The Seller's Handbook: How to Use Reddit for Marketing

Reddit is a "non-mainstream" entertainment, social and news website that covers news, video games, movies, music, books, fitness, food and photo sharing, similar to the "American version of Baidu Tieba".

Some terminology about Reddit:

• Redditor: A user on Reddit;

• subReddit: a section categorized on the homepage of the website;

• Upvote/downvote: Similar to like/dislike, it determines the popularity of the post;

• threads: Main posts for discussion.

The style of the post on Reddit is as follows:

Generally, sellers will advertise on large social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and perhaps Pinterest, and regard these as the only social media marketing channels. Yes, there are a lot of users and social activities on these platforms, but the Internet is a "melting pot", and in addition to these large platforms, there may be other platforms where your potential customers are. Reddit may be such a platform.

Reddit is one of the largest and underutilized social media marketing platforms. According to Amazon subsidiary Alexa.com, as of March 6, 2019, Reddit was ranked as the 6th most visited website in the United States (17th in the world). While Reddit may not surpass Facebook in daily traffic, it has surpassed Twitter and LinkedIn.

Reddit bills itself as the "front page of the internet" because it focuses on the latest news and hot topics on the Internet. Although most users on Reddit regard the website as a forum, Reddit is more of a communication platform where users can post messages, and other users can upvote (similar to like) or downvote (similar to dislike) the posts. The most popular posts will be pushed to the front of the front page.

Reddit is a community divided into hundreds of separate categories based on topics and interests. For example, the r/politics community is dedicated to discussing global political news, while the r/dogberg community is dedicated to publishing silly and cute dog daily life. Twitter users can decide what appears on their homepage by following other people's individual accounts, and Redditors (Reddit users) can choose to subscribe to the communities they like.

Since the website allows users to comment on other people's posts, opening the Reddit homepage gives people the feeling of seeing the hot spots of the entire network. If you have registered a Reddit account, your homepage will push posts to you based on the communities and topics you follow. Just like Weibo posts, users can like or dislike, comment, and answer each other's questions.

Reddit users can freely choose how to participate in the site, whether just using the site to read news or actively posting to become a celebrity on a topic. For sellers, being able to reach potential customers and share original, high-quality product content is really a good thing.

After all, Redditors join communities based on interests and locations, and there are subReddits (similar to forums) and subreddits like r/Pittsburgh, which are dedicated to discussing local news. At first glance, it seems that sellers can directly enter Reddit and market to targeted potential customers.

But is this really the case? No! You know, Reddit is a website with a very low tolerance for advertising on the entire Internet.

If you think Reddit is like Craigslist, where you can post ads at will without considering the values ​​and preferences of your audience, you are wrong. Redditors are very protective of the community they have built and hate any commercial atmosphere that pollutes the site.

If you want to be a real person, it would be inappropriate to promote your T-shirts at a local comic book store party. Reddit communities are people who come together for some reason, whether it's a hobby, a cause, or just for fun. If you want to succeed on Reddit, you have to learn to respect them.

If you’re planning to market on Reddit, here are 4 best practices to consider:

• First, you need to register as a member . A brand new ID with no posts and reserved for future promotion of products or services is not convincing. Before you start marketing, you need to really participate in it, such as commenting on posts and understanding the jokes.

• Give more than you gain . Most Reddit communities require you to contribute 80% of your time and only spend 20% on self-promotion. Depending on the quality of your posts and the community you target, this ratio may go up or down.

• Post original content and actually participate in the discussion on your posts. If you repost your daily Facebook posts to subReddit, this marketing strategy will not be successful. However, if you can become a valuable and contributing user in the community, you may find new fans (i.e. brand audience).

• Don't try to fake it . Redditors can spot fake accounts and will be very angry if they find out they've been fooled.

While the above guidelines are mostly universal on the Reddit platform, you also need to understand that your target community may have its own culture.

If you are a member of the platform and are genuinely interested in the community you participate in, then it's not a big problem. You can learn the rules and customs of subReddit relatively easily, find out what kind of content posts are most watched, and then learn how to title and format your posts to get the most results. Sometimes you will also learn the unspoken rules of subReddit.

