Reddit might not be a popular marketing tool like other social media channels such as Facebook and Instagram, but with its over 330 million active users it can be a shame not to use it to promote your business.
Well, the thing is it’s already widely used for marketing, but it’s not really being talked about that much.
Why is that so?
Well, simply speaking, Reddit is primarily a social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion forum website and it doesn’t tolerate users who blatantly promote anything.
So, if you are going to promote your art or your business on Reddit, you’ve got to do it as discreetly as possible.
And that is why I am writing this post because I’d love to share some of the best practices that can help you succeed on Reddit marketing.
Why Business Owners Should Use Reddit?
Reddit markets itself as the “The Frontpage of the Internet.” And I must say that with its billions of monthly active visitors and over 150,000 sub-forums and communities, they certainly put justice to their slogan.
With such influence, it’s hard to just disregard its potential in helping drive traffic to one’s business website.
However, Reddit art promotion or any marketing stance for that matter isn’t welcomed with open arms on this platform.
So, if you don’t want to be downvoted or even banned from the site, you have to follow certain “reddiquettes.”
When you learn how to properly engage in the community and contribute valuable content, you can certainly reap the following benefits from Reddit marketing:
- Driving traffic
- Reaching your desired audience
- Selling products
- Testing products
- Branding
Reddit Social Media Marketing:
How to Succeed on Reddit Marketing?
Enjoying fruitful results from an all-out marketing campaign can take time, how much more if you can’t deliberately spread your wings with your promotional tactics?
Reddit can be a source of affordable traffic, but again, only when used properly and even so – it still takes time.
If you are patient enough and you are willing to take the risk, then below are some of the helpful tips that I can share on how you can succeed in Reddit marketing:
1. Be a Redditor
While it’s true that you can contribute and engage on Reddit even if you don’t sign up, I highly discourage it if you want to promote your business on this platform.
Creating an account and being an active Redditor is the first step that you have to take.
Unless you are promoting your brand, using your real name or your birthday as a username is highly discouraged. You can make the most out of this platform by being anonymous.
Then again, since you are using Reddit art promotion or you are planning to grow your personal brand, then, by all means, you can use your business name.
And just a head start, you can’t change your username later. So, you’ve got to make up your mind right from the start or else you’ll end up creating a new account just to use a new username.
2. Join Subreddits to Target Specific Niches
After creating an account, you’ve got to join subreddits or communities that are related to your business. Reddit has a subreddit for almost every niche that you can think of.
You just have to key in “r/keyword” into the search box to find out if it already exists. R/AskReddit is the community where you can ask and answer thought-provoking questions, r/Art is about art, r/streetwear is the official Reddit community for streetwear, and so on.
Contents that are shared on your chosen subreddits will appear on your frontpage. So, if you want to stay abreast of the latest in specific communities or niches, you’ve got to be part of subreddits that you can relate to.
3. Bring Value to the Table
Once you’ve been accepted in your chosen subreddits, you can start sharing content – GIFs, videos, pictures, texts, blogs, links, and so on.
Users in the community will upvote or downvote what you shared depending on how they find it – useful, entertaining, spammy, annoying, or irrelevant.
So, you just can’t share anything that you want because it will affect your standing.
This leads us to another essential component of your Reddit profile, your “karma” points. Karma reflects your standing based on the comments and posts that you’ve shared.
Although karma won’t help in bringing your post up, it can help in relaying your status to other Redditors.
If you have high karma, then that only means that you are active enough in the community.
Hence, if you are going to promote something, they won’t see you as someone who is just there to market your business and not really to contribute and engage with the community.
I’m sure you don’t want to be perceived that way. So, you’ve got to bring value to the table.
Moreover, sharing high-quality content attracts more upvotes. The more upvotes you get for your post, the higher the visibility it will get.
Perhaps, your post can even reach the front page. Every user has a front page. The Front Page of Reddit contains all the top posts at a given time from a Redditor’s subscribed subreddits.
In other words, it’s like your account’s homepage. If you are subscribed to three subreddits – r/art, r/digitalmarketing, and r/fashiondesign, your front page will show you all the top posts or trending posts from these three subreddits at a given time.
4. Engage in the Community
One way of building a good image from your chosen communities/subreddits is by engaging with other users.
You can’t just lurk around and expect fruitful results in return. Just like in any other platform, you’ve got to engage.
And again your link karma and comment karma will tell if you are engaging enough. Your karma points are displayed on your profile, so other users can immediately know whether you are just a lurker, a marketer, or a valued contributor.
