With its mix of interesting links and social commentary, I always find it surprising that Reddit isn’t on the radar of more content marketers. Many companies are already receiving a lot of website traffic from Reddit so the question becomes: can you afford to ignore such a large source of potential viewers for your content?

 

A Big and Engaged Audience

Reddit is a social news website and forum where people share interesting things they find online. The site consists of thousands of communities called subreddits, each with their own specific topic, such as technology, music or politics. And every post submitted has its own discussion thread attached.

Reddit is the fourth most-visited website in the U.S. and the ninth most visited in the world. It has around 540 million visitors per month and every visitor views an average of around 10 pages every day. According to Ignite, most Reddit users are American, male and from 25 to 44 years old. But this doesn’t mean you can’t reach all kinds of people from various backgrounds and professions.

The Keys to Sharing Content on Reddit

Members can submit either links to another website or to their own original content and other members can upvote or downvote each piece of content. The more upvotes a post gets, the higher up it appears on its respective subreddit or the front page of the site.

But be sure to read the rediquette guide and the guidelines in the FAQ on spam. As it says on the site: “Reddit is a community, not a platform for self-promotion.” If you just post links to your website with no real relevance, you’ll be downvoted immediately and flagged to the moderators for spamming.

So, here are some tips to get the most out of Reddit.

Build Your Karma Score

Participation is crucial for building your credibility on Reddit. Reddit’s Karma system gives you a score based on upvotes for your posts and your comments. So reply to comments on your own submissions and comment on posts by others. Users will take you more seriously if your profile has more karma.

Add Value

Before posting, ask yourself if it’s relevant to the subreddit. Do a quick search to see if it’s already been covered. Provide valuable information on a topic, interesting industry insights or human stories. In-depth posts are more likely to be upvoted than one-liners.

Write Long Titles

Long, descriptive, compelling titles perform better on Reddit and you have 300 characters to get your point across. Full sentences are fine, whereas click-bait style headlines just won’t work.

Be Authentic

Although Reddit doesn’t like marketing, it does like authenticity. Quirky is good. Jimmy Hickey, the founder of Oregon-based Findlay Hats, saw the power of Reddit firsthand. When he posted about how excited he was to run into someone in Rome wearing one of his company’s hats, it went viral. Their website received around 60,000 visits and they made $28,000 in sales overnight. So, tell a story.

Ask Questions

Asking a question on Reddit is a great way to get people involved. For example: “What’s right and wrong with our new website design?” will give you valuable feedback, encourage more comments and raise your profile.

Post Links to Other Interesting Content

Don’t just post links to your own blog posts. Link to other useful articles that help your target audience. The community will respect you more.

Try Reddit Ads

This is one of the safest ways to market your business on Reddit. You can target people based on their subreddit subscriptions, so you can reach niche audiences that are more likely to engage with your brand.

Explore the Reddit Opportunity

Many marketers fear or ignore Reddit. But if you take the time to get to know the community, it can be a goldmine for content marketing and engagement. In addition, with links being a valuable part of any SEO strategy, Reddit can also help boost your search engine rankings and help you reach even more people. While every link starts out as a do not follow link, popular links with more upvotes are changed into do-follow links, giving your content more visibility online.

The bottom line is that if people like your content, they’ll upvote it. If you engage with the community, follow the rules, answer questions and post helpful, entertaining and authentic content, Reddit could supercharge your online presence.