Reddit Marketing: The Ultimate Guide

Reddit is an increasingly sought-after platform by marketers that allows for deep connections and engagement with a customer base.

After all, it has roughly half a billion registered users.

If you’re a marketer that has heard of Reddit but doesn’t know where to begin, this article is for you.

After reading this Reddit marketing guide, you’ll know exactly how to reach your audience on Reddit and engage them with relevant, enticing content.

Let’s begin.

What exactly is Reddit?

Reddit is a social news aggregator that houses over 2 million unique communities called subreddits.

Essentially, it’s a forum-styled platform that allows for conversation around all sorts of topics, whether incredibly niche or generic.

The difference between Reddit and other social media platforms is that it focuses on communities (subreddits) as opposed to people.

Since its birth in 2005, Reddit has gained steady popularity and continues to be one of the world’s most popular social platforms.

What is Reddit used for?

Reddit’s primary use is to share and engage with content.

Users can join subreddits about a topic and post content around it, as well as engage with existing content through upvoting/downvoting posts and commenting.

You can use the search bar to find and join subreddits that are relevant to your audience.

To easily access a subreddit, you type in: https://www.reddit.com/r/subredditnamehere

The right-hand side of each subreddit will provide information about the community, its member count, as well as the rules of the subreddit.

Subreddits allow you to filter posts based on Hot, New, Top, and Rising. There is an infinite scroll so you can keep finding more posts within the subreddit.

Above the post filters, you can create a post.

When posting on a subreddit, there are four types of content that you can share: Post, Video, Link, or Poll.

Some subreddits choose to only permit a certain content type to be posted e.g. only posts or only links.

Subreddits may also utilise flairs within posts so users can categorise their content e.g. Question, NSFW, or Spoiler.

Why is Reddit so popular?

A big factor in Reddit’s popularity is its functionality for users to create their own subreddits/communities.

You can find subreddits about almost anything, and have strangers find, join, and engage with them.

Reddit also provides certain incentives for users to continue engaging on their platform.

One feature is awards, which can be given to a Reddit post or comment from another user.

Users can buy awards with Reddit Coins and then give them to others.

The most iconic awards are silver, gold, and platinum.

Some awards also provide the user with a limited-time access to Reddit Premium – allowing for an ad-free experience plus bonus Reddit perks.

The customisable features within Reddit also extend to user’s avatars, which they can customise or simply upload a profile picture of their choice.

Another aspect within Reddit that incentivises more popularity is Karma.

What does Karma mean on Reddit?

Reddit users can build up Karma from their posts and comments.

Essentially, the more upvotes their posts/comments get, the more Karma they will have.

Building up Reddit Karma is beneficial as it acts as an authority metric to other users.

However, it’s still possible for people to try and farm Karma by re-posting old content onto popular subreddits – and it’s very easy to spot this activity from a user’s profile.

Is Reddit good for marketing?

Marketers have historically not utilised Reddit as a marketing tool as much as they should have.

One vital reason why Reddit is good for marketing is because of its ability to niche down and find communities around something so specific, that it is bound to have the type of audience that marketers want to target.

Rather than trying your luck posting on social media with hashtags that most people won’t actually engage with, Reddit provides marketers with an ability to reach a group at both a general and specific level.

You can post on a subreddit to get the attention of the users who are online and/or regularly check the subreddit, or, you can send direct messages to users who engage with posts in that community.

Both of these grant you easy access into your target market, so you can better find out what they are looking for in terms of your brand’s offering.

How do you promote on Reddit?

Reddit allows you to promote your content both organically and paid.

For organic Reddit promotion, you need to be active on the subreddits that you are targeting, and engage with the community in a way that doesn’t appear to be self-serving.

This means that you should be focusing on adding value to the subreddits, be it through sharing expert knowledge/insights as posts and/or comments, or just generally being a supportive member of that community.

To publish posts that get a lot of traction, you should research what the best performing posts are in the subreddits within the last few weeks/months, and then try to emulate them in a unique way.

If you want to gain traction whilst commenting on other people’s posts, make sure you add a unique angle to the conversation and reply to various other comments on the thread. That way, you’ll end up with lots of Karma.

How much does it cost to advertise on Reddit?

Reddit is surprisingly cheap to advertise on, compared to other platforms.

It has a minimum spend for advertising, and the usage for this will vary depending on the subreddits you want to target.

This is because some subreddits are more popular than others, and popular subreddits will make it easier for you to reach the minimum spend.

When targeting subreddits, it’s important to ensure they are active and specific enough for your audience – you wouldn’t want to target generic subreddits like r/funny or r/news.

You first need to create an advertising account and set up a campaign before allocating your minimum spend.

What’s the best time to post on Reddit?

Most of Reddit’s users are based in the United States, meaning that you might have to alter your posting schedule to match US time zones.

However, the easiest way to gauge the best time to post on Reddit is to identify when hot posts were posted.

You’ll often find that it’s hard to exactly measure when the best time to post actually is, but using already popular posts as a benchmark will help give you an idea of a good time to post.