If you have a good image in your community, it’s easy for other users to be curious about what you do. Hence, you can attract potential clients just by building your profile and establishing yourself as an authority at certain niches.
5. Create a Subreddit for Your Kind of Art
You can’t just create a new Reddit account and start a subreddit right away. It doesn’t work that way. You’ve got to earn your stripes first, and one way of doing so is by being a valued member of the community.
Technically, your account should be at least 30 days old before you can create a subreddit, and you should also have enough karma points.
Once your karma points are up, you can finally proceed on creating a subreddit that targets your niche, or something that your brand can relate to.
You must do your research first when it comes to the name of the subreddit that you want to create. With the massive number of communities on this platform, don’t be surprised if there’s already a subreddit for what you are planning to create.
But of course, you can always create a similar community just make sure that there’s an added twist to it. Or you’ve got to think of ways to set your subreddit apart from similar niches that already exist.
Check out this article for a more detailed explanation of how to create a subreddit.
6. Spot Marketing Opportunities
Aside from sharing valuable content with the community, there are still other marketing opportunities that you can take advantage of on Reddit.
One tested and a proven way is to search for people who are talking about your product, or a similar product from what you are selling. You can comment on the post directly, or you can also send the user a private message.
7. Make Use of Reddit Marketing Tools
There are some tools and links that you can use to advance your Reddit marketing goals.
- Instead of searching the top subreddits from the Reddit search box, you can go to “redditlist.com.” This site can help you track the top 5000 subreddits that might be worth your time.
- Make use of Reddit Insight to track data analytics for your account and to identify what kind of content works best in a given subreddit, and what doesn’t do good at all.
- Reddit Enhancement Suite is an incredibly useful tool among Redditors. RES is an unofficial browser extension for Reddit. It doesn’t only help in making your browsing experience smoother, it also lets you tag users, thereby allowing you to remember who has responded to your post positively.
How to Get Started on Paid Reddit Advertising?
If you have an allocated budget for paid Reddit advertising, you have the chance to rake in more visibility and traffic from the community through promoted posts, display ads, and sponsored Q&A/AMA.
Let’s talk about these three advertising options below.
1. Promoted Posts
These are the most popular form of paid advertisement on Reddit. With promoted posts, you are basically paying to bring your post to the top of a specific subreddit.
And one interesting feature about this is that you can promote posts shared by other users. For example, if someone shared good feedback about your art or your product, you can promote such post so it can gain more visibility.
Promoted post is just like any other posts, but you are paying to boost its reach. As such, you still need to abide by the rules in sharing normal Reddit posts.
So, even if it’s promoted, don’t make it too obvious that you are selling your art or any product for that matter. Take this promoted post by Transamerica as an example.
2. Display Ads
If you’ve tried running ads on Facebook or any other platforms, then you are also familiar with Reddit’s display ads because they are pretty much the same.
These are the types of ads that show up in the sidebar with catchy headlines and graphics to capture the readers’ attention. However, running display ads on Reddit is much more expensive and you can only set it up directly with Reddit’s team.
And since they will set up the ads directly for you, they only cater to clients who spend at least $50,000 per quarter.
Are you ready to start your display ads on Reddit? If so, feel free to get in touch with their team on this link: https://www.redditinc.com/advertising.
3. Sponsored Q&A/AMA
AMA/Q&A or “Ask Me Anything” will work for you if you have been on the platform for some time. In this post, you will schedule a time that you will be online to answer questions from the community.
Informing other users of the schedule can give them ample hours to think of valuable questions for you one you are live.
Reddit’s AMA subreddit has over 19.6 million members. Hence, running a sponsored AMA can be a great way to promote your brand and your art, while also giving you insights about what your target customers are thinking or dreaming of.
However, just like with display ads, you have to contact Reddit’s team directly for this matter. And you need to spend a minimum of $50,000 quarterly across all ads.
Are You Ready to Dive In?
Without a doubt, Reddit is one of the leading websites worldwide, and as of July 2019, 38.09 percent of its desktop traffic came from the United States.
The United Kingdom contributed 7.22% to its desktop traffic, while Germany contributed 3.9%.
The bottom line is, though Reddit really has the potential to drive cheap traffic to your site and eventually convert more sales, you should first know the demographics of your target customers.
If you and your target customers are based in the UK and the US, then there’s a higher chance that you will enjoy better turnover than the marketers from other parts of the world.
What do you think? Are you planning of adding Reddit to your marketing channels? Do you have some questions, insights, or feedback that you’d like to share? Don’t hesitate to share them in the comments below.
For the meantime, here are more articles about marketing that you might want to check out:
