four posts on your profile. Don't waste these on company announcements. Pin your most helpful technical posts or detailed answers instead. When someone checks your profile, they'll see you helping people first, not selling. One post explaining a common problem in your industry is worth more than four posts about your product.

Post History Clean Up

Your last 25 posts show up first when someone clicks your profile. These matter more than your pinned posts. If needed, delete old posts that don't match your business focus. Just remember that comments mentioning your company should make up less than 1 in 10 of your recent posts. Any more looks spammy.

The Follow Button

Reddit has a follow feature most businesses ignore. If someone follows you, your posts show up in their home feed. But this only works for posts to your own profile. Try posting detailed industry tips directly to your profile once a week. Your followers see these even if subreddits remove them.