How to Crosspost on Reddit to Maximize Reach

Reddit crossposting is a native platform feature that allows users to share an existing post into a new subreddit, preserving the link back to the original and attributing karma to the original poster. Most marketers treat it as a secondary tactic. That is a mistake.

A well-executed crosspost strategy can transform a post that performs well in one niche community into a multi-subreddit event, exposing your content to different audiences with distinct engagement patterns, each resetting the time-decay clock and creating fresh momentum. In 2026, as organic Reddit reach becomes more competitive, crossposts represent one of the few native amplification mechanisms that requires no advertising budget.

This guide covers the full mechanics of Reddit crossposting — how it works technically, which subreddits permit it, how karma attribution functions, when to crosspost for maximum impact, and how to build a multi-subreddit strategy that compounds rather than dilutes your engagement velocity.

What Is a Reddit Crosspost?

A crosspost is a Reddit-native reshare mechanism. When you crosspost a post, Reddit creates a new submission in the destination subreddit that links directly to the original post. The original submission, its vote count, and its comments remain intact. The crosspost is treated as a new, independent submission in the destination community — complete with its own vote tally, its own comment thread, and its own position in the Hot feed.

This is categorically different from copying and pasting content or reposting a link manually. Reddit's interface clearly labels crossposts as crossposts, displays a thumbnail of the original post, and shows who the original poster (OP) was. Users in the destination subreddit can click through to the original, vote on it there, and read its original comment thread.

From a distribution standpoint, the mechanics matter in two important ways:

First, karma attribution. When a crosspost earns upvotes, those upvotes accrue to the crosspost submission — not to the original post. However, traffic generated by the crosspost (users clicking through to the original) can drive indirect upvote activity on the original. The original poster's karma comes from the original post's votes, not the crosspost's votes. This distinction matters for accounts where karma threshold requirements are a concern.

Second, engagement independence. Each crosspost generates its own comment thread. This means the same piece of content can simultaneously accumulate discussion in r/marketing, r/entrepreneur, and r/socialmedia — three separate conversations, three separate vote counts, three separate positions in three separate Hot feeds. The engagement velocity effect is multiplicative if timed correctly.

According to Reddit's own content policy at redditinc.com, crossposts are a sanctioned form of sharing content across communities, provided they comply with both the platform's site-wide rules and the individual subreddit's posting guidelines. The responsibility for compliance sits with the user initiating the crosspost, not with the original poster.

How to Crosspost on Reddit: Step-by-Step

The mechanical process of crossposting has been simplified in Reddit's current interface. Here is the complete workflow:

On desktop (new Reddit UI):

1. Navigate to the post you want to crosspost.
2. Click the share icon below the post (the arrow pointing outward).
3. Select "Crosspost" from the share menu.
4. In the crosspost dialog, search for and select the destination subreddit.
5. The original title is pre-populated — you can edit it to better fit the destination community's norms.
6. Add a text body if relevant (this is the crosspost's own body, separate from the original).
7. Choose the appropriate flair if required by the destination subreddit.
8. Submit.

On mobile (Reddit app):

1. Tap the share icon on the post.
2. Tap "Crosspost to a Community."
3. Search for the destination subreddit.
4. Edit the title if needed.
5. Submit.

One critical rule: you can only crosspost to subreddits where crossposting is explicitly allowed. If a subreddit has disabled crossposts, the crosspost option will not appear for that community, and attempting to route around this restriction is a violation of community rules.

Before executing a crosspost strategy, check each destination subreddit's rules (visible in the sidebar and in the "About" section). Subreddits with strict self-promotion rules, original-content-only requirements, or explicit crosspost bans must be excluded from your distribution plan.

Subreddit Rules and Crosspost Permissions

Not all subreddits accept crossposts. The permissibility of crossposting varies significantly across Reddit's communities, and there is no universal rule — each subreddit's moderation team sets its own policy.

