Reddit isn’t often mentioned slantingly the “big” social networks, though it’s one of the most influential. It boasts 420 million users — 20% higher than the population of the United States — and receives increasingly traffic than Amazon with over 1 billion monthly unique visitors.
Reddit continues to grow by double digits every year, subtracting 25% increasingly users in 2020 and 14% increasingly in 2021. That growth, combined with 40% of Gen Z searching social platforms for info instead of Google, makes Reddit a unique opportunity for brands.
But Reddit isn’t the weightier place for every company. It has a unique vibe, which this vendible will explain.
Find out if Reddit marketing is right for you, and how to get started on the self-proclaimed “frontpage of the Internet.”
Download our Social Trends report to get all the data you need to plan a relevant social strategy and set yourself up for success on social in 2023.
What is Reddit?
Reddit is a social network with a forum-style discussion structure. Users create posts in topic-based communities — tabbed subreddits — and interact in scuttlebutt threads. Every thread has an OP (original poster) who started it. Users can moreover vote content by others “up” or “down” the algorithm.
Reddit launched in 2005 and sold to Conde Nast less than a year later for $10 million USD. A unconfined payday for the founders, recent higher grads, although as of Q4 2022, Reddit now has an unscientific value between $10-15 billion USD.
How does Reddit work?
Reddit is all well-nigh fostering polity by encouraging users (a.k.a. redditors) to interact with each other.
Before today’s visually-focused platforms like TikTok and Instagram existed, we eldest Millennials only had web forums with text posts to connect with others virtually worldwide interests. (R.I.P. Yahoo Groups.)
Reddit is a hybrid between a forum and a modern social network: Subreddits are like individual forum sites, but you can participate in everything with one account, like a social network.
The other big thing that sets Reddit untied is the way their algorithm works: Popular posts with lots of upvotes get increasingly exposure in the Reddit homepage and subreddit feeds. And, downvoted content receives less exposure.
Instead of using complicated algorithmic tools to rank content, Reddit’s algorithm runs on votes. Simple and effective.
Redditors use the platform in many ways, but worldwide ones are:
- To ask for help with a specific problem, such as tech tutorials (or big life crises)
- Subscribing to subreddits to stay informed well-nigh their favorite topics
- Connecting with others who share their interests
- To learn something new (check out r/IWantToLearn)
- For entertainment via memes, humor subreddits, or to discuss TV or movies
What is a subreddit?
Subreddits serve as mini-communities within the site — like Facebook Groups, but public — and foster user interaction virtually worldwide interests. Subreddits have their own URL, for example the Star Wars subreddit can be found at www.reddit.com/r/StarWars.
People often leave in the r/ when talking well-nigh subreddits. Seeing the leading r/ in front of a word is recognizable as stuff a Reddit polity scrutinizingly anywhere on the web these days. For example, instead of saying “the memes subreddit,” I’d say “r slash memes.”
Anyone can create a subreddit. Like any online group, most large subreddits have multiple moderators to alimony the polity on-topic and spam-free. To help with this, subreddits often have specific rules and posting requirements to follow, with consequences for not waxy to them.
Make sure you read the rules surpassing posting or commenting, lest you risk shattering the conch shell of digital democracy.
You can find subreddit rules in the right sidebar or in the defended Rules tab.
What is karma on Reddit?
A redditor’s karma is their net upvote score. Clear as mud?
Reddit users can upvote or downvote comments and posts, indicated by the up and lanugo arrows on the left side.
Every upvote counts as a 1 to your karma score, and every downvote subtracts from it. Upvotes – Downvotes = Your karma score.
Having a upper karma score doesn’t requite you any special powers, but it does serve as a unstipulated indication of how helpful you are. It’s a quick “trust temperature” others can use to evaluate you.
You can see someone’s karma score by hovering over their username.
What is a flair on Reddit?
Flair is a full-length many subreddits use. There are 2 types of flair:
- User flair
- Post flair
User flair is a text or icon “tag” that appears without your username in a specific subreddit. Sometimes you can segregate it yourself and in some subreddits, only moderators may assign flair.
In the r/cats subreddit, you can segregate a cat successors as your user flair. This polity moreover has achievement-based user flairs that towards automatically when you reach those milestones.
Post or link flair is like a subject tag or category that subreddits use to differentiate and filter content. These show up as multi-colored labels next to a post’s title.
Not all subreddits have user flairs, though most use post flairs to alimony things organized.
What is an upvote on Reddit?
An upvote is equivalent to a “like” on platforms like Instagram or Facebook. It ways someone likes your post or comment, or found it useful, insightful, helpful, etc.
You can see how many upvotes a post has and as mentioned earlier, each upvote helps raise your karma score.
6 ways businesses can use Reddit
1. Market research
With so many highly-specific subreddits, Reddit is the perfect place to learn increasingly well-nigh your target regulars — everything from a quick vibe trammels to in-depth insights. Is it a little stalkerish? Meh. Good marketing unchangingly is, right?
Use Reddit to find out what’s really important to your peeps.
For example, if you’re towers an ecommerce shipping app, read threads to see what users like and don’t like well-nigh their current provider, features they wish existed, or what would make them switch.
Obviously a few comments won’t revolutionize your product strategy, which is why Reddit shouldn’t be your sole source of market research. But it’s an easy and self-ruling way to validate or generate ideas, expressly if you notice worldwide feedback patterns. You can stay in stalker mode by just reading, or create a branded worth to directly engage with users.
