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In May 2018, Reddit overtook Facebook as the third most popular website in the U.S. This revelation closely followed their announcement of a redesign, the first in a decade. Reddit’s newfound media presence has industry insiders hustling to develop effective strategies to tap into their engaged user base. In April 2018, the site reached 330 million monthly active users, which put it on par with Twitter. The average user spends over 15 minutes per day on Reddit, with an average session time of six minutes and 25 seconds.
Run your user page like a subreddit
Content posted to user profiles is not subject to the rules and regulations that are found on subreddits, giving users more freedom when it comes to marketing. While users and brands are now free to play by their own rules when posting to their pages, it is important that they keep the platform’s sense of etiquette (or reddiquette) in mind. By following these unspoken rules, branded content will begin to conform to Reddit’s natural flow of information. This is especially important for clients who are concerned about brand safety when jumping into a platform that has become infamous for its anti-marketing sentiment.
Pay attention to your karma score
Reddit runs on a form of social currency called karma that is gained when users’ posted comments and links are upvoted and lost when they are downvoted to a number lower than zero. Reddit karma, at face value, is a quantitative measure related to the quality of content that a user posts and how active that user is.
As a new Reddit user—and more specifically a brand—you should be very interested in organically increasing your karma score. Not because having a higher score will grant you special privileges but because it will force you to genuinely interact with the community that you are trying to join. Links and comments should be well thought out and valuable to other users, boosting your score and your engagement on the platform simultaneously.
Work with nano influencers
Nano influencers, who users with followings between 100 to 1,000, can be an excellent way to kick-start your Reddit page (a count of user followings will more than likely be available on user pages when the update is rolled out to the entire community, as it is currently only in beta and available to one percent of redditors).
If you find someone who knows the site well and has a track record of popular posts that align with your brand, don’t be afraid to reach out to them. While their following may be small, there will be many of them when the update fully rolls out. They will also have a stronger influence over their closely knit following than micro or macro influencers would.
Create branded AMAs
Creating an Ask Me Anything (AMA) is a simple and surefire way to connect with users on Reddit. AMAs became celebrated on the platform because they grant everyday people access to celebrities, politicians, executives and artists.
Involving someone famous is not the end-all be-all of this approach; it requires more creativity than that. Audi, for instance, invited celebrities to a live AMA series called Think Faster where they were driven around a race track at high speeds in one of their high-performance vehicles. It was branded as “the world’s fastest AMA,” which draws on their brand of luxury and power.
Reddit has been a challenging platform to market on for years because of its very nature. The community is tightly knit, and marketers have had little success in introducing native content into subreddit feeds. But the new changes coming to the site have opened the doors to innovative strategies. User pages, nano influencers and branded AMAs are key ways to get your message across as a brand. Building your karma score will ensure that your social media team becomes a part of the Reddit community rather than just trying to market on it. And as time goes on, the brand image that you build on the site will grow alongside user response to the effort that you put forth.