Subreddits that commonly allow crossposts:

• General interest and aggregator communities (r/InterestingAsFuck, r/nextfuckinglevel)
• Multi-topic discussion boards
• Subreddits explicitly designed for cross-community sharing
• Communities focused on news, research, and information sharing

Subreddits that commonly restrict or ban crossposts:

• Original content communities (r/OC subreddits that require content created by the poster)
• Highly moderated professional communities (r/medicine, r/law)
• Communities with strict no-self-promotion rules
• Subreddits built around specific formats that crossposts do not fit

According to Buffer's research on Reddit marketing, failure to read and follow subreddit-specific rules is the number one reason that otherwise high-quality Reddit marketing campaigns fail. This applies directly to crosspost strategies — a crosspost that violates community rules will be removed by moderators, destroying both the distribution opportunity and potentially flagging your account for increased scrutiny.

The practical checklist before crossposting to any subreddit:

1. Read the full sidebar rules.
2. Check if crossposting is explicitly mentioned.
3. Verify that the content type you are crossposting (link, image, text) is permitted.
4. Confirm your account's karma meets any posting thresholds.
5. Check whether the destination requires a specific flair or title format.

Skipping this checklist is how crosspost strategies produce moderator removals instead of engagement.

Karma Attribution and Account Strategy

Understanding how karma flows through crossposts is essential for managing your Reddit account's growth alongside your content strategy.

The karma attribution model:

When you submit an original post, all upvotes on that post contribute to your link karma. When someone else crossposts your content, the karma from the crosspost's upvotes goes to the person who crossposted it — not to you. However, if you crosspost your own content, you receive the karma from the crosspost's votes.

This creates a strategic choice: do you crosspost your own content (retaining karma), or do you cultivate community members who will crosspost it organically (sacrificing karma for authenticity)?

For marketing purposes, self-crossposting is more controllable and more reliable. Organic crossposts by other community members are more credible and carry no risk of being seen as self-promotion, but they are unpredictable.

A balanced approach: publish your original post and manage the first hour of engagement actively (see the go-viral-reddit playbook for the complete first-hour framework). If the post performs well, crosspost it yourself to related communities while the original is still rising — typically within 2 to 4 hours of the original submission. Frame each crosspost slightly differently to match the receiving community's norms, even if the underlying content is identical.

Karma thresholds matter. Many subreddits require minimum karma levels before users can post. A multi-subreddit crosspost strategy requires an account with sufficient karma to post in all target communities. Accounts with thin karma histories are disproportionately affected by posting restrictions. This is one reason that maintaining a healthy, aged account with diverse karma accumulation is a prerequisite for serious Reddit distribution work.

Building a Multi-Subreddit Crosspost Strategy

A multi-subreddit crosspost strategy treats your content as a single asset capable of serving multiple communities simultaneously. The goal is to identify communities where the content is legitimately relevant, sequence crossposts to maximize simultaneous velocity, and manage each distribution point as an independent engagement event.

Step 1: Map Your Subreddit Ecosystem

Before creating any content, build a map of subreddits where your content category is welcome. For a piece of content about Reddit marketing strategy, for example, the ecosystem might include:

• r/marketing (2M+ members, high competition)
• r/entrepreneur (3M+ members, moderate competition)
• r/socialmedia (500K members, lower competition)
• r/content_marketing (150K members, niche audience)
• r/growthhacking (200K members, highly relevant)
• r/digitalmarketing (300K members, relevant)

Not all of these may accept crossposts or self-promotion. After filtering by rules compliance, you have your eligible distribution network.

Rank your network by strategic value:

Start with your primary target — the subreddit where you have the highest confidence and the most relevant audience. This is the post that you optimize most heavily and support most aggressively with early engagement. Crossposts follow after the original post has demonstrated momentum.

Step 2: Customize Titles for Each Community

The single biggest mistake in crosspost execution is using the identical title in every destination subreddit. Subreddits have distinct cultures, vocabularies, and norms. A title that lands well in r/entrepreneur may read as tone-deaf in r/marketing.

Original title example: "I analyzed 3 months of Reddit posts to find what actually drives upvote velocity. Here's the data."

Adapted for r/marketing: "3-month Reddit data: what actually determines whether a post reaches the front page"

Adapted for r/socialmedia: "Reddit post analysis: the specific factors behind upvote velocity (data from 3 months)"

Adapted for r/growthhacking: "Quantifying Reddit upvote velocity: what the data says about early momentum and algorithm position"

The content is identical. The framing matches the vocabulary and style of each community. This is not manipulation — it is translation. Every effective communicator adjusts register for different audiences. Reddit is no different.

