Reddit for a small business is the job of answering real questions in the communities where your customers ask them, with no selling, and it is a Skill job you can finish in one sitting. Give the AI the thread, the community rules and what you know from doing the work, and it drafts a reply in about a minute per thread; reading, trimming and posting a few replies takes under an hour. The AI drafts. You post as yourself, from your own account, after reading every line. The reply earns attention by being the most useful answer in the thread, not by mentioning your business.
- Shape
- Skill
- Sitting
- one sitting
The shape: Skill
This job is a Skill because it is one repeatable move: a question goes in, a better answer comes out. There is no setup to install and no chain of steps where one output feeds the next. Once you have a brief that works, you reuse it every time you sit down to answer threads.
What makes it a skill, rather than a one-time prompt, is that you get better at the brief. The first few drafts will sound too polished or too eager. You tell the AI what you cut and why, and the next draft starts closer to how you talk. Keep the brief in a note so the next session starts from your improved version, not from scratch.
What that means for you: the AI does the typing and the structure, and you supply the part Reddit actually rewards, which is first-hand experience. A reply built from what you have seen on real jobs reads like a person. A reply built from a topic reads like a search result, and Reddit users can tell.
If you do not yet know where the good threads are, the social listening page covers setting up saved searches that catch them each week.
What you give the AI
Gather these for each thread before you open the chat. The more of your own material you hand over, the less the draft sounds like anyone else.
- The original post, pasted in full. The question, plus any details the person added, such as their budget, their city or what they already tried.
- The top few comments already in the thread. So the AI does not repeat an answer someone already gave, and can add what is missing instead.
- The subreddit's rules. Copy them from the community's sidebar or about page. Note especially anything about self-promotion, links and who may answer professional questions.
- What you know from doing the work. Two or three things you have seen on real jobs that bear on this question: a mistake customers make, the thing that costs more than people expect, the cheap fix that usually works.
- Two or three things you have written before. A past reply, a text to a customer, an email you were happy with. The AI uses them to match your voice.
- Your line on disclosure. Whether you will say you run a business in this reply, and if so, the one plain sentence you would use.
- Anything you will not say. Prices, diagnoses, legal or medical advice, promises about results, or anything your trade or license rules out.
What comes back
Paste the brief below into the AI you already use, fill in the brackets, and run it once per thread. Keep the conversation open while you work through several threads, so it remembers your voice and your corrections.
You are helping a small business owner draft a reply to a Reddit thread.
The owner will read, edit and post the reply from their own account.
The owner's business: [what you do, where, for whom]
The subreddit: [name]
The subreddit's rules: [paste them]
The original post:
[paste it in full]
The top comments so far:
[paste 2 to 4]
What the owner knows from real work that bears on this question:
[2 to 3 specifics in your own words]
Examples of how the owner writes:
[paste 2 to 3 past replies, texts or emails]
Disclosure: [either "do not mention the business" or the one sentence to use]
Do not say: [your list]
Write one reply that:
- Answers the question the person asked, in the first sentence.
- Adds something the existing comments do not already cover.
- Uses one of the owner's real-work specifics above.
- Is under 150 words, in plain sentences, with no headings and no bullet lists unless the question asks for steps.
- Contains no link, no call to action and no sales language.
- Follows the subreddit rules above.
Do not invent facts, prices, results or experiences the owner did not give you.
Mark anything you are unsure of with [CHECK].
Then, below the reply, list in one line each anything in the thread or the rules that makes posting a bad idea.What comes back is a short reply you can paste into the comment box after editing, plus a short list of warnings. The warnings matter as much as the draft. If the AI flags that the subreddit bans business owners from answering, or that the question has already been answered well, the right move is to skip it.
When you have done a few, paste back the version you actually posted for each one, ask the AI what you changed and why, and ask it to fold those changes into the brief. Save the updated brief. That is how the skill improves from one session to the next.
How to judge it
Read every draft as the person who asked the question would. You can reject a bad one in under a minute if you know what to look for.
It answers a different question. A bad draft drifts to the general topic and misses what the person actually asked. If they asked whether a quote is fair and the reply explains how to choose a contractor, send it back.
It sounds like a brochure. Words like "comprehensive", "seamless" or "we pride ourselves" mark a draft that will be downvoted. Reddit replies read like a knowledgeable friend typing on a phone, so the draft should too.
It repeats the thread. If the top comment already said it, your reply adds nothing. Cut anything the thread already covers and keep the one point only you could make.
It mentions the business when it did not need to. If the reply works fine without the mention, take the mention out. If the reply only works with your business in it, it is a pitch, and it does not belong in that thread.
It claims something you did not supply. An AI filling a gap will state a typical price, a timeline or a past job in a confident tone. Delete every fact you did not give it, and check every line marked [CHECK].
It is too long or too tidy. Headings, bold lead-ins and five neat bullets look generated in a comment box. A good reply is usually three to six plain sentences.
What stays with you
The AI writes a draft. Four parts of this job stay with you, and they are the parts Reddit actually judges.
Your experience. The specifics that make a reply worth upvoting come from your work, not from the AI. If you have nothing first-hand to add to a thread, skip it, however good the AI's draft sounds.
Reading the room. Each subreddit has its own rules, its own tone and its own moderators. Read a community for a while before posting, and reread its rules before each reply, since rules change. Whether a thread is a fit is your call.
Every claim. If you work in health, law, finance, real estate or any licensed trade, decide in advance what you will not say in public, and keep it out of every draft. You answer for the reply, not the AI.
The post button and the follow-up. You post from your own account, as yourself. When someone replies to your comment with a follow-up question, answering it is where trust gets built, and that answer is yours to give. Do not hand your account to a tool that posts on its own.
An editorial example
This is an invented example to show the skill, not a real business.
Say you run a one-person bike repair shop in a mid-sized city. Your saved search turns up a post in your city's subreddit: someone was quoted a large amount to fix their commuter bike's shifting and asks whether that is reasonable. Two comments say "find a new shop" and nothing else.
You paste the post, the two comments and the subreddit's rules, which say local businesses must disclose when they comment on recommendation threads. You add what you know: shifting problems on commuter bikes are very often a stretched cable or a bent hanger, and a fair quote usually names the part. You paste two texts you sent customers last month, and you give the disclosure sentence you are happy to use.
The AI returns a five-sentence reply. It says to ask the shop to name what part they plan to replace, explains the two common causes in plain words, and suggests asking for the old part back. It ends with the disclosure line. One sentence states a typical price for a cable job you never gave it, so you delete it. You read it once more as the person who asked, then post it from your own account.
The reply does not ask anyone to visit your shop. It is the most useful answer in the thread, and that is the whole job.
Where this sits with the rest of your marketing
Reddit answers reach people who are asking right now. Your own posts reach people who already follow you. The same questions can feed both: a question you answer well on Reddit is often a post your own customers would find useful, which is the idea behind turning everyday customer questions into better content. If you want a place where those conversations happen on your own ground, the community page covers setting one up. More jobs like this one, each with its own shape, are on the DIY marketing list.
Of every job on this list, social media is the one that comes back every week, and Boomp is software that does that one for you. See ten posts made from your website, free
