Reddit as Your Inbound Marketing Tool
Known as “The Front Page of the Internet,” Reddit is one of the most active places on the internet. It gets the attention of 90 million unique visitors and countless share of cool content each month. It’s a great tool to promote your content and draw traffic to your site.
Demographics
Before we talk about Reddit as a marketing channel for your product or service, understanding the demographic of people that make up this community is important. Following are a few statistics about the Reddit community:
• Most users are between the ages of 18 and 34
• Over 50% of the community members have some college education
• The other 30% has a bachelor’s degree or higher
• 75% of Redditors make from $0 to $50k a year
• The majority of Redditors are male users but there is a sizeable population of female users too
Posting
To get started, you need a Reddit account. Once you register, you can start to build “karma”—a gauge on Reddit to determine how helpful a user you are in the Reddit community. Karma is a good indicator to other Redditors how trustworthy and credible you are.
As you post, be aware that a lot of content floats around everyday competing for a limited amount of attention. Posting duplicate content or outdated content is frowned upon, so a good rule of thumb is to create new content and post in only one Subreddit. A Subreddit is a customer-made forum focusing on one topic. Check out the posting rules from each Subreddit before you post.
Here is a list of the most popular Subreddits that get the most traffic:
• /r/Announcements
• /r/AdviceAnimals
• /r/AskReddit
• /r/AskScience
• /r/Aww
• /r/Bestof
• /r/Blog
• /r/Books
• /r/EarthPorn
• /r/ELI5 (Explain Like I’m 5)
• /r/Funny
• /r/GIFs
• /r/IAMA
• /r/Movies
• /r/Music
• /r/News
• /r/PICs
• /r/Science
• /r/Technology
• /r/Television
• /r/TodayILearned
• /r/Videos
• /r/WorldNews
• /r/WTF
Now you can decide what type of content you want to post. Here is a list of the most often used subjects that do best on Reddit:
• Heartwarming/Personal Achievement Stories
• Educational/Unusual/Obscure Facts
• Photography/Art
• Religion
• Video Games
• Technology
• Science
• Music
• Comics
• Food
• Fitness
Organic Use of Reddit
Reddit is an effective short-term marketing option when used correctly. It is a place to promote your content and can draw a huge amount of traffic to your site within an hour or two. Try posting links to cool content in Subreddits or hosting an Ask Me Anything (aka AMA). AMA is a great way to start your Reddit marketing strategy since you have an interesting individual, such as your CEO or upper level employee, whom people want to know more about. Often time, AMA can take more than two hours but it’s important to keep direction of what kinds of questions people should ask to a minimum. Through AMA, you can offer insights and cool facts about your business as well as respond to questions from passionate Redditors.
Reddit Advertising
Aside from gaining organic traffic and attention, you can purchase advertisements on Reddit, too. Ads on Reddit are similar to Google ads in that they are annotated as “sponsored links.” Reddit uses the CPM (cost-per-impression) model instead of the commonly used cost per action model, such as pay-per-click. This model allows marketers to service untargeted ads across Reddit or target a specific Subreddit related to the service and products of your business.
Reddit holds a lot of untapped potential for markers. It can be a highly rewarding asset when used in conjunction with other online marketing tactics like SEO and social media. However, keep in mind that the Reddit community is unique and has its own set of rules.
For more information on Reddit marketing, read here.