Step 3: Time Crossposts for Simultaneous Velocity

Timing is the variable that separates a good crosspost strategy from a great one. The goal is to engineer simultaneous engagement spikes across multiple communities, not to stagger posts so they peak sequentially.

Sprout Social's research on social media timing confirms that content posted during peak audience activity windows generates significantly higher engagement rates — a differential that is amplified on Reddit due to the platform's time-decay algorithm, which rapidly deprioritizes posts that are not accumulating upvotes relative to their age.

The timing framework for crossposts:

1. Submit your original post 15–30 minutes before the primary subreddit's peak activity window.
2. As the original post starts accumulating early upvotes (typically at the 30–60 minute mark), prepare your crossposts.
3. Execute the first wave of crossposts within the 2–4 hour window after original submission — while the original is still rising and the content is timely.
4. Execute the second wave (smaller subreddits) in the 4–8 hour window.

This sequence means that at the 4-hour mark, your content may simultaneously be ranking in the Hot feeds of three to five subreddits — each driving its own engagement velocity, each potentially surfacing the content to users who never saw it in the original community.

For a detailed breakdown of subreddit-specific timing data, use the free Reddit best time to post tool to identify peak windows for each community in your distribution network. Aligning crossposts with each destination subreddit's peak activity is the highest-leverage timing optimization available.

Step 4: Manage Each Crosspost as an Independent Engagement Event

Each crosspost is not a set-and-forget action — it is a new post in a new community that requires the same active management as your original submission.

For each crosspost:

• Post a substantive first comment within 5 minutes (can be adapted from the original's first comment but should address the specific community).
• Respond to every early comment quickly.
• Monitor the score relative to other posts currently visible in the Hot feed.
• If a crosspost is underperforming relative to its community's front page threshold, assess whether early engagement support is needed.

Active comment management is especially important in crosspost submissions because the original post's comment thread is not ported over. Each crosspost starts with zero comments, which can make it look thin compared to a post that already has an active discussion. Seeding the first few exchanges quickly transforms this from a weakness into a strength — you are building the conversation from scratch for a new audience.

Engagement Velocity and the Crosspost Effect

Engagement velocity — the rate at which a post accumulates upvotes and comments relative to its age — is the primary signal Reddit's algorithm uses to determine a post's position in the Hot feed. Crossposting affects engagement velocity in ways that are not immediately obvious.

The compounding velocity effect: When a post goes live in multiple subreddits simultaneously (or in close sequence), users in different communities may encounter it, upvote the original, share it externally, or comment on it at the same time. This parallel engagement activity, even though it occurs in separate subreddit contexts, can generate a broader halo of Reddit-wide interest that increases the probability of organic cross-community discovery.

The social proof signal: A post that a user sees referenced or crossposted in multiple communities they belong to carries implicit social proof — it has been validated by curators in different contexts. This increases click-through rates and upvote conversion from users who encounter it in any one location.

According to HubSpot's analysis of content distribution ROI, content that reaches audiences through multiple entry points consistently outperforms single-channel distribution on engagement and conversion metrics. Reddit's crosspost architecture is a native mechanism for achieving this multi-entry-point distribution within a single platform ecosystem.

When velocity is insufficient: Genuinely high-quality content sometimes fails to achieve the velocity threshold needed to reach a subreddit's front page because the account is new, the immediate network is small, or the target subreddit is highly competitive. In these cases, buying Reddit upvotes from aged, legitimate accounts can provide the early momentum that allows real users to discover and engage with the content organically. The distinction that matters is between low-quality bot services (which generate votes that Reddit's fraud detection removes) and quality services that use real accounts with authentic activity patterns.

Used on your original post before executing your crosspost sequence, early upvote support can ensure that the post you are crossposting is already showing a credible score — which increases the perceived quality of the content when it lands in destination subreddits. A crosspost from a post sitting at 87 upvotes reads very differently from a crosspost from a post at 3 upvotes. To get real Reddit upvotes that stick, the account quality and delivery methodology of the service you use determines everything.

Common Crosspost Mistakes to Avoid

Even experienced Reddit marketers make errors in crosspost execution that cost them reach. The following patterns consistently underperform or generate negative outcomes.

