How to manage AEO : Reddit and Reputation Management

Reddit is a critical part of your AEO and Reputation Management in the age of AI. Here are a few Case studies and AEO best practices that you can follow

Deep Dive: Liquid I.V.

Problem
Rising acquisition costs made traditional digital channels unsustainable. Liquid I.V. needed meaningful engagement without eroding the trust of the community.

Strategy
They automated the tedious, mechanical parts of community management—monitoring mentions, scheduling posts—but deliberately kept the human elements human. Comments were answered by real people, not bots. They also connected Reddit mentions directly into their CRM, ensuring community insights became part of the broader customer lifecycle.

Result
They achieved a dramatic drop in cost-per-acquisition, saw a strong return on ad spend, and actually improved brand favorability among Redditors—something most brands struggle to do.

Key Insight
Authenticity doesn’t mean rejecting automation. It means using it with discipline: let machines handle what people can’t sense, but let humans handle what people can feel.

Deep Dive: Contiki

Problem
Contiki needed to reach younger travelers in a crowded category and build credibility with Gen Z, who tend to distrust overtly polished marketing.

Strategy
They paired high-visibility category takeovers with authentic storytelling. Instead of glossy campaigns, they leaned on real traveler stories and encouraged the community itself to share content. The tone was candid, playful, and aligned with Reddit’s culture—never overly corporate.

Result
The approach generated strong lifts in brand perception, engagement, and clicks, proving that the combination of reach plus realness resonates.

Key Insight
Visibility is table stakes; trust is the differentiator. On Reddit, storytelling and community voices outperform slick, one-way promotional content.

Deep Dive: Duolingo

Problem
Most brands fight internet memes about them. Duolingo realized it was better to embrace the chaos.

Strategy
They leaned into the joke of the “threatening owl,” turning their mascot into a cultural phenomenon. On Reddit, they posted absurd, self-aware content in meme-heavy communities while also engaging seriously in their own subreddit with bug fixes and support.

Result
They unlocked massive organic awareness, with users creating memes and content on their behalf. Instead of trying to control the narrative, they fueled it.

Key Insight
When the internet hands you a joke, don’t fight it—play along. On Reddit especially, leaning into humor and self-awareness earns more loyalty than any polished brand ad.

Deep Dive: Nissan

Problem
Legacy auto brands often struggle to appear authentic in community-driven spaces like Reddit. Nissan needed to break through without looking like a corporate outsider.

Strategy
In 2013, Nissan’s community managers—Redditors themselves—launched a playful campaign: they asked users to share Amazon wish-list items, promising to fulfill some. They even shipped a car in a giant Amazon box, leaning into the absurdity.

Result
The campaign earned thousands of comments, widespread upvotes, and front-page exposure. It was less about selling cars and more about proving Nissan could play by the community’s rules.

Key Insight
Reddit rewards brands that participate as people, not advertisers. Creative generosity and humor can carry a legacy brand further than any polished tagline.

Deep Dive: Maker’s Mark

Problem
Alcohol brands often default to lifestyle-heavy marketing, which rarely translates well to Reddit’s culture of wit and in-jokes.

Strategy
Maker’s Mark flipped the script with “Let it Snoo”—a campaign that spoke Reddit’s language, riffing on the site’s mascot. For the Kentucky Derby, they asked Redditors to invent whiskey-inspired horse names, inviting play rather than pushing product.

Result
The campaign drove thousands of comments and positioned Maker’s Mark as a brand that “got it.” By playing in-jokes back to the community, they earned credibility that polished ads couldn’t.

Key Insight
If you want to belong, don’t just show up—show you understand the inside jokes. Participation beats presentation.

Deep Dive: Ryan Reynolds’s Brands (Aviation Gin, Mint Mobile)

Problem
Most celebrity brands lean on fame. Reynolds leaned on humor and self-deprecation, meeting Reddit where it thrives.

Strategy
Through his Maximum Effort agency, Reynolds treated Reddit like a comedy stage. “Leaked” ads, fake feuds, and tongue-in-cheek posts made marketing feel like entertainment. By being in on the joke, he blurred the line between fan content and brand content.

Result
The community amplified his campaigns organically, posting ads themselves and creating conversation threads that felt more like cultural moments than paid media.

