Reddit for Marketers
What you need to know about this gold mine for brands
In 2024, I had the pleasure of attending ADWEEK Social Media Week in New York City. In addition to listening and learning from global brands like Duolingo, Verizon, Taco Bell, Sweetgreen and Nat Geo, I had the opportunity to hear from Roxy Young, the Chief Marketing & Consumer