Marketing on Reddit: A Contradiction in Terms?

by | Jul 25, 2013 | Articles, Content Marketing, Social Media

July 25, 2013: Reddit  — the social news and entertainment website — is hot with digital marketers. Emerging in 2005 as a powerhouse online community, Reddit has hosted AMA’s (“Ask Me Anything”) from personalities as illustrious as President Obama himself. Organized into categories called “subreddits,” Reddit is a self-curated, vote-based community where content is voted up and down. While raw and rough, Reddit has also done some immense good via its r/charity and r/smartgiving subreddits.Marketers shouldn’t ignore Reddit. Even though its operation might seem unusual when compared to more established platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google +, it’s a terrific tool for building and activating a fan base.

I hope you have a basic familiarity with Reddit. If you don’t, you can start here.  I’ll assume that you’re familiar with the basics of subreddits, karma, up/down voting, and the time decay algorithm that Reddit uses. My aim at is show you how to get the most out of Reddit.Reddit offers the immediacy and vibrancy of Twitter with the intelligent conversation of Google+ and the focus of Facebook Groups. It also offers paid advertising with basic analytics to track performance (click throughs, impressions, bar charts over time, downloadable stats).

Reddit can be a fantastic way of promoting your brand, be it a celebrity or product. However, there are a few things to keep in mind:

1) Use it as a user first. Reddit is a very user-driven community, which gives the platform its strength. I recommend using it as a normal user first. Getting familiar with Reddit’s unique culture, acronyms, and so forth will let you select the appropriate Subreddit to use. Also, each subreddit has its own brand of the larger “Redditiquette.”

2) Know your Moderator. Unless you control the Subreddit and are a moderator, you’ll be dealing with one, especially if the Subreddit  you’re targeting — or the one that deals with your brand — was created by someone other than you. Moderators have the ability to post their own content, remove links, and otherwise stymie your marketing efforts. Make sure to be on good terms with them when you post content to the targeted subreddit.

3) Own your efforts, but remember that you are a guest. If Twitter can be described as a highway, Linkedin as your job, Google Communities as your after school club, and Facebook as your cluttered living room, Reddit can be described as your friend’s garage. It’s that place where there’s all sorts of cool stuff, but it’s messy and you have to remember that you’re a guest.

4) Back it up with hard numbers.Coding lab Hackreactor created a basic tool called Reddit Insights that allows real time post tracking, user tracking, word clouds, and interactions viewing. Another tool, http://www.redditanalytics.com/, is a Reddit search engine that allows for deep diving into Reddit posts and keyword tracking, upvote/downvote analysis, and so on.

5) Understand the scope. There are quite a few things that the Reddit platform is bad for. It’s not really good for much conventional advertising. Specifically, posts that would be the norm for other platforms will be immediately downvoted and discarded from Reddit if they annoy Redditors. Some examples of Reddit advertising exist, but we feel that Reddit is best used more for distributing social content into specific welcoming communities, raising brand awareness, and conducting community relations. Any messaging that has the whiff of a sales pitch will be downvoted and destroyed by Redditors, and the site has clear guidelines about what it calls self promotion.

Redditors (registered Reddit members) reward original, engaging content. Spam techniques won’t work on Reddit, as such content will be immediately downvoted and forced off of the subreddit front page. This is different from owning a Twitter handle or a Facebook page. Community management skills are everything on Reddit, so an understanding of Redditiquette is crucial to success.

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