What writing for Reddit taught me about human psychology
Before I started writing for Reddit professionally, I thought I understood audiences. I had spent years in the film industry studying how stories move people. How a single scene can make a stranger cry, laugh or feel seen. I thought that translated directly.
It did, but not in the way I expected.
Reddit is the most honest audience in the world
In film, audiences are passive. They sit in the dark and receive your story. They might love it or hate it but they rarely tell you in real time.
Reddit is the opposite. The feedback is immediate and completely honest. Post something that feels off and the community ignores it. Post something that reads like marketing and you get called out within minutes. Post something that genuinely resonates and it climbs. Not because an algorithm pushed it but because real people chose to upvote it.
That is a different kind of pressure. And a different kind of lesson.
What gets removed teaches you more than what survives
In film school they teach you to study great films. Watch Kubrick. Analyse Bergman. Understand what makes a scene work.
Reddit taught me to study failure. A post that gets removed tells you everything about what a community values, what it protects itself against and where the line is between authentic contribution and unwanted intrusion.
Every removed post is a lesson in human psychology, specifically in how people recognize inauthenticity before they can even articulate why something felt wrong.
The gap between information and connection
One of the clearest patterns I noticed is that posts that lead with information rarely outperform posts that lead with a human moment.
A post that starts with "Here are five tools for X" gets ignored. A post that starts with "I spent three months getting this wrong before I figured out why" earns attention, because it signals that a real person with real experience is about to share something genuinely useful.
This is not manipulation. It is how human communication has always worked. We trust people before we trust information. Reddit just makes that dynamic visible at scale.
The film connection
As a director, one of the first things you learn is that audiences do not connect with characters because of what they do. They connect because of what they feel. The external action is just the surface. The internal truth is what stays with you.
Writing for Reddit works the same way. The topic of a post is the surface. The human truth underneath, as the shared frustration, the genuine curiosity, the moment of recognition, is what makes it survive and spread.
When I write a Reddit post now I ask the same question I used to ask in the edit suite, “does this feel true?” Not accurate. True. There is a difference. Accurate is verifiable. True is felt.
What this means for AEO and GEO
AI systems learn from human behaviour at scale. The content that gets upvoted, shared and cited across Reddit is the content that earned genuine human trust first. That is not a coincidence.
If you want your brand to show up in AI-generated answers, the path runs through human psychology, not through technical optimisation alone. The content that AI cites is the content that real people already validated as trustworthy and useful.
Reddit is the clearest proof of that principle. And my years in film gave me the foundation to understand why.
Where I come in
Helping brands create content that earns genuine trust on Reddit, across the web and in AI-generated answers, is what I do. The strategic thinking behind it is the same whether the output is a Reddit thread, a blog post or an AEO content strategy.
If you want to explore what that looks like for your brand, feel free to reach out.
Why Reddit is the Most Powerful AI Search Signal in 2026
Reddit accounts for a significant portion of the training data behind major language models. The platform's upvote system means that the content AI encounters on Reddit has already been validated by real humans as genuinely useful. That signal of authenticity is exactly what AI systems are designed to seek out and trust.
Beyond training data, Google has a $60 million data partnership with Reddit giving it prioritized access to live Reddit content. ChatGPT has a similar agreement. That means when someone asks these platforms a question, Reddit threads are among the first places they look for answers.
The result: a well-placed Reddit thread can influence thousands of AI-generated answers long after it was originally posted. That compounding effect is unlike almost any other content channel.
What this means for brands
When someone asks ChatGPT "what is the best tool for X" or "how do companies solve Y problem", Reddit threads discussing those exact questions are likely shaping the answer they receive.
If your brand is mentioned positively and consistently in those threads, you increase the likelihood of appearing in that AI-generated answer. If you have no Reddit presence, you are absent from one of the most influential channels in AI search.
Most brands are absent.
The difference between Reddit and every other channel
Most content marketing happens on channels a brand controls, like their own website or their own social media. Reddit is fundamentally different. It is a third-party platform where real people discuss real problems and real solutions in their own words.
That independence is precisely why AI trusts it. A Reddit thread recommending a product carries significantly more weight than a brand's own website claiming it is good. AI systems are specifically designed to prioritise third-party validation over self-promotion.
This is why authentic Reddit presence is one of the highest-leverage moves in any GEO strategy right now.
