Reddit Marketing Guide: The April of 2017 marked the milestone of 250 million users on Reddit. Redditors is another name for these marketers. Redditors collectively have composed over 853,824 subreddits, which have been joined by millions. These subreddits are mostly on specific topics and if you are an online retailer, you have the option to create a subreddit for your own niche.
Even though these Redditors don’t like being the target of any marketing scheme, you can still succeed on this platform by giving them value for their money. It is notable that an average person who shops on Reddit spends $52.96 on brands discovered through this platform. Therefore, a value can be generated out of the platform, making it a great way to earn money.
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Reddit Marketing: Create Value on Reddit
Now arises the question of how to create this value? Many people say that it can be easily achieved by spamming every possible subreddit with your product link like ThinkPup did, but we know that isn’t going to work for you.
Therefore, you can try to build your brand by engaging in the community. Various ways to do this include making your username your brand name, this helps keep the brand name at the top of every user’s mind. But if you want to find your direct target audience, i.e., people interested in your niche, then you need to find a vocal community.
Reddit AMA
A successful example of that vocal community building was an AMA (Ask Me Anything) conducted by Elon Musk. Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX held an Ask Me Anything thread about “becoming a spacefaring civ.” His talking to people on Reddit was meant to complement content for his Mars presentation at SpaceX.
Even though he had a link to his SpaceX brand, the way he provided the content through that AMA appeared more value-based rather than a sales pitch. He talked about the SpaceX projects, like the rocket Falcon 9, basic technical queries and so on. But this was an instance which highlighted that Reddit’s platform can be used for building Public relations as a brand- by engaging users in your content and thus, building a vocal community.
Reddit Digital Marketing Tips
There is no other platform on the internet like Reddit. Here, you can’t communicate with the users by spamming them with your link. You need to provide a certain type of content- either memes, AMA sessions, inspirational content or questions.
When approaching users on the platform, especially as a new brand, adding the link to your blog post even after answering their questions isn’t enough. You might even get shadow banned while doing this, which means that you would get banned and won’t even know about it.
Therefore, it is always better to provide some value instead of simply answering queries. And the best way to provide the content is knowing the users. This will help you in determining what kind of content does your user need. The best way to do this is to become an active member first. Avoid “marketing” on Reddit and focus on knowing the market first.
Reddit Content Marketing
Content marketing works almost on all platforms be it reddit or on your own blog. A lot of companies, in lack of time or resources, prefer hiring a blog management service that does all the work for them.
Your best bet in getting to know your market is being active in a relevant subreddit. If you run a yoga store, join the yoga subreddit as a member. The best way for reddit content marketing is to post pictures of yourself doing complex yoga poses, host an AMA where you answer any yoga related questions from your personal experience, or simply answer the queries of various people on the topic. To achieve this, you need to be online at least once a day, daily so that Redditors become familiar with you. This way, you are engaging with the members and developing their trust in you.
It can also help to analyze what kind of content is getting more engagement in your subreddits. And once you are done analyzing, you might want to model your posts based on that kind of content. For example, if AMAs are getting the most upvotes, then an AMA is going to provide you the boost.
Does one kind of post get ample of more comments than the others? If so, what drives that kind of engagement. Study it and you will realize that even before putting your foot into engagement, the key here is to examine the patterns of the different categories of content people like. This will help you make that kind of content and engage more people as a community.
Reddit Marketing Tips For Beginners
The one thing you would like to keep in mind apart from generating your value as a brand is – providing your product link organically. There is one instance from which you can learn this- a Redditor asked a question on Reddit, about why is beef jerky so expensive.
In response to his question, the Founder of Bridgford Jerky explained the entire process to him. And on being asked for a discount, he provided them a link for a discount which was meant especially for Reddit users.
But if you decide to use your brand name as your username, be mindful of what you post. If you have posted something negative or critical about another user, you can get many serious downvotes. You might not even realize what you posted was inappropriate or negative before it’s too late.
To avoid any such circumstance, you might use a generic name instead. Therefore, it will be wise to say that you should not take any risk among the users as a brand. Always ask yourself “Does this comment represent my brand positively?”, before posting anything on Reddit.
Once you are done being an active member of your subreddit for at least six months, you can start selling on it. But keep in mind that you would still need to create engaging content with a value-based approach.
Also, avoid advertising wholly on Reddit. If you want to see if your product would do good, try it out definitely but, don’t get stuck only on Reddit because it takes time to build a brand there. Meanwhile, on an average, most brands find that Facebook and Google ads offer a lot better and faster return, which is great for their avenue. But on Reddit, the only way to generate that revenue is by getting more upvotes.
Reddit Marketing Tools
As we just saw, to generate more upvotes means to generate an avenue. Therefore, there are some tools in the market which can help you in marketing right. Reddit Enhancement Suite is one of them. It comes as a chrome extension and offers features which make your Reddit feed never-ending.
This way you don’t ever have to click on the next page, and you can focus on leaving more comments on posts. Through this, you can also view the total breakdown of the number of votes a Reddit post has received, and this can be used to study the pattern.
Reddit Marketing Resources
There are many resources below that will lead you to gain a better knowledge of marketing on Reddit:
- Shopify’s “How To Use Reddit For Beginners” explains how to use Reddit as a marketing source. Be it with affiliate marketing or with drop shipping, Reddit can be a game changer if you could use Reddit effectively for marketing.
- Shopify’s “How I Built an Online T-Shirt Business and Made $1248.90 in 3 Weeks” shares the story of a Tucker Schreiber who made eighteen sales through marketing on Reddit. This can be read to understand how he launched his first store and then generated sales on Reddit.
- Like I said in the first pointer, Reddit can also be used effectively in the affiliate marketing business. Check out other articles in Digi Critics to learn affiliate marketing and high affiliate paying networks.
This is all, for now, I have for Reddit Marketing Guide. The article will be updated with new and updated information from time to time. Stay tuned to Digi Critics to know more about Online marketing tutorials and reviews. If you like this article, do share with your friends. Check out the blog for other informative articles. Do you have an opinion? Leave it in the comments section below. This is me, Rehan, signing off now; see you soon in the next article.