By Phoebe Eileen
If you were on the internet at any point in the mid to late 2000s, Reddit was likely one of the first social media sites you experienced. In the days of my wide-eyed internet youth, I often found myself going back and forth between Facebook and Reddit. It's been quite a journey seeing the latter` grow to become one of the most visited sites on the web today, but it has been even more fascinating to see what a mammoth site like it can do for businesses big and small!
What is Reddit all about?
Reddit describes itself as a social network of communities (called subreddits) that center around the various interests that people have. There are over 2 million subreddits, according to Metrics for Reddit. Think of anything that people may have even the slightest passing interest in, and there's probably a community around it (yes, I looked up cows, and sure enough, there was a subreddit for it).
Reddit separates itself from other social media platforms in a few fascinating ways:
It has a bulletin-board structure. Users create their posts, and other users amuse themselves by liking, disliking, or making comments on them.
It's got a unique like and dislike scheme, better known as the upvote and downvote system. It is a democratic setting where more upvotes move a post higher up a bulletin board, meaning more people can see it.
Each upvote that your post or comment receives earns your account "karma" which are just points that can influence your standing within a community. You want to accumulate as many of them as you can because one downvote deducts one point of karma.
All Reddit accounts are anonymous, as users don't need to reveal their names or email addresses to anyone. This makes users on this site notoriously frank in their posts and comments.
Who are Reddit’s users?
It should be clear that most people on Reddit are there for entertainment. It is very much an immersive community setting, where constant interaction is what gets your account noticed.
You will also find businesses with dedicated subreddits that engage with their audience by offering support or providing a place where they can openly talk about their products or services.
How can your brand market itself on Reddit?
Growth on Reddit as a brand can take one of two different approaches, depending entirely on how you choose to use the platform.
1. Connecting with a community
There's a subreddit for anything, even your target market as a business. A brand can have a business subreddit that they can use to engage with their audience, growing a community through answering questions and even commenting within other relevant subreddits! With enough community trust, you can guide a part of your audience to your website, where a visit can hopefully turn into a sale. Be wary, however, because Redditors are very defensive about their communities. Sometimes aggressively promotional or out-of-touch comments may rub many users the wrong way. Upvotes and downvotes are the bread and butter of the Reddit community, the latter of which can be bad for karma and damaging to the reputation you may be trying to build. Gaming company EA experienced this when its community team's response to a user's concerns about one of their games did not go over well with Redditors. It remains the most downvoted comment in Reddit history to date. Nissan USA succeeded with this approach by engaging with the community directly in a marketing campaign where the team answered questions and offered gifts to users in their 2014 partnered promotion with Amazon. Communities are different, and effectively connecting with them takes some research and an understanding of the overall sentiments of users.
2. Reddit Ads
Like all other social media platforms, Reddit offers its users the option of marketing through placing ads in feeds or on the right-hand sidebar. The conversion rate is lower than on most other social media platforms. However, the ads are much more affordable, with costs per click as low as $0.44 where sites like Instagram would stand at $1.33.
The beauty of Reddit ads is that you can place them based on location settings and interests, and have the site algorithm naturally post them within the subreddits that are related to or relevant to your choices. Alternatively, you can choose to select the specific subreddits where you’d like your ad to feature.
The platform as a whole is often surprisingly easy to navigate, just choose between three post formats that you want your ad to take. Go for the headline-text only format to convey a well written promotional message. You can also choose to use the headline-picture format or the headline-video format for your post if you feel confident that the media will display your offer better. You can add a link to your webpage on your post as a way to funnel in visitors to your site as well.
The key is to make your post engaging, and for this, you need the tone of your writing to relate well to the targeted audience. There is no rule specifying that the tone of your message needs to be professional or “markety”. Sometimes, the more casual and fun-sounding, the better! A well-crafted ad post can fit in so well within a subreddit that users will engage with it as they normally would with any other post, and that’s a great thing.
Again, caution is essential when opting to launch an ad campaign. Take your time and research the subreddits that are related to the product or service that you offer. An unrelated ad ending up on an even more unrelated subreddit is both a waste of money for you and a ticket to lost karma from unnecessary downvotes.
Conclusion:
The takeaway here is that Reddit is a niche social media platform, but one that is worth including in your marketing plan as a business. It's the kind of website that plays by its own rules, and the subreddits built within it reflect this perfectly. Redditors are not easy to market to, but an authentic connection with them is a step in the right direction. It's all about naturally engaging with communities and offering them value through your comments and posts. So go ahead and try to have fun posting on Reddit, your niche community is in there somewhere, it’s just a matter of exerting a genuine effort to reach them.
PHOEBE EILEEN
Phoebe is a bit of a nerd who likes to write about both current events and history. Her love for the written word inspires her years of experiences as she turns her thoughts into blog posts that she shares with the world. When she's not crafting her next write-up, she is relaxing with a good book or a quick videogame with her friends.
Find her online:
Medium: @phoebeabongo
Twitter: @leeniephoebe