What authentic Reddit presence actually looks like
It does not mean creating accounts and posting promotional content. That approach gets flagged and removed immediately. Reddit communities are highly sensitive to anything that reads like marketing, and moderators remove it fast.
Authentic Reddit presence means contributing genuinely to communities where your buyers already spend time. Answering questions from real experience. Sharing insights that help people solve problems. Building the kind of credibility that earns upvotes because the content actually deserves them.
The structure matters too. Posts that rank in subreddits and get cited by AI tend to share common characteristics. A clear problem stated upfront, specific details that demonstrate genuine knowledge, and a conclusion that can be easily extracted and referenced. That is not an accident. It is the intersection of good community writing and smart GEO strategy.
The window is still open
Most brands are still treating Reddit as an afterthought or ignoring it entirely. The brands building authentic Reddit presence today are quietly building one of the strongest GEO signals available, one that influences not just the people reading those threads but every AI-generated answer that cites them afterward.
That window will not stay open forever. As more brands wake up to the opportunity, the communities will become more crowded and the bar for earning genuine engagement will rise.
The best time to start was six months ago. The second best time is now.
Where I come in
Helping brands build authentic visibility in Reddit and across AI-powered search is exactly what I do. Whether that means developing a Reddit content strategy, auditing where your brand currently appears in AI-generated answers, or building a GEO approach that works across all the channels AI looks at, I am happy to help.
The brands that figure this out early will have an advantage that compounds over time. Feel free to reach out if you want to explore what that looks like for your brand.
What is GEO & Why It's the Next Step After AEO
Most marketers have just started hearing about AEO (Answer Engine Optimization). But there's already a next step. It's called GEO, and understanding the difference between the two is becoming one of the most important distinctions in search strategy.
What is AEO?
Answer Engine Optimization is the practice of structuring your content so that AI systems like ChatGPT, Google AI Overview and Perplexity cite it when answering user questions. Instead of optimizing to rank in a list of links, you optimize to be the source an AI trusts enough to reference directly.
AEO focuses on your own content: your website, your blog, your structured data. Get those right and AI starts citing you.
What is GEO?
Generative Engine Optimization goes further. Where AEO is primarily about your own content, GEO is about managing how your brand appears across the entire internet, everywhere AI systems gather information to generate their answers.
That includes Reddit threads, news articles, review platforms, LinkedIn posts, third-party mentions and any other source an AI might pull from when building a response about your industry or brand.
GEO recognizes that AI doesn't just read your website. It synthesizes information from hundreds of sources simultaneously. If your brand only appears on your own channels, you are invisible to a significant part of how AI builds its understanding of your space.
The key difference
AEO asks: is my content structured so AI can cite it?
GEO asks: does my brand exist credibly across all the places AI looks?
They are not competing strategies. AEO is the foundation. GEO is the next layer.
What GEO looks like in practice
A brand with a strong GEO strategy shows up in Reddit discussions their buyers are having. They get mentioned in industry newsletters. Their founder has a LinkedIn presence that signals expertise. Third-party review sites reference them positively.
When an AI system gets asked about a problem that brand solves, it finds evidence of that brand everywhere it looks, not just on the brand's own website.
That consistency of presence across the web is what GEO builds.
Why this matters now
Most brands are still figuring out basic SEO. A smaller number are starting to think about AEO. Almost no one is thinking strategically about GEO yet.
That gap is the opportunity. The brands that start building cross-web presence now will have a compounding advantage that is very difficult to replicate once the space gets crowded.
Where I come in
This is exactly what I work with. I help brands and agencies build visibility across both traditional search and AI-powered answer engines, combining AEO-optimised content on their own channels with a broader GEO strategy that ensures they show up wherever AI looks.
If you are starting to think about how your brand appears in AI-generated answers, or if you want to understand the gap between where you are now and where you need to be, I am happy to help. Whether that means auditing your current AI visibility, building a content strategy that works for both Google and answer engines, or simply having a conversation about where to start, feel free to reach out.
Why a Film Background Makes You Better at AEO Content
The president of the most valuable AI company in the world studied literature. Not code.
Daniela Amodei, President of Anthropic, the company behind Claude, recently told ABC News:
"In a world where AI is very smart and capable of doing so many things, the things that make us human will become much more important instead of much less important."
Anthropic does not just preach this. They hire for it. They look for great communicators, people with high emotional intelligence, critical thinkers and kind, empathetic humans. As Daniela puts it, humanities skills will be more important than ever.