Efficiency hack: Do Reddit research slantingly all your other social media management inside Hootsuite with the Reddit app add-on. Set up streamlined keyword searches and hands monitor new posts.
For a increasingly detailed process, trammels out our guide to Reddit market research.
2. Social listening
All the benefits of market research without having to do the searching yourself. The joys of technology.
Social listening tools automatically capture mentions of your brand, or other specified target keywords, and measure sentiment over time. Essentially, it’s tracking what people say and think well-nigh your visitor wideness multiple platforms and delivering that data in a neat report.
A popular method for listening on Reddit is with Brandwatch, which is part of Hootsuite Insights, and misogynist as a self-ruling app integration.
Learn more, including other tool recommendations, in our guide to social listening.
3. Unite marketing
Can you make a ton of money with affiliate marketing, either as an individual or business? Heck yes.
Is sprayin’ your unite links wideness Reddit and prayin’ people click them the weightier way to unzip that? Heck nope.
Reddit’s official content policy doesn’t explicitly ban unite links, but they do warn versus coming wideness as “spammy.” It does, however, explicitly say you can’t disguise link sources, A.K.A. use shorteners or cloaking tools to purposefully pass off an unite link as organic.
More than link management, Reddit cautions versus seeming spammy by:
- Only posting self-promotional content.
- Posting the same scuttlebutt wideness multiple subreddits.
- Sending a lot of unsolicited private messages.
TL;DR? Use Reddit with the intention of towers connections and stuff a genuinely helpful person, not just to make money.
So how can you be genuine AND make money at the same time?
- Follow the 60/40 rule: Ensure at least 60% of your contributions are promo-free and useful for others.
- Insert a step between Reddit and your unite links: Many subreddits don’t indulge unite links at all. To get virtually this, make the link in your post go to a page on your website well-nigh the product or topic. From there, people can click on your unite links.
4. Advertising
Reddit ads can reach up to 50 million daily zippy users, but with huge potential reach comes huge potential wasted spend.
Effective targeting is important for all social ads, but expressly on Reddit. Remember how Reddit is basically a tuft of separate communities, A.K.A. subreddits?
This is a key point for advertisers: You can target your ads to specific subreddits. Whoa.
For Reddit ads, don’t be wrung to get specific. For example, members of r/Hiking are probably sturdy people who like sports, right? Vector’s ad wouldn’t make much sense in a unstipulated campaign, but it fits here.
You can moreover install Reddit’s Pixel on your website to retarget web visitors, plus segregate from standard targeting options like location, interests, and more.
5. Create your own subreddit
If you’re ready to go all in on Reddit marketing, create your own subreddit. This can either be branded with your name or be topic-based.
For example: r/dbrand is a company-focused sub for snarky tech device skin manufacturer, Dbrand.
Their polity serves as a place for loyal fans to find out well-nigh new collections and get quick consumer service, either from the visitor or from other Redditors.
Yes, when washed-up right, your subreddit can indulge your weightier customers to do consumer service for you. Now that’s a social ROI to get behind.
As a topic-first community, you don’t know at first that r/NewTubers is run by a brand.
The subreddit focuses on helping new YouTube creators grow, and is operated by Fetch, which helps small YouTubers monetize their videos surpassing they’re eligible for the official YouTube Partner Program.
The key to a topic-based polity like this is to ensure it’s valuable without stuff self-promotional. Mention your company, but not often.
Moderating a subreddit can take a considerable value of time so make sure Reddit is a good fit for your audience, and fits into your marketing plan, surpassing jumping in.
6. Host an AMA
AMAs, or “Ask Me Anything” threads, are very popular on Reddit.
There’s an unshortened AMA subreddit, although I wouldn’t suggest posting there as a brand. Instead, host an AMA within your own subreddit (if you have one), or partner with a popular subreddit in your industry.
Subreddits are unchangingly looking for valuable content to engage their members and many are unshut to hosting AMAs with verified experts (that’s you!). Many will ask for “proof” of who you are, which is usually a photo of you at work standing next to Apollo 11 to verify you’re really a rocket scientist, for example.
AMAs help you learn what your regulars truly cares well-nigh based on what they ask. And, they can strengthen trust in your trademark through towers real connections.
Not to mention get a ton of views — Carlos’ AMA whilom got over 4,500 comments.
How to start a Reddit account?
1. Sign up
Go to Reddit and click Sign Up. Create an worth with your Google, Apple, or email account.
2. Segregate a username
Reddit will fill in a (ridiculous) username for you. Pick your own and a password.
3. Optional: Personalize your home feed
Hooray, you have a Reddit account!
Answering a few onboarding questions will help personalize your recommendations, or you can skip it. You do have to pick at least 3 interests surpassing skipping.
Is Reddit worth it?
Only you can wordplay that. Ask yourself:
- Does Reddit fit into our marketing plan?
- Which of our marketing goals does Reddit tie into?
- Do we have the time and resources to add Reddit to our content mix?
If towers genuine polity is a social media goal of yours, starting your own subreddit is a unconfined way to unzip that. Or if a subreddit isn’t right for you, consider using Reddit as an razzmatazz channel.
Last but not least, you could stay incognito and simply use Reddit as a search engine for market research.
Download our Social Trends report to get all the data you need to plan a relevant social strategy and set yourself up for success on social in 2023.Get the full report now!
The post What is Reddit, and Should Your Trademark Be Using It? appeared first on Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard.