A Beginner’s Guide On How To Use Reddit To Promote Your Brand

April 4, 2023

By: Gareth Mankoo

A Beginner’s Guide On How To Use Reddit To Promote Your Brand

Congratulations if you wondered how to use Reddit in your brand’s marketing mix. You’re rare.

The marketing world always leans towards what’s trending and popular without wearing the boots of the consumer. Typical social media marketing plans involve Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Snapchat, and YouTube strategies.

Being popular helps these platforms attract more marketers. But what if you have a brand that targets a niche community? The generic social media world is cluttered and noisy, with specific targeting getting progressively expensive. The answer lies in a platform that can reach these close-knit communities. The answer is Reddit.

You will discover how to use Reddit to participate in sub-community communication, have questions asked to your brand and respond to them, and participate in active conversations through threads. Reddit users identify as Redditors, which could be a play of words on ‘editors’ given the number of contributory articles they publish.

11 tips on how to use Reddit effectively for your brand

Reddit has become notorious for the inside jokes users share under the garb of anonymity. Infiltrating this community as a brand may seem challenging at first. A little method to the madness will teach you how to use Reddit not just as an advertising platform but as a tool that will give you real-time insights into the behavior of your brand’s target audience.

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We’ve used the example of a fictitious coffee brand to demonstrate the platform's power.

1. Set up and sharpen your Reddit profile

Source: Testing Catalog
Source: Testing Catalog

Creating your brand’s identity on Reddit is the first step in understanding the platform. Begin by registering for a Reddit account with a username with a critical element of your brand name. It could be your brand’s name or a mascot’s name if you’d like it to represent your brand on the platform.

When you first sign up, Reddit will introduce you to some accounts that could interest you. Follow them just to get acquainted with how the content of others is presented to you. Also, do a Google search for Reddit users from your industry and follow them to keep a close eye on how they get around the platform.

Subreddits are represented with “r/” as a prompt. You could look for r/gifs or r/coffeelovers to understand how conversations in threads appear.

2. Link to your other social media accounts

Source: Ask David Taylor
Source: Ask David Taylor

Don’t forget to connect your account with your other social media so that cross-platform sharing is a breeze. In doing so, you also give your contacts the impression that you know how to use Reddit you’re not a new kid on the block. It matters here because of the close-knit group most Redditors consider themselves to be.

Make sure your handles and business elements in all platforms are similar, if not identical, to adhere to social media branding principles.

3. Pick broad subreddit topics

Picking specific topics may be the first thing you do. But the accurate content you’re looking for may not be in a particular subreddit. Look for it in broader discussion forums. For instance, if you want to look for opinions on Cappucino, try looking for it on r/CoffeeLovers or r/Coffee rather than r/Cappuccinos.

Once you’re convinced that narrower topics work well and have good content to satiate you, get specific. It is also recommended to follow subreddits that are around your area of interest. r/cafes would be an excellent place to start if you’re interested in all things coffee for your brand.

4. Learn how to style your comments

Source: Business Insider
Source: Business Insider

Reddit lets you format your comments to stand out in threads. The basic formatting options include italics, bold, strikethrough, inline code, quotes, and superscripts.

Here is a handy guide to improving the way your comments appear. You can make them more attractive and emphasize the points you want to highlight.

5. Build your karma over time

Source: Keyhole
Source: Keyhole

When you’re learning how to use Reddit, you will encounter Karma, a powerful metric on the platform similar to SEO. Post Karma and Comment Karma are bestowed upon your profile if you help others with valuable responses. Upvotes are a great way to enjoy Reddit Karma.

Reddit is a contributor platform that rewards those who contribute with their comments and individual posts. Good Karma means more respect in the communities where your brand interacts. And respect is an invaluable asset on the platform.

6. Promote deals in the right subreddits

The best thing about Reddit is how specific you can get with your communication avenues. There is a subreddit for nearly any topic you can think of. If you promote deals, you could post on a subreddit frequented by deal-seekers.

Try r/deals, no matter what industry your business falls under. You must also post in subreddits that consider your line of business their interest: E.g., coffee lovers.

7. Post something interesting and relevant to your business

Source: Grow and Convert
Source: Grow and Convert

You signed up with Reddit to post content that positively highlights your product or business. For this, you must be the subject matter expert customers expect you to be.

In an online space where coffee lovers already populate, you want to present yourself as an expert who loves coffee and manufactures it, roasts it, and bottles it. You can speak about the type of coffee beans you use and how users can enjoy your coffee.

Specificity to your business gives you a higher pedestal than just a sales-hungry person on social media. Share updates about your business if you need something intellectually stimulating. There’s always someone to read what you have to say.

8. Curate viral content

Whenever you refresh your Reddit page, you may see something new. The continuous feed of information may surprise you with the content you need to inspire your baristas. Subscribe to subreddits that deliver great content from your industry.

When you have a comprehensive subscription list, you can always fall back on it for inspiration and use the best practices of these users in your Reddit strategy.

9. Run a contest in a subreddit

Source: VYPER
Source: VYPER

Why not? There’s always a demand for contests on any social interaction channel. Reddit is not different. Test with smaller contests in subreddits that speak about your brand or product category. After a few experiments, you will realize how palatable Redditors find your brand. There’s nothing like free stuff to lure people on the internet into a conversation.

10. Do an AMA if you have a compelling story

Source: Semrush
Source: Semrush

AMA or Ask Me Anything is a great content format to exercise on Reddit. Since the platform thrives on user responses, it is an ideal avenue to have Redditors asking you questions about your brand, thereby making an informal FAQ sheet along the way. There’s an existing subreddit called r/AMA where users can drop their questions and invite questions.

11. Consider investing in Reddit ads

Source: Reddit for Business
Source: Reddit for Business

Once you find the audience interactions you are looking for on Reddit, it’s time to go inorganic and leverage Reddit Ads, the platform’s advertising tool. You can run ads for different objectives, from awareness to traffic redirects and application installations to purchases.

The results of the campaigns you run on the platform are reported to you regularly and in the formats you desire.

Frequently asked questions about how to use Reddit for marketing

What are some commonly asked questions about how to use Reddit to build your brand? Get your questions answered with these three FAQs.

1. What is the purpose of Reddit?

On Reddit, users can read and submit articles or links for the benefit of other users. Images, videos, articles, and even whole threads of conversation all fall under this category. Reddit, with its hundreds of millions of users, is one of the most visited websites in the world and a hub for breaking news and the latest trends.

2. Who is Reddit's target audience?

Regular users of Reddit spend an average of 34 minutes per day browsing the site. Users on Reddit tend to be between the ages of 18 and 35, and they are especially engaged in subreddits dedicated to topics like video games, fashion, and pop culture.

3. What posts do well on Reddit?

Publish only in-depth, original, well-written, helpful, and action-inducing material. No matter where you publish your story, Reddit users will read it. What you get depends on how they feel about it (through upvotes or downvotes).

Bottom line

In today’s world, information is an invaluable currency of social acceptance. If you’re a contributor to someone’s knowledge, you’re appreciated and given more respect. It is the premise of Reddit, where upvotes are the acknowledgment Redditors receive from their peers. As a brand, it is no different.

By earning good Karma on Reddit, you not only come across as a socially active brand but also one that delivers intangible value to its customers. When your posts naturally rise to the top of discussion threads, you can acknowledge that you’ve mastered how to use Reddit.

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