Reddit now shapes how AI search describes brands, argues MTM Agency’s Chloe Buchanan

Chloe Buchanan of The MTM Agency argues that Reddit has become one of the most influential sources shaping how brands are understood on an internet increasingly mediated by AI, and that marketers can no longer afford to ignore it.

For years, she says, Reddit has been treated as somewhere to listen, a sometimes volatile place to join in, and frequently a channel teams could pass over for platforms offering better controls, tidier reporting and safer environments for brands.

That approach now looks outdated, she argues, not because Reddit has changed, but because how people find, assess and verify brands is shifting fast.

When buyers ask questions such as “best PR coverage tracking software”, “is this tool worth it?” or “what are the downsides no one mentions?”, they increasingly do so through conversational interfaces rather than search boxes. The answers draw on large-scale patterns across public discussion, particularly discussion that is candid, specific, comparative and based on real experience, which is what Reddit supplies.

How AI search differs from SEO

Buchanan says marketers tend to assume SEO and AI search visibility are the same thing under a new name. While there is some overlap, she argues the shift is more fundamental. Traditional SEO is built for crawling, indexing and ranking; the new challenge is to be retrieved, interpreted and summarised. Information has to be repeated, reinforced and phrased in ways that match the real questions people ask.

Threads on Reddit open with a question or an open statement, and responses take the form of answers, with upvotes and engagement signalling what the community finds useful or credible. In her words, the platform is “essentially a library of human judgment organized in the same way AI systems are prompted.”

Modern AI experiences, she argues, tend to favour content that resembles Reddit: problem-first, based on experience and tested through debate.

Community narratives

As a result, a brand's narrative is no longer just what it publishes but also what communities consistently say about it. Buchanan describes Reddit as the place where the ‘unofficial truth’ forms: the stories customers tell, the caveats they pass on, the comparisons brands are placed in and the myths that persist because nobody addressed them. In AI-driven discovery, those become inputs into the summaries people trust.

Absence is also a risk. If a brand is missing from Reddit, she says, the gap is filled by whatever data exists. One old complaint thread, a support problem left unresolved or a one-sided comparison can carry disproportionate weight if it is the most substantial public account available.

Participation, not campaigns

Buchanan is clear that this does not mean brands should run Reddit like other channels. The platform is “famously resistant to marketing theater”, and dropping campaigns into threads, posting links with no context or turning up with a scripted brand voice nearly always goes wrong. Communities reward genuine contribution and quickly spot brands that are there to take attention rather than add value.

Treating Reddit as a distribution channel earns distrust, she argues, while treating it as a reputation layer and one signal among many can earn credibility. The better question is not how to run Reddit as a channel, but how to take part in the conversations that shape a category's narrative. “The brands that tend to do well on Reddit are always the most helpful rather than just the loudest.”

She sees Reddit as a cross-functional matter sitting between PR, social and search. It affects earned media because it shapes beliefs, and community mood by rewarding openness and quick responses. If PR looks after reputation, social after presence and SEO after discoverability, Reddit is the point where the three converge and where the gaps between those teams become visible.

Measuring the effect

Buchanan recommends treating Reddit as an ongoing narrative audit, backed by regular social listening. Brands should find out what people say about them when no one from the company is present, which subreddits act as decision hubs for their category, which threads repeatedly appear in search results, which misconceptions keep recurring and whether owned content, PR coverage and community engagement are correcting them. They should also establish whether credible voices exist around their product.

For leadership teams wanting proof, she suggests tracking changes in recurring themes over time, how often the brand is recommended in relevant threads, the balance between warnings and endorsements, and reductions in persistent misunderstandings.

Ultimately, she argues, the issue is trust: brands are assessed on what other people say about them publicly and on how closely that matches lived experience, and Reddit concentrates those judgements in a form both people and machines can reuse. “Whether or not you participate, the conversation still happens.”