Key Insight
On Reddit, the best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing at all—it feels like entertainment the community wants to share.

Deep Dive: The Economist

Problem
News outlets risk being dismissed as “just another ad” when they enter Reddit. The Economist needed to bring value without selling subscriptions too directly.

Strategy
They deployed staff writers under an official account to host AMAs and spark conversations. Instead of promoting headlines, they leaned into Reddit’s intellectual discourse, engaging with tough questions and providing analysis in real time.

Result
This approach positioned The Economist as a thought partner, not a marketer, and built long-term brand credibility among knowledge-seeking Redditors.

Key Insight
The smartest move on Reddit isn’t to push content—it’s to participate in the conversation you’d want to be part of anyway.

Deep Dive: Dollar Shave Club

Problem
As a scrappy startup in 2012, Dollar Shave Club needed to take on entrenched shaving giants with limited budget.

Strategy
They launched a low-budget, humorous video that quickly spread across Reddit’s marketing and humor subreddits. But they didn’t stop at distribution—they jumped into threads, responded to comments, and played along with the community.

Result
The campaign fueled massive awareness and discussion, establishing them as both a product challenger and a cultural one.

Key Insight
On Reddit, the combination of humor plus participation can level the playing field against giants with 100x your budget.

Deep Dive: Noosa Yogurt

Problem
CPG brands often feel out of place on Reddit. Noosa needed a way to spark genuine interaction without looking like a forced ad.

Strategy
They launched a back-to-school campaign using Reddit Polls, asking users to vote on favorites. Instead of selling yogurt, they asked for opinions and made the brand feel like part of a casual, fun conversation.

Result
The poll drove participation and visibility, with users engaging far more than they would have with static ads. The lighthearted tone created positive brand sentiment.

Key Insight
Sometimes the simplest ask—“vote on this”—is the most powerful. Engagement comes from giving users something to do, not just something to look at.

AEO best practices

AEO vs SEO: Traditional SEO is keyword‐centric, slow to build (domain authority, backlinks, etc.), and optimized for Google search. AEO is about optimizing for AI / LLM (large language model) interfaces—ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, etc.—which often summarize many sources, include citations, and show clickable links/maps etc. graphite.io+1
Longer, more conversational queries: AI / LLM‐driven questions tend to be 20‐25+ words vs ~6 or so for standard Google searches. More nuance, more constraints. cervin.com+1
Third‐party mentions / citations matter: When LLMs build answers (especially via Retrieval Augmented Generation, where current external content is fetched to support answers), what gets cited/mentioned often influences what appears. So it’s not just about your content; it’s about what others are saying about you. graphite.io+2cervin.com+2
Help centers / product documentation are rich opportunities: Because many tail / niche queries come from people asking “Does product X do this?” etc. Those kinds of queries map well to help & feature content. lennysnewsletter.com+1
Inflection point ~ January 2025: That’s when ChatGPT and other AI assistants began making answers more clickable (maps, shopping cards, citations), which pushed up referral traffic. Webflow, for example, reportedly went from near zero to ~8% of signups coming from AI traffic. lennysnewsletter.com+1

Expanded Recommendations / Tactics + Examples

Here are Ethan’s recommendations expanded, with tactical ideas, trade‐offs, and implementation tips.

