How to Create a Subreddit for Your Business.

The short answer

To create a subreddit, click Create a community in the left sidebar on desktop, or tap it from the community drawer in the app. Add a name, a description and up to three topics, set the community type and decide whether to age gate it. Check the name twice: communities cannot be renamed or deleted.

The decision that comes before the button

Reddit’s own help centre says creating a community is “generally very easy”. The hard part for a brand is everything the button commits it to, which makes this an Operations decision before it is a marketing one.

A community on Reddit is permanent in a way a post is not. Reddit says communities cannot be deleted once created. It also expects someone to moderate, and its Moderator Code of Conduct sets out expectations moderators need to follow to avoid possible future interventions.

Reddit suggests three questions before anyone clicks: what the community is for, whether an active one with the same purpose already exists, and whether you are willing and able to moderate it. For a brand, the third decides everything. If your team is new to the platform, start with how brands should post on Reddit without getting removed.

Check whether the community already exists

Reddit is plain about this: there are a lot of communities, and the one you want may already be there. If an identical community is already thriving, its help centre suggests joining it, taking part, and then volunteering or applying to moderate.

For a brand that is often the better move. An established community already has members and habits; a new one starts with neither. If a similar community exists but is not moderated, Reddit points to r/redditrequest as the way to reclaim it.

If you go ahead alongside existing communities, Reddit’s advice is to make yours distinctive and offer something a little different.

How to create a subreddit on desktop

Reddit’s steps on the website:

1. Click the Create a community button in the left-hand sidebar.
2. Fill in the community name and description.
3. Add topics to tell Reddit what the community is about. You can add up to three.
4. Set your community type.

Reddit says topics help it work out what a community is about and connect it with relevant audiences more quickly. It also says it may change your topics as the community evolves, based on what gets posted there.

How to create a subreddit in the app

The app adds a styling step:

1. Open the left community drawer from the menu icon.
2. Tap Create a community.
3. Fill in the name and description, then tap Next.
4. Add a banner image or avatar, or skip and do it later.
5. Add up to three topics.
6. Set your community type, then tap Create.

Either route ends in the same place. Desktop matters later: Reddit says some moderation tools are not on the mobile apps yet, and for those you will need the desktop site.

The name is permanent, so treat it like a domain

Reddit calls the name the foundation of the community’s identity. It shows at the top of the community and forms the URL people use to reach it.

It cannot be changed. Reddit’s warning is specific: check your spelling and capitalisation when you create it.

For a business, that means the name needs the same sign-off as a domain or a handle. Agree three things before anyone types it:

• whether it carries the brand name, which reads as an official channel, or a topic, which reads as a community
• the capitalisation, since it is fixed at creation
• whether the obvious name is already taken

When the name you want is taken

If the name exists but the community has been left alone, r/redditrequest is the route, and it sets a bar a brand account has to clear. Under Reddit’s criteria, the account making the request:

• must be at least 28 days old, with at least 100 comment karma that did not come from free karma communities
• must have a verified email
• must not have been banned or suspended from Reddit in the last 90 days
• should be active across Reddit, with a history of taking part in good faith
• must be actively moderating any communities it already moderates
• must not be banned from an excessive number of communities

The community has to qualify too. Reddit says you can request it if its moderators have been inactive for the last 30 days and do not respond to you, and you must send them a modmail message when you make the request.

The traps in r/redditrequest

A few of the rules catch brands that try to rush:

• One request every 15 days. Reddit removes extra requests automatically, and posting from an alt account to dodge the wait could mean a permanent ban from r/redditrequest.
• If three requests for a community are already pending, no new ones are considered until those are reviewed.
• A community banned for being unmoderated cannot be requested for 30 days. One banned for breaking Reddit’s rules can never be requested.
• Meeting every criterion does not guarantee approval.

The practical lesson: a brand that has never used Reddit cannot use r/redditrequest on day one. The account age and the comment karma have to be earned by a real account taking part in real conversations. That is the right order anyway. The person running a community should know how Reddit works before they run a corner of it.

Community type and the age gate

The last step is the community type, and Reddit asks you to decide whether it is appropriate to age gate the community before you launch.

For most brands the age gate has an easy answer. It deserves a proper conversation in alcohol, gambling and other adult categories. Reddit’s request criteria also say that anyone requesting a large 18+ community must have some experience moderating adult content, which tells you Reddit treats those communities as a separate skill.

Set the type with your moderation capacity in mind. An open community is only as good as the person clearing its queue.

Who moderates, and when

Reddit says it is important to be willing to moderate any community you build, and that doing so helps keep it in good standing if spam or rule-breaking content turns up. If you are short on resources or new to moderation, it suggests planning to add moderators soon.

For a brand, this is the decision that matters most. Settle it before the community exists:

1. Who is the lead moderator, and who covers them when they are away.
2. Which rules the community launches with, written before the first post.
3. What gets escalated to legal, PR or customer service, and how fast.
4. Whether staff who moderate say they work for the brand.

The last one is a judgement call. Our view is that they should, because being open costs far less than being found out. If you want help building that plan, it is the kind of thing our Reddit work covers.

What to set up before anyone finds it

Reddit recommends reading up on growing a community before sharing it with others. Before the link goes anywhere, have these in place:

• a description that says plainly who the community is for and who runs it
• the rules, posted
• a banner and avatar
• a few posts, so the first visitor does not land in an empty room
• a moderator rota and an escalation route

The order matters. A community that gets traffic before it has rules ends up taking its rules from its first argument.

What good looks like

Imagine a software company opening a community for its users. The good version launches with a name signed off like a domain, a lead moderator with cover, rules written in advance and a description that says the company runs it. Staff answer questions without selling, and members are allowed to criticise the product.

Someone also watches what is said about the brand in other communities, because the subreddit is not the only place the conversation happens. We cover that side in what replaces Reddit RSS feeds for brand monitoring.

The bad version is a launch post in a community nobody moderates, which turns into a support queue nobody answers.

Next step

If your team wants a subreddit but nobody owns the moderation, that is the gap to close first. If your social process is slowing down good ideas, NBK can help rebuild the workflow behind the content.