For example , the r/CatsStandingUp subreddit only allows photos of cats standing up. The community of more than 300,000 subscribers can only submit content with the title "Cat" and reply with the text "Cat". That's it. I don't know why, but this is the rule of the subreddit. If you post something different in the subreddit, almost immediately, your post will be downvoted and sink.

Here's a reminder for sellers, don't do anything that's against the rules. Redditors are quick to block or remove people who are obviously outsiders. They value the quality of posts, and the purity of the community. They believe that if they can't uphold the community guidelines, then their favorite corner of the internet may be overwhelmed by people who just want to sell things.

1) Register an account

First, you need to sign up for a Reddit account. Consider choosing a username that includes your brand keywords as well as your personal name. The more you put a real person’s name in your account, the more convincing it will seem.

2) Set up a Track Reddit account to receive reminders

TrackReddit (which has free and premium features) will send you alerts if someone uses a keyword or phrase you set on Reddit. This way, you can quickly jump in when a user mentions your brand and join the conversation on the exact topic or product type. The setup is as shown below:

3) Publish a post

Explore all the subReddits that might be relevant to your brand. You can start with the default homepage, but to explore more niche communities, check out the recommended communities in the subReddit sidebar and search Google for “Reddit + [industry keyword]” (replace it with your brand’s topic or keyword).

4) Always observe and listen

Log in to Reddit every day to see if there are any comments on your posts. Like and comment on posts that you have something to say. Understand the average time when popular posts are published and pushed in the target community.

5) Improve the quality of reviews

Before you post original content, comment regularly. I'm not saying you should comment everywhere, but I mean you have to actually contribute and take the time to participate in discussions, answer user questions, and share funny content.

6) Share unique and original content

Create content on Reddit that targets your target audience (the next section covers the types of content that are popular on Reddit). But don’t get frustrated if it doesn’t get a lot of attention. Just like not every Facebook post will go viral, not every Reddit post will become a popular post. If you get likes and some positive comments, that’s a good start.

7) Persistence is victory

Continue to be active on Reddit. No social media platform has an immediate return on investment, and Reddit is no exception. Play the long game and catch the big fish. Continue to actively participate in community topics and become a valuable and contributing user.

Once you have completed the above steps, the next question that sellers usually encounter is how often and how much to post. However, no one can give a perfect answer. Because some boards have more posts and are more active than others. And some boards hope that users will have more original content.

*Note: Reddit is a bit difficult to market to, so you will need to figure out your audience and develop the best marketing plan based on your own experience.

Reddit is home to nearly every type of digital content, including new types of content you may not have thought of yet. Basically, if you can post relevant content on Reddit, you have the potential to find a new audience.

However, there are some types of content that tend to get more likes, comments, etc. on Reddit. Below is a simple ranking based on the potential for likes and comments. The actual situation may be different for different brand sellers. But it is true that original content tends to get higher recognition.

Here are the types of posts that get the most likes and comments on Reddit:

1) GIF posts

Reddit users love GIFs, such as sports, major events, movie scenes, animations, cute animals, and re-edited GIFs with Reddit jokes. GIFs are compressed short videos, and if you can post this type of marketing post, you may be successful.

2) Video Post

Generally speaking, Redditors are less likely to like comments if you link directly to platforms such as YouTube or Vimeo. Videos can take a long time to load, which is not suitable for most communities. And not all sections are like this, the results will vary. If you can cut the best part of the video into a GIF and put the full source link in the comment, you may receive more likes and comments.

3) Picture Post

Pictures are still very friendly to mobile users, and users can easily like and comment on them. Before posting, you have to find interesting pictures. If you can post some interesting pictures of cats or dogs, you may have a head start in your marketing campaign.

4) Text Post

Many posts on many subreddits are mostly text. In this age of digital media, this may sound a little unbelievable, but there are many Redditors who enjoy discussing deep, thought-provoking content, so it’s no surprise that text is the preferred format for posts and comments.

5) Blog Post

In general, Redditors hate blog spam. To avoid being one of those annoying ads, be active in the subreddits where you share blog posts. Make sure the post is compelling enough and that your responses to the post aren't automated. If you feel like your content warrants a long post, consider posting it on Reddit instead of directly linking to your website.