#	Recommendation	Expanded Tactics & Examples
1. Volume of Mentions > Single Top Rank	• Actively cultivate mentions in forums, blogs, reviews. Example: get product features talked about in Reddit threads; encourage user testimonials in niche blogs; affiliate sites reviewing your product. • Use “mentions campaigns” — e.g. send your product to micro‐reviewers, or invite people to write about your use case. • Monitor what URLs are being cited in answers (for target questions) and try to get cited by those URLs too.	• Risk: mentions in poor quality content could associate you with low relevance. • Risk: sheer volume doesn’t help if none of the mentions are for queries / topics relevant to your product or audience. • Must ensure mentions are accurate and positive—negative mentions may also get propagated.
2. LLM Traffic Converts ~6× Better Than Google Search Traffic	• Identify key customer journeys/questions where people are asking via chat interfaces, and tailor content to provide full answer + display relevant features/pricing etc so that intent is clear. • Use chat logs, chatbot transcripts (if available) or customer support “what customers ask first” data to surface these high‐intent query types. • Ensure landing pages are optimized for conversion (clear offers, CTAs), because when traffic comes from LLMs people are closer to decision‐making.	• Be cautious about overclaiming conversion improvement without setting control groups. • Attribution difficulties—LLMs may send traffic via multiple paths, sometimes indirect or with ambiguities. • Some LLMs / AI tools may obscure click behavior, making conversion tracking harder.
3. Early‐Stage Startups Can Win at AEO Sooner Than SEO	• A startup with little domain authority can still get mentioned or cited in enough relevant threads/pieces so that LLMs pull them into answers. • Leverage rapid content creation: help‐center / FAQ pages, micro case studies, integrations, niche features. • Be fast to capture emerging question types in your industry—if you move before competitors, you can dominate the “question space”.	• The risk of being early is being wrong: building content for questions that don’t scale or don’t show up often. The startup needs disciplined measurement to avoid wasted content. Also, low budget/content teams may produce lower quality, which may hurt brand credibility.
4. Long Tail (Micro‐niches) Is Enormous in AEO	• Do “question mining”: find very specific, multi‐constraint queries (e.g. “tool integrating A with B and supporting feature C”) • Build dedicated landing pages or blog posts targeted at those micro‐niches. • Optimize content to answer follow‐up questions, anticipate “what else” someone might ask after the initial question (because conversations build depth). • Use schema / structured Q&A formats, tables, comparisons to help clarity.	• Content volume can explode. Risk of content sprawl—lots of thin content. The value per micro‐niche might be small, or very seasonal, so ROI must be monitored. Over‐optimization might lead to unnatural content that feels forced.
5. Reddit as a Kingmaker (Authentic Participation)	• Create real personal accounts for individuals on your team. Disclose who you are. • Choose subreddits relevant to your product, monitor questions, answer with helpful content (no overt pitch). • Over time, build credibility: people associate your real account + answers + helpfulness. 5 strong comments (or posts) can shift visibility. • Track where Reddit threads are getting cited in AI answers; try to seed good discussions (case studies, experiences) that can be cited.	• Be careful: Reddit is highly sensitive to perceived self‐promotion. If you behave like a marketer spamming, you’ll get downvoted / banned. Some threads enforce strict rules about commercial content. Authenticity takes time; faking it (sockpuppet accounts, automated posts) is likely to backfire.
6. YouTube for B2B “Boring” Long‐Tail Terms	• Look for topics that are useful but under-served in video format. For example tutorials, demos, integrations, use cases. • Use video SEO: titles describing the problem (“How to … with …”), captions, transcripts so content is indexable or can be quoted. • Promote these videos off YouTube via embeds, blogs etc. • Possibly include voice or human presence—even basic —because audio/visual helps build trust.	• Video production takes more time/money than text. Need to ensure quality is acceptable. If video content isn’t discoverable (no promotion, poor metadata), it could be wasted. Some users prefer text; video might not always convert as high for certain queries.
7. Help Center / Documentation as Growth Channel	• Audit all feature‐/product‐related customer support questions. Make sure each is answered in content that is accessible (not gated), well structured, and optimized for clarity. • Move help center content from a separate subdomain (e.g., support.myproduct.com) into a subdirectory under your main domain (e.g., myproduct.com/docs/…). This tends to help with domain authority and signal strength. • Crosslink aggressively among related topics / features. • Monitor what help center pages are being cited in AI answers; optimize them (content, clarity, formatting) to maximize their chance of being used.	• Potential tension with internal vs external help content: opening up too much might expose competitive or privacy-sensitive content. If help center content is low quality (poor editing, outdated), it may harm credibility. Need to ensure searchability and discoverability of help center pages.
8. Recognize the Inflection Point (Jan 2025) and Ramp up Investment	• Use data pre/post this inflection: compare AI referral / conversion trends 6 months before vs after. • Model scenarios: what portion of your funnel could reasonably come from AEO, given product type, audience, etc. • Reallocate budget/time to test AEO tactics now, before competitors saturate. • Plan for scalability: content, tools, team structures oriented toward AEO.	• Jumping in too hastily without measuring could waste resources. The AI / AEO landscape is still evolving—LLMs change, tools change. What works now may need adaptation. Be wary of hype; make sure your tests have clear ROI levers.
9. The AEO Playbook (Ethan’s 7-Step Process)	Expanded version of his steps with tactical sub‐tasks: 1. Find questions: Use paid search keyword data + customer support transcripts + competition’s content + forums (Reddit, etc.) to identify high-intent questions. 2. Set up answer tracking: Build dashboards that show when your product shows up in AI answers / when competitors do. Track across tools (ChatGPT, Perplexity, etc.), question variants, time. 3. See who’s cited: For target questions, which URLs / sources are being used in citations? Which content is being pulled in? 4. Create landing pages answering follow-ups: When you see what people are asking after the initial question, build content for those. Also ensure the content you build is deeply helpful (examples, comparisons, feature breakdowns). 5. Get mentioned off-site: Use Reddit answers, YouTube, blogs, affiliate posts to generate source content people will cite. 6. Run controlled experiments: A/B tests of content, compare performance vs control, monitor both traffic AND conversion so you learn what works. 7. Build a dedicated team: Someone (or a small squad) owning AEO metrics, content gaps, mention/citation strategies, tracking. Over time this becomes a core growth channel.	• Needs resourcing. Some companies may lack capacity (content, dev, monitoring) to do all steps well. Attribution is messy. Making causal claims (“I did X so I appeared in Y citations”) requires care. Scaling mention outreach/offsite work can degenerate into spam or low‐quality content unless standards are maintained.

