While Facebook still enjoys its market leader status among the social media platforms used worldwide, with more than 2.8 billion active users every month, it is far from the only one that promises benefits to marketers and brands. In fact, depending on the nature of the business, other social networks may even be more promising.
Reddit is one such platform. It offers marketers the ability to connect directly with their target audience with minimal research and expenses. However, the platform is also somewhat challenging to master. Thankfully, the benefits of using Reddit for marketing outweigh the obstacles and risks.
If you’re interested in using the platform to get your brand out there, read further. This article will detail why Reddit is an excellent tool for marketing businesses and provide tips to help you make the most out of this platform.
Reddit – The Website
Reddit is a unique and effective blend of forum, social network, and news. It allows users to post and interact with content in a way that is straightforward but also very intuitive. From this information alone, you can tell that Reddit inspires a kind of engagement that other social media platforms do not.
This engagement fuels the website’s growth and is arguably the most important reason marketers should take notice, but more on this below.
Reddit – The Community
Reddit is divided into groups or communities called subreddits. There are more than 2.8 million subreddits in existence, according to recent data by Oberlo.
Subreddits can be described as groups dedicated to certain topics or niches. They can be anything from politics to makeup trends. There are subreddits where people write fiction, apply for jobs, and share recipes. In fact, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that there is a subreddit for just about anything.
You can do a quick test by Googling any subject that comes to mind and adding ‘reddit’ to the search.
For marketers, this means that you can engage with a group that already has at least some interest in your business or industry. You can mount entire campaigns knowing that you are marketing to people who are already familiar with your niche.
A store selling bowling gloves, for example, can join a subreddit called r/bowling to interact with people who actively play. A car detailer can participate in the Mercedes Benz subreddit for a more targeted approach. And you’re not limited to joining only one subreddit.
You can also stay on top of trends and best practices in your industry by subscribing to subreddits and reading user-created and shared content.
Also, you can use subreddits for market research. Reddit is a great place to gather data on your target market—their pain points, what they’re saying about you or competitors, what they want to see in your products, and what their experience using your products was like. You can do so in a number of ways, such as by posting a survey on a subreddit and asking questions in a subreddit relevant to your industry.
The Content
This is where it gets a little trickier. While anyone can join most subreddits and participate in their discussions, the Reddit community has a particular aversion against blatant marketing pitches. It’s not that the users or Redditors are anti-marketing. They are just not always using the website for that purpose.
Instead, there is a strong focus on community in Reddit. Members prefer to interact with other people, not brands—there are other social media platforms better suited for that kind of interaction.
This emphasis on community is reflected in Reddit’s scoring system for content and comments. Redditors can upvote or downvote the posts or comments on posts as they see fit. The number of upvotes informs the position the content or comment is presented.
While this democratic system is not new nor unique to Reddit, here, it is incredibly powerful. If you post something that is generally disliked or downvoted, its exposure will suffer, as well as your credibility.
In fact, Reddit users have a karma score that is directly related to the upvotes their posts and comments receive. The exact calculation for karma is known only to Reddit, but upvotes generally increase it and downvotes do the opposite.
For marketers, this means the upvote and karma system can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, every post or comment has the potential to discredit your brand. However, you can also make the most of this and build your credibility in a more meaningful and impactful way.
If you’re new to the website, it will be helpful first to observe. Join the subreddits related to your business and do your research on how users are interacting. You can then build your credibility by addressing the issues or concerns that other users raise. If you do this correctly, you’ll see your karma points and follower count rise.
The anonymity of Reddit also plays a part in the interactions. Being anonymous allows people to be more open about their opinions. Prepare for some brutally honest feedback about your posts or products.
If done right, your posts will receive the engagement you’re hoping for, which will translate to quality leads and, eventually, an improvement to your bottom line.
Using Reddit for Marketing – The Future
Reddit is one of the most popular social networks in the U.S. and around the world today. The website has 52 million active daily users, which represents a 44% growth compared to 2020. This growth has been a trend for the platform for the past few years. Between 2015 and 2019, there has been a 258.33% growth in active users.
Reddit’s popularity is highly unlikely to fall anytime soon. As people move toward an increasingly digitally reliant world, the appeal of the social network will only continue to grow.
According to Oberlo, around 44% of Redditors belong to the 18-29 age group. For marketers, this means an investment in Reddit advertising today is bound to remain beneficial for years to come as the landscape continues to evolve.
In 2015, Wired wrote a piece that emphasized the potential of Reddit. In the article, they compared how the website was founded on the same principles as the internet. Because of this, they said that the future of the website is a reflection of the future of the entire internet as well.
Should You Use Reddit For Marketing?
Maximize Reddit for marketing. Gain market insights, traffic, and leads. But always remember that the platform doesn’t take kindly to blatant pitches. Reddit puts it best themselves on their page about self-promotion: “It’s perfectly fine to be a Redditor with a website; it’s not okay to be a website with a Reddit account.”
For more helpful information about Reddit, social media advertising, and digital marketing in general, fill out the form on our contact page. We offer professional Reddit and forum management services to help businesses leverage the platform for their marketing goals.