Crossposting too early. Crossposting before the original post has demonstrated any momentum means you are distributing an unproven piece of content. Other users who see the crosspost will check the original — if it has no upvotes and no comments, the crosspost looks like spam, not amplification. Wait until the original has at least 20–30 upvotes before crossposting.

Crossposting to irrelevant subreddits. Forcing a piece of content into communities where it does not belong generates downvotes, moderator removals, and, over time, reputational damage to your account. Every destination subreddit should have a genuine audience fit.

Using identical titles without adaptation. As covered in the multi-subreddit strategy section, identical titles in different communities fail to match the receiving community's norms. This reduces click-through rates and engagement conversion even when the underlying content is excellent.

Ignoring crosspost comment threads. A crosspost with no comments, no first response, and no moderation from the poster looks abandoned. Active management of each crosspost's comment thread is not optional if you want the crosspost to sustain its position in the Hot feed.

Crossposting to the same subreddit multiple times. Posting the same content (or effectively similar content) to the same subreddit repeatedly — whether through crossposts or new submissions — is spam under Reddit's content policy and will result in account actions. Each community should receive a crosspost only once per content piece.

Not checking whether the source post allows crossposts. Original posters can disable crossposts on their submissions. If you are crossposting someone else's content and the crosspost option is unavailable, respect that choice. Attempting to manually replicate or repost the content to route around this restriction is a policy violation.

Crossposting as Part of a Broader Reddit Strategy

Crossposting is most powerful when it is one component of a coordinated Reddit content strategy, not a standalone tactic. The posts that benefit most from a crosspost strategy are those that have already been engineered for Reddit virality — correct title format, strong community fit, optimized timing, and early engagement support.

For content to reach the Reddit front page, it typically needs to perform exceptionally well in at least one subreddit before the broader Reddit audience sees it. Crossposting accelerates the path to this level of visibility by multiplying the number of communities where the content has the opportunity to generate front-page-level scores. Understanding how to go viral on Reddit is the prerequisite for executing a crosspost strategy that delivers meaningful results — crossposting a post that was not engineered for virality to begin with simply distributes mediocrity more widely.

For scheduling the execution of your crosspost sequence — including timing original submissions and crosspost waves precisely — the discipline of scheduling Reddit posts provides the operational framework that turns a crosspost strategy from a reactive tactic into a planned distribution system.

And for tracking whether your crosspost strategy is actually generating returns, treat each subreddit's engagement metrics independently. A post that earns 150 upvotes in r/marketing and 80 upvotes in r/socialmedia is generating 230 total upvotes across two engaged audiences — a result that is difficult to achieve through any single-channel organic effort.

The 2026 Crosspost Landscape

Several platform-level trends in 2026 make crosspost strategy more important than it was in prior years.

Reddit's expanding user base. Reddit's daily active user count has grown significantly since its 2024 IPO, with the platform continuing to attract users from search, social media migration, and direct navigation. More users means more potential reach from every well-placed post — and more competition for front page positions in major subreddits.

Increasing moderator sophistication. As Reddit's moderation tooling has improved, subreddit moderators have become more effective at identifying and removing promotional content that violates community rules. This raises the quality bar for all submissions, including crossposts. Content that would have slipped through in prior years is now caught and removed, making content quality and rules compliance more critical than ever.

Reddit's algorithm updates. Reddit has continued to refine its engagement velocity algorithm to better distinguish authentic engagement from artificial inflation. This makes the quality of early engagement signals more important — a small number of high-quality early interactions from aged, active accounts significantly outperforms a large number of low-quality interactions from thin accounts.

According to Sprout Social's 2026 social media industry analysis, Reddit has become a primary discovery platform for B2B and B2C audiences across technology, finance, health, and consumer categories — making the ability to execute Reddit distribution strategies at a professional level an increasingly valuable marketing capability.

The crosspost mechanic is native to Reddit, sanctioned by the platform, and understood by users. A marketer who executes crosspost strategy with the same rigor applied to paid distribution campaigns can generate reach that, on a cost-per-engaged-user basis, compares favorably to any alternative channel.

Crossposting is not a workaround or a growth hack. It is a native Reddit distribution mechanism that exists precisely because the platform's value comes from content finding the communities where it belongs. Used correctly — with rules compliance, community fit, adapted titles, and active engagement management — a crosspost strategy transforms single-subreddit content into multi-community assets that generate compounding reach over time.