Suggested Additions & Alternative Angles

Since I’m thinking ahead critically, here are some ideas Ethan didn’t emphasize (or could lean on more) — alternatives / extensions of his playbook:

Use prompt/template design to surface your mentions: Think about how users might phrase questions in different tools (ChatGPT vs Gemini) and test prompts that trigger citation of your content. Possibly create content targeted at those prompts (without being overly SEO-like).
Schema / structured data for Q&A / features: Structured markup can increase clarity of your content to machines, which may help LLMs select your content for citation.
Embed “micro-case studies” featuring user quotes: Third-party validation is powerful. If you have clients/users, get them to speak to specific problems. These can seed content that other sites / forums will pick up (often verbatim), giving you more mentions.
Monitor AI model changes & updates: Because LLMs are evolving fast—how often they do RAG (retrieve external sources), how often they use recent content, how they weight freshness vs authority vs citations—these parameters shift. You’ll want to track whether the models you care about have changed their policies / algorithms.
Develop content designed for “voice assistants” / chat UI migration: Think about how your content will be consumed when read aloud or summarized (not just skimmed). This includes clarity, avoiding jargon, partitioning content logically.
Use internal linking to boost authority signals: Within your site, ensure feature, help, and blog content link to each other where relevant, so “question clusters” are discoverable and well connected.

Metrics / KPIs You Should Track

To know if your AEO efforts are working, here are metrics to watch (beyond general traffic):

Share of Answers (or Share of Voice) in AI tools: how often your site/product is mentioned in answers vs competitors across target questions.
Conversion Rate (LLM traffic vs Google traffic) – are leads or signups or purchases from AI traffic really better quality?
Interaction metrics: time on page, bounce rate, scroll depth for long-tail Q&A / help content.
Referral traffic from Reddit / YouTube / external mentions. Track which mentions lead to citations in AI answers.
Click-throughs on AI answers (if possible) or link clicks from LLM outputs.
Cost/effort per mention / content piece vs ROI — especially for offsite content / mention campaigns.

Possible Trade-offs & What Might Not Work

Thinking critically: not every tactic will suit every business. Some caution points:

Industries with regulatory constraints or privacy concerns may find it harder to share openly in online forums or help centers.
Content quality matters a lot; poorly written or superficial content can backfire in reputation and may get ignored by both users and LLMs.
Over-optimization (writing for machines vs writing for people) tends to degrade experience and can reduce conversion.
Risk of content duplication / overlap: many micro-niche pages can begin to overlap so thin content arises; worse, internal competition.

Sources: The ultimate guide to AEO: How to get ChatGPT to recommend your product | Ethan Smith (Graphite)

Lenny Rachitsky in LinkedIn

Xdo Consulting