How to Use Reddit for Marketing: Guidelines for Posting
Table of Contents:
How to Use Reddit for Marketing
- The Basics of Reddit
- Before You Post to a Subreddit
- Guidelines for Posting
- Famous Reddit Marketing Successes
- Famous Reddit Marketing Failures
- Helpful Subreddits for Marketing
- Are You Ready to Use Reddit for Marketing?
Guidelines for Posting
Posting content to Reddit can make some people anxious. You’ve spent a lot of time creating something you think people will like, and now you’re pretty much throwing it to the wolves.
Reddit is famous for tearing things apart — especially marketing initiatives — but they’re also famously receptive to new ideas.
As we discussed earlier, the best way you can use Reddit for marketing is to be sincere, passionate, and helpful.
Still, there are some other qualities that help as well.
Be Sincere
Sincerity is key when you’re posting to Reddit.
Sincerity means you’re not trying to get people to your site (even though you are). You’re posting to a subreddit to improve the community, and you want to become an active member of that community.
Those are the motivations that you should have when you post to Reddit. They’ll help you keep a level head and post to Reddit as a person, as opposed to a marketer. And when you’re posting to Reddit, that goes a long way.
Be Passionate
Passion is another way Reddit users can tell honest participants from sneaky marketers.
Users convey passion by posting links to content and titling them colloquially.
So instead of writing a title about how your new cleaning detergent beats competitors, you could write a title focused on the difference that your detergent makes.
Still, it’s important that you don’t come across like an infomercial. And as we established before, every subreddit has its own tone and personality.
So really, the best (and only) way to convey passion in a subreddit is to actually be passionate about it.
Be Transparent
Transparency is a huge part of properly using Reddit. It basically means that you’re forthcoming about who you are and what you’re doing.
We mentioned before that Reddit users don’t like it if you treat Reddit like a marketing platform. But that’s because Reddit users don’t like straight-up ads that masquerade as quality posts.
But if you create an actual quality post and offer something to the community, Reddit users can accept you with open arms. We’ll take a look at a few examples of this later.
Contribute Value
Along with the last three qualities, it’s also important that your post adds value to a subreddit.
That value can come through solving a common problem, showing high-quality work, or offering behind-the-scenes insight on a subject.
Value is most helpful to a post when your content has a wide audience appeal. So if you’re posting to r/smartphones, you could have more success with a post about an issue with smartphones in general compared to a post exclusively about the iPhone 4S.
That’s not to say a post about the 4S couldn’t succeed — it absolutely could. It just wouldn’t be as relatable as a post about smartphones in general.
Check Facts
Whenever you post anything to Reddit, it’s critically important that you check facts that you use in your post.
That includes adding sources for statistics, showing your math for any numbers, and explaining the process behind how you arrived at a certain conclusion.
You can bet that the other members of a subreddit will double-check all of the facts and figures you provide. If you want to make sure they don’t point out each incorrect detail, you need to make sure your content is 100% bulletproof.
This takes a little extra time, but it can pay off big time once you actually post something. Reddit’s primary concern is quality content. If you’re providing conclusions and ideas based on incorrect facts, it’ll bring your whole post into question — and possibly your whole account!
Offer Help
Offering help is one of the best ways to market your company on Reddit. It works so well because you’re solving a problem for other Reddit users while showing them that your company can make their lives easier.
Or, if you can’t directly solve a problem for Reddit users, you can at least give them the information they need to solve it.
A good example of this could be an infographic on how to stay motivated that you post to r/motivation. It’s simple, it’s direct, and it offers helpful solutions to people interested in that subject.
It may not be the biggest community on Reddit, but it’s a qualified community that is sure to drive interested traffic to your site.
Create Content for a Subreddit
If you’re trying to figure out what content you could post to Reddit, you may have to go back to the drawing board.
Creating content for a specific subreddit is a great idea, especially if you’ve just started your site and you want a few surges in traffic.
Plus, creating content allows you to keep your subreddit in mind throughout the entire creation process. That means you’re more likely to appeal to subreddit users specifically since your content is custom-tailored for them.
On top of that, any content that you make specifically for Reddit has to be thorough, well-designed, and smartly done. That means you have a great opportunity to repurpose that content to other opportunities, like outreach and link-building.
But what kind of content do you make for Reddit?
That depends on your target subreddit. But generally, these three formats work well:
- Photos
- Videos
- Graphics
The only catch to them is that if you’re going to use them, you have to use them well.
Use Reddit Advertising for Actual Advertising
If you don’t feel like using the guerilla tactics of Reddit marketing, you can always use Reddit Advertising to get the word out about your brand.
Reddit displays ads on its mobile apps for Android and iOS. The ads are listed along with posts on appropriate users’ pages, but they’re designated as ads.
So when you take out an ad on Reddit, your users will know 100% that you took out an ad. As a result, you may not have the same clicking power as you would have from a more subtle marketing campaign.
Still, Reddit advertising can drive qualified traffic to your site. Arguably, that traffic can be even more qualified than traffic from typical marketing since users who click on an ad know that they’re going to your site for a product.
You have to weigh those potential benefits against the general dislike and distrust that Reddit users have toward advertising in the first place.
Beyond that, it’s also important to do your research on subreddits and user behavior just like you would if you were marketing. Otherwise, you won’t be sure if your target market actually uses Reddit. And if you take out thousands of dollars of ads on a platform that your audience doesn’t use, that’s cash down the drain.
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