Field Notes: Reddit Citations Drop 80% in ChatGPT (Don't Care)

Okay, so the reason I don't care about this particular chart is that I don't think your marketing strategy should depend on the citation behavior of any one platform, especially when that behavior can change overnight.

Of course, you can have platform-specific tactics.

I mean, you should.

The way you participate on Reddit should be different from the way you show up on LinkedIn or YouTube or even your own website.

Every platform has its own unique subculture, formats, incentives, and norms.

But the larger strategy should come from somewhere more durable.

Who are the people you're trying to reach? Where do they spend time? Where do they learn? Where do they talk to each other? And where do they make buying decisions? And how can you become visible, useful, credible, and trustworthy in all those places? Ideally, you're doing that in more than one place.

If Reddit genuinely matters to your audience, then Reddit probably still matters to your audience even today and to your marketing efforts, even though ChatGPT is citing it less.

Because why would you suddenly stop caring about Reddit just because ChatGPT suddenly changed how it retrieves information? You were getting value there before the AI tool ever got involved.

You're participating in a community, learning how people talk about the problem you solve, answering questions, maybe even creating demand.

Now, if ChatGPT happens to pick up some of that information and surfaces your company later on, then that's great.

That's additional value on top of something that's worth your while.

The reverse is where I think things get weird.

If you only started caring about Reddit because somebody showed you a chart saying ChatGPT cites Reddit a lot, and now you're reconsidering the entire thing because another chart says ChatGPT doesn't cite Reddit very much anymore, then you're letting the retrieval behavior of an AI product decide where you do your marketing.

And that retrieval behavior is incredibly unstable.

To be clear, I don't think this is you specifically, friend.

It's probably other people, people who don't have the foresight to listen to this podcast.