6) AMA Posts

AMA is an acronym for "ask me anything" and is a question-and-answer thread. Redditors can ask other people anything they want to know in this thread. People and brands with stories have gained fame and great success in AMA threads. AMAs are usually held in the r/IAmA subreddit, but there are also AMA threads in some interest-based subreddits.

AMA posts are very confusing, with all kinds of questions and answers. If you want to try to post this type of post, first you have to accept the cultural concept of AMA, whether it is good or bad, so be thick-skinned and go for it.

7) What’s new

As the internet has grown at a rapid pace, Reddit has become a powerful place to gather news. In communities that are relevant to timely updates (politics, video games, movies, etc.), sharing news can make you popular. This news can be a new tweet from a thought leader or a first-of-its-kind article that has the potential to make headlines in a community.

8) Advertising

If you want to advertise on Reddit, the safest option is to pay Reddit to do the advertising for you. The Reddit advertising platform is not very mature yet. But it has achieved considerable success in the past few years and has added tools and refreshed its advertising platform configuration many times. Therefore, it is difficult to say what the best practices and costs are for advertising on Reddit compared to Google or Facebook ads.

Typically, community targeting advertising is effective for customers.

*Remember : When you start posting original content, it’s important to have variety. That is, even if your GIF posts are doing well, don’t just post GIFs. If you can, try to post in a variety of ways to serve your audience.

As mentioned above, Redditors don't like commercial ads on the site. But! Redditors welcome sellers or brands if they respect their community and take an active role in improving it. They like original content, jokes, learning new things, and brands or sellers who take the time to get to know them.

When advertising is done well, existing and potential customers benefit. Good advertising should serve the audience. Advertising should not only please customers, but also bring value to their lives.

The following are successful advertising and marketing cases:

The winner of each theme post will win KFC's ultimate date night package, which includes a limited edition white bear-skin rug shaped like Colonel Harland Sanders, the founder of KFC's famous fried chicken, fried chicken pajamas, KFC gift cards, etc. This advertising strategy can be said to be very strange, but the clever thing is that KFC has a good target audience and the theme post is posted in a creative community.

Most importantly, KFC expected some people to troll the post. The marketing team would joke with Redditors, even if they had to make fun of themselves along the way, but the community ended up generating a lot of original content around the KFC brand.

They take the time to reply to comments, in order to better engage in conversations with Redditors, and try to integrate into the community. By offering rewards that users will like. Big brands like KFC will feel down-to-earth if they reply to someone in a post, and then the post will be "publicized" and the reply is usually full of emojis.

In this way, KFC can jump directly to the front page with this advertisement post and gain exposure. But it also contributes to the Reddit community. KFC's sister brand Taco Bell has its own board, which is full of high-quality content.

It’s not necessarily the big consumer brands that have to post to get valuable content on Reddit.

For example, video game lawyer Ryan Morrison, who has become famous for providing a lot of legal advice and opinions to e-sports developers on Reddit, claims that this form is only for educational and entertainment purposes and does not constitute a legally binding client relationship.

For several years, he has been answering questions in the esports section under the handle VideoGameAttorney. Recently, his posts in the r/gamedev section have averaged several hundred comments each, and his replies in r/IAmA (the Q&A section) have nearly 1,800 comments and over 15,000 likes.

Morrison's approach to growing his business through Reddit was simple. He went to communities where he could help and offered his advice and suggestions. In the real world, few Redditors would have become his customers. But because he was active and willing to contribute to an audience he cared about, he built a reputation in the game development community.

Jason Calacanis, a seasoned angel investor and host of This Week in Startups radio, comments and responds on Reddit about topics related to entrepreneurship, startups, and investing. He even uses Reddit to collect questions for his radio Q&A segments.

On the DIY side, Christine McConnell built a large following on Reddit through her handmade creations, catching the attention of Netflix executives and subsequently getting her own show. Reddit is primarily a blank canvas. Its users are very open to creative content, so you can tap into this core feature and find unique new ways to use the platform to market your products.

Reddit is more of a platform for extended networking activities, where you can talk directly to your target audience. You want to be part of communities related to your brand and really participate in those communities.

From this perspective, Reddit is an outreach tool. It doesn’t replace the audience building you do on traditional social media platforms, but rather it’s a new door for you to share original content related to your brand.

What do you think, Amazon sellers? Do you think Reddit is worth considering as a marketing channel?