Hosting a Reddit AMA (best practices)

We identified hosting an AMA on Reddit as a potential growth opportunity after our HackerNews launch + AMA going well. As a health company we found that our users resonated with being transparent and honestly answering their questions (including saying when we didn’t know the answer).

To start we attempted to host an AMA on subreddits that are most relevant to our users.

Relevant subreddits: Microbiome, HumanMicrobiome, QuantifiedSelf, Biohackers

Steps we took:

• Reached out to moderators with template below offering an AMA. (Note: You can find the moderators towards the bottom of the right toolbar on the subreddit home page — see attached for example):
• Hi Mods — I wanted to see if you are open to hosting an AMA on this sub? I founded an oral microbiome testing company, and thought this sub might be interested in an AMA with my co-founder (PhD microbiologist) about the oral microbiome and its role in oral and systemic chronic diseases (Alzheimer’s, diabetes, etc.).
  We recently hosted an AMA in HackerNews here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26386664
  Let me know if you approve, and if so, when would be a good time/day
• r/microbiome accepted and gave me these instructions: Make a post announcing your upcoming AMA on the sub here, about a week out from your AMA, and put a URL to it and we will sticky it.
• I picked a weekday between 7–8am, as this was listed as peak browsing times for Reddit and I assumed it would carry over to the r/microbiome subreddit

On the day of:

• Set a calendar block for our founders who will be responding to questions
• We created a Notion file where we would post questions as they came in and then draft responses for each other to look over
• This is great for digging into later for social content, FAQs, etc.
• We answered questions for 1–2 hours as they came in, and then intermittently throughout the day.

r/IAmA

r/IAmA is a large subreddit dedicated to hosting AMAs. It has potential for much larger reach than niche subreddits, though it is much more competitive for getting upvoted to a top spot for visibility.

Steps we took:

• We first tried applying through their portal here: https://askmeanythi.ng/
• We were rejected from their application, but it encourages you to still post and see how the community responds.
• They mentioned that Thursday mornings at ~8–9am PST are their best posting hours, so I set a calendar reminder and posted then.
• Similarly to the niche subreddit AMAs, we set-up a calendar block and Notion file for collecting questions and answers.
• We ended up getting traction and answering questions throughout most of the day.

r/IAmA results

We received ~1,000 site visitors over the 2 days our AMA was on the Reddit r/IAmA front page and our post received over 180,000 views and 40+ shares.

Our learnings on responses

• You will get internet trolls in the comments. It’s typically best to just avoid them.
• Don’t use marketing speak and avoid hand waving answers whenever you can. When we danced around privacy issues or our technology we received the most criticism.
• Thank everyone for their feedback on the website, your messaging, etc. (esp. for negative criticism), we found people would change their tunes rather quickly on thoughtful responses and as YC companies we know that nothing beats honest user feedback.