I spent years in the film industry before I ever wrote a single piece of SEO copy. And reading that quote, something clicked.
What film school actually teaches you
Studying film science and working as a director and screenwriter teaches you things that no marketing course covers.
You learn how to build tension before a payoff. How to earn an audience's trust before you ask for their attention. How to structure a story so that each beat leads naturally to the next, without the audience noticing the architecture underneath.
You learn to ask: why would someone care about this? What do they already believe, and how does this story connect to that? What needs to be shown versus what needs to be said?
These are not soft skills. They are precision instruments for communication.
Why this matters for AEO and GEO
Answer Engine Optimization is the practice of creating content that gets cited by AI systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overview. When someone asks an AI a question, it pulls from sources it trusts. Your content either earns that citation or it does not.
What determines whether it does? Not keyword density. Not technical optimisation alone. Trust signals. Clarity. Structure. And above all, whether it reads like a real person with genuine experience actually wrote it.
AI can generate words at scale. What it cannot generate is judgment. The instinct to know when a paragraph rings false. The ability to feel the moment when a story earns belief rather than demands it. The understanding of when to slow down, when to be direct, and when a single specific detail does more work than three generic sentences.
That is a film education. That is what years of storytelling actually builds.
The content that gets cited is the most human content
In my work helping brands build visibility in AI-generated answers, the pattern is consistent. The content that earns citations is not the most optimised. It is the most trustworthy. The most specific. The most clearly written by someone who actually understands what they are talking about and cares whether the reader understands it too.
Creative professionals such as writers, directors, journalists, designers, have been told for years that their backgrounds are not practical enough for the digital world. That they need to become more technical. More data-driven. More algorithmic.
What Daniela Amodei is saying, and what I see in the data every day, is the opposite.
The next era of search visibility will not be won by people who know how to game an algorithm. It will be won by people who know how to communicate like humans, because that is exactly what AI is learning to reward.
SEO vs AEO
The Difference Between SEO and AEO - Why It Matters in 2026
Search is changing faster than most brands realise. For the past two decades, SEO has been the dominant framework for online visibility. But a new discipline is emerging alongside it. One that operates by entirely different rules.
This is the difference between SEO and AEO, and why understanding both is no longer optional.
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization is the practice of optimising your content so it ranks highly in search engine results pages, primarily Google. When someone types a query, Google returns a list of links. SEO determines which links appear at the top.
The core mechanics of SEO include keyword research, backlinks, technical site health, and content quality. Success is measured in rankings and organic traffic.
What is AEO?
Answer Engine Optimization is the practice of optimising your content to appear in AI-generated answers. When someone asks ChatGPT, Google AI Overview, or Perplexity a question, they receive a direct, synthesised answer - not a list of links.
AEO determines whether your brand is cited as a source in that answer.
The core mechanics of AEO include content structure, topical authority, third-party citations, and making your content easy for AI systems to extract and reference. Success is measured in brand mentions, citations, and share of voice across AI platforms.
The key differences
SEO optimises for clicks. AEO optimises for citations.
In SEO, the goal is to get a user to visit your website. In AEO, the goal is to be the source an AI system trusts enough to reference when answering a question, even if the user never visits your site at all.
This shift is significant. Studies suggest that Google AI Overviews now appear in approximately 84% of searches. When an AI overview appears, click-through rates on organic results drop sharply. Traffic is no longer a reliable indicator of visibility.
Do they work together?
Yes, and this is important. SEO and AEO are not competing disciplines. Strong SEO remains the foundation. A technically sound, well-structured website with high-quality content is still the starting point for both.
But AEO extends beyond your website. It requires managing how your brand appears across the entire web - on Reddit, in news articles, on review platforms, and anywhere else AI systems gather information.
The brands winning in 2026 are not choosing between SEO and AEO. They are building for both simultaneously.
What this means for your content strategy
If you are still measuring success purely in rankings and traffic, you are missing a growing share of your actual visibility. The questions your customers are asking AI right now may already be influencing their decisions, and your brand may or may not be part of those answers.
AEO is not a replacement for SEO. It is the natural next step for any brand serious about being found in a search landscape that has fundamentally changed.
Myself, André Havéus, is an SEO and AEO Copywriter and AI Search Strategist helping brands build visibility in both traditional and AI-powered search. Based between Karlshamn, Sweden and Cape Town, South Africa.