r/PublicRelations rules, stats, and what to post

This is a subreddit for people who work in public relations. The description says it plainly: a subreddit for PR professionals and unprofessionals. That second word is a little joke, but the point stands, the room is open to practitioners and to people who are still learning the craft. The rules tell you what counts as on topic here. Posts should be related to the practice of public relations, and good submissions pose questions or generate discussion about the field. So the people posting here are communicators, agency folks, in-house PR people, and students or career changers who want to talk about the actual work: pitching, crises, media relations, salary questions, and the daily practice of the job. What it is not is a place to promote things, and it is not a place to talk about the software and services PR people use. The moderators have made both of those boundaries very explicit.

Four rules decide almost everything for a marketer. “Self-promotion” says submitting links to your own content or blogs, or promoting services and tools, will be removed and may result in a ban, and it invites you to message the mods if you want to check first. “No discussions of tools” is unusual and strict: the subreddit does not accept posts about products or services that PR people use, and the moderators explain this is because threads about such products flooded the sub. “Off-topic posts” requires that everything relates to the practice of public relations. “Low effort posts” requires submissions to pose questions or generate discussion, so a thin drive-by post fails even if the topic is right. Two more rules shape how you behave: “Questions and frustrations” points simple questions to the weekly simple questions thread, and “Frustrations” points venting to the weekly Friday Frustrations thread.

If you are a founder trying to earn credibility here, drop the launch mindset entirely and think like a practitioner with a genuine question. The strongest safe shape here is a discussion post about the practice of public relations itself. Share a hard-won lesson from a real situation, leave the company name out of it, and end with an honest question the community will enjoy answering. If you have a specific, well-reasoned observation about how the industry handles something, that fits too, as long as it is measured and not an attack on a named person. If what you have is a simple question, use the weekly simple questions thread the rules point to, and pack it with relevant context so people can actually help. If what you have is a frustration, save it for the Friday Frustrations thread. Notice that none of this involves your product, because any post about PR tools and services is off the table here, full stop.

The clearest way to get removed or banned here is self promotion. Do not link your own blog, your own case study, your agency, or your tool. Do not soften it into a question either, because promoting services or tools is called out by name. Do not start a thread about any PR product or service, including asking which ones people recommend, because that discussion is banned outright. Do not post anything off topic, and do not post something so thin that it never generates real discussion, because low effort submissions get removed. Do not attack specific individuals, and if you criticize an organization, keep it specific, measured, and well reasoned. Finally, match the format: simple questions go in the weekly simple questions thread, and venting goes in the weekly Friday Frustrations thread rather than its own post.

Rule “No discussions of tools” stopped me cold, because a whole category of posts I see everywhere else, the tool recommendation threads, is simply banned here. I also noticed there are no observed top posts for this community, which tells me the bar for getting traction is high and I would be learning from the rules alone. My honest read is that this room protects its professional discussion fiercely, and the only respectful move is to show up as a curious practitioner, never as a promoter.