Also, make sure to look at the number of online users for a subreddit before you post, as if there’s virtually nobody online, it’ll be harder to get your post seen at that very moment.

This is especially important for certain subreddits whose users post frequently throughout the day.

Is Reddit good for SEO?

Historically, Reddit would dofollow links within in posts that had a significant number of upvotes.

This is not the case anymore.

All links posted on Reddit have a nofollow & UGC tag.

The question now becomes, is Reddit actually good for SEO?

The answer is (unsurprisingly) it depends.

As an SEO expert, I’m not going to claim that Reddit can directly improve your organic search positions on Google, but it can definitely help create brand awareness and trust amongst your customer base.

In turn, this might lead to people visiting your website or conducting business with you – both of which are extremely important for you and your business.

Indirect benefits to your SEO through Reddit would be engagement.

Because you can get your content seen by a targeted audience, it’s likelier that they will be more engaged with it.

Of course, many argue that engagement isn’t a direct ranking factor, but Google knows exactly how people are interacting with your site.

More engagement is better than little-to-no engagement.

How to perform Reddit analysis

Reddit analysis is all about gathering information about subreddits, including their performance, growth, and opportunities to create resonating content.

There are some tools out there that can provide such information, and I’ll cover the main ones in this section.

Subreddit research

The first tool you can use is Subreddit Stats, which allows you to get information about any subreddit, including an overview of its performance and growth over time, as well as the top submissions to that subreddit from various timescales.

The best part about this tool is the charts that it shows about the growth of a subreddit over the years.

This offers a clear picture regarding the potential of that subreddit to be actively used in your Reddit marketing efforts, as any decline in subscribers or not enough growth over time may warrant looking for different subreddits to target.

Another great subreddit research tool is called Later for Reddit, which can provide you with suggestions of subreddits to explore, as well as giving you insights into the best times of the day to post on any particular subreddit.

This tool breaks down the data in your time zone, so you can set yourself reminders of when best to post in your chosen subreddit.

Keep in mind that you should utilise both of these tools in conjunction to get a more concrete understanding of the subreddits that you’re researching.

Content research

If you want to find out the most engaging content pieces to post on Reddit, take a look at the top posts.

When you filter this to a recent timescale e.g. week or month, you can find trending topics that people are writing about on Reddit.

You can take these and find new angles to write about which haven’t yet been discussed, and this can be used as a good way to engage the community and entice lots of upvotes and comments – both of which will increase your Karma.

We can see that in this example from r/marketing, the top posts this week have been case studies.

Knowing this, you could go and find an awesome marketing case study that you’ve either read or curated yourself, and post about it on the subreddit.

Content that you find on Reddit can also be repurposed into content for your website and/or other social media platforms.

Remember that you mustn’t plagiarise anything, rather find new angles to write about and discuss.

Common Reddit marketing mistakes

Marketers often join Reddit to find people that they can sell their products/services to.

The issue is that they’ll also often make serious mistakes that can cost them their reputation.

Mistake #1 – The “sell, sell, sell” approach

The most common mistake is when marketers go on subreddits with the mindset of “sell, sell, sell”.

This approach is not only going to raise eyebrows and potentially get your posts removed from the subreddit, but it can also directly lead to a decreased brand image.

You might be wondering why that is significant on Reddit, and the answer is that these subreddits will house people that are somewhat interested in your offering.

Reddit communities all share a common interest, so if you’re damaging your brand image by appearing too salesy, you’ll lose out on a lot of potential customers.

Mistake #2 – Farming Karma from unrelated subreddits

I’ve seen many people that post on r/seo or r/marketing that are relatively new users to the community but have lots of Karma.

This is a red flag.

It’s very easy to go onto someone’s profile and see exactly what, where, and when they post/comment.

More often than not, they’ll be spam posting irrelevant, duplicate content on subreddits that are in no way associated with them as a user (or their interests).

Reddit Karma should be built up naturally by audiences that care about what you have to add to the communities you most care about.

Mistake #3 – Not adding value to the community

This is somewhat relevant to the “sell, sell, sell” approach, because oftentimes marketers that only want to sell will subsequently not add any value to the subreddit.

To be a valued member in a subreddit, you should be posting and/or engaging with other posts – as this adds value to the conversations.

The best way to counteract this mistake is by consistently adding value when you can, and in turn, this can lead to people actually being interested in what you have to say.

Plus, they might search for your website and even turn into a customer.

Conclusion

Reddit is a social platform of communities.

The key word here is social, because whilst it’s all well and good to post on different subreddits, you should try to engage with what’s already out there.

As a marketer, you can find subreddits that are relevant to you and your brand, and engage with them to find out more about how you can improve your product/service.

Engaging with Reddit communities helps you stay ahead of the competition, and will make it easier to push your brand out to relevant people that are likely to be interested in your offering.

I hope this guide has given you a clearer insight into how you can use Reddit as a marketing tool, allowing you to thoroughly research subreddits and execute some awesome Reddit marketing activities.