Reddit is in the top 10 most visited sites on the internet with all content on the site generated by communities
Reddit provides a great opportunity for advertising, as community-created content is interactive and engaging. That said, as it’s content created by communities, it can be unpredictable and difficult to control the narrative.
Subreddits
Reddit works by creating communities around topics, these are known as subreddits. These range from political discussions, to funny cat pictures, to hobby support and conversation. If there’s a large enough group of people interested, then there’s likely a subreddit for it.
Community content is voted by users, where good content is voted up to the top of the page and poor content is voted down and away from the front page.
Your advertising strategy should revolve around the subreddits that cater to your customers’ interests. For example, if you’re an arts and crafts site you could promote yourself on r/knitting. This subreddit contains 312,000 subscribers interested in the topic who could participate in the content posted here. The more targeted you can get with your subreddit choices, the more likely you are to see positive results.
Creating relevant content
As Reddit communities are all user-generated content, typical sales messaging tends not to perform well. People who visit the site (Redditors) are looking for content that is engaging or useful, not simply an advert for knitting supplies.
Content that you promote on Reddit should be interesting and practical, almost indistinguishable from the user-generated content. If you already have a blog on your site then this is the place where you can begin to promote it.
Engaging with the community
Brands who advertise on Reddit should interact with the community in an open and collaborative way. Don’t be afraid to share useful links to sites that aren’t your own. Reddit can be quick to turn on brands that are seen to be outright promoting their own products and not being part of the community. If you’re providing valuable content they can’t get elsewhere, then you’ll be talking to a very receptive community.
If you’re careful, Reddit can be an effective way to advertise your brand and get people talking. However, if you fail to understand your audience or don’t engage with people on a human level then you might end up with some negative brand association.
For example, games developer EA recently entered the Guinness World Record books for the most downvoted comment of all time. Due to their poor community relationship, over 600,000 people downvoted their comment.
If you need help evaluating how Reddit can work with your brand, and in what way, then we would be love to discuss it with you.
