Why You Need to Be on Reddit (If You’re Not Already)
When your company begins revising its social media marketing strategy, it probably doesn’t include Reddit in the mix. Don’t feel ashamed or embarrassed. Few small business owners think about incorporating Reddit into their plans.
Reddit, however, often spawns viral news, memes, and other content all across the internet. It also offers other advantages, some of which are explored in more detail below. To get started, let’s revisit what Reddit is and why it’s important.
What Reddit Is
Reddit calls itself the “front page of the internet,” but you can think of it as a democratic comments section. Users, called Redditors, upvote and downvote each other’s posts and comments. Reddit also is social. People converse with one another on the site and share content that interests them.
That content relates to most subjects under the sun. If you want to know how people feel about NHL hockey, there’s a “subreddit” for that. You should know the term; subreddits can be extremely broad or narrow. They cover general topics like hockey as well as narrow ones, such as a particular hockey team or individual player.
New subreddits form every day, making it possible to find out how people think and feel about almost anything. And if Reddit lacks a subreddit about your business or industry, start one. Someone, possibly even your target audience, will see and interact with it.
Why Reddit Is Important
The site’s user base could contain your ideal customer. The Pew Research Center offers interesting insights into Reddit’s Redditors, listing demographics and behaviors that possibly coincide with your customer persona.
- Redditors are predominately male. According to Pew, 67% of Reddit users are men as compared to 33% of women.
- Redditors tend to be young. When it comes to age, 18–29-year-olds use Reddit the most at 64%. The next largest age group, at 29%, is 30–49 year olds.
- Redditors spend more time online. Pew reports that 47% of Redditors go online “almost constantly.”
- Redditors receive salaries across income brackets. Pew separates incomes into three brackets: less than $30,000; between $30,000 and $74,999; and more than $75,000. Redditors can be found in every category: 30%, 34%, and 35%, respectively.
- Redditors typically identify as liberal. As compared to the general public, Redditors skew liberal at 43% instead of 24%.
Reddit is important for other reasons too. It can generate traffic back to your website, especially if the Redditors decide they like what you have to say, show, or share. That referral traffic tends to improve search engine rankings, making Reddit important for not only marketing and sales but also search engine optimization (SEO).
A few other metrics deserve mention. Reddit boasts an average bounce rate of 26%. Redditors typically visit almost ten pages, or subreddits, daily and spend nearly sixteen minutes per day on the site.
Translation: Redditors are actively involved with the platform and may be willing to engage with you.
How to Use Reddit Successfully
If you decide to include Reddit in your 2018 social media strategy, implement the following seven tips. They can help prevent missteps and deliver desired results, namely, information about your target customers and opportunities to interact with them.
- Ease into Reddit. Reddit is unique, looking like a messaging board from the early 2000s. It also claims a reputation as ruthlessness. (Redditors can surprise you. They came to a boy’s rescue when he lost his favorite stuffed elephant.) You should prepare for users to say anything and everything in response to your posts and comments.
- Learn the lingo. Reddit features a somewhat steep learning curve with its acronyms. When you first visit the site, you will see acronyms like “TIL,” “OP,” and “AMA.” The first means “today I learned,” the second refers to the “original post,” and the third involves the ever-popular “Ask Me Anything.”
- Target subreddits. Rather than start your own subreddits, look for ones specific to your industry and participate in the ongoing conversation. It’ll save you time and connect you with a large, vested community. You can find subreddits by either keyword or name. You will find some quality subreddits through the broader keyword option, but you’re more likely to find relevant subreddits if you search by name.
- Know the context. Some subreddits require you to only post helpful links. Others want more in-depth information or side-by-side comparisons. Watch the subreddit carefully and interact appropriately to ensure you receive upvotes rather than downvotes. The more sales-y your posts are, the more downvotes you’ll get. (To understand the importance of upvotes, skip to the sixth tip.)
- Engage with users. Reddit requires that you be conversational, even more so than Twitter and Facebook. As you improve your posting and commenting skills, you’ll likely witness higher engagement on not only Reddit but also other social networks. You’ll also figure out what content resonates with Redditors, which can help fine-tune your marketing, public relations, social media, and advertising activities.
- Build your karma. As with traditional karma, you want to have positive Reddit karma. You get it as Redditors upvote your comments and posts, so stay active on the site. The more involved you are, the more opportunities for upvotes you earn. And as the upvotes increase, so does your karma, which offers significant rewards. The higher your karma score is, the better and more visible your reputation with the Reddit community will be.
- Optimize your Reddit submissions. Karma and participation help with visibility. However, you can improve it further by optimizing your posts. This step differs little from what you already do with your website content. Simply replicate those techniques when crafting Reddit submissions. Optimize the title, use capitalization and tags correctly and strategically, and refer back to the advice found in the fourth tip.
Reddit offers several benefits. First, you can learn more about your target audience and apply that knowledge to marketing and sales efforts. Second, you can increase backlinks and referral traffic. Third, you can interact with customers directly, growing engagement and sales. Fourth, you can find out what people are saying about you and your competition, which is an upgrade from traditional review sites.
If you think your current social media marketing strategy needs an update, give Reddit a try. It could deliver the results you were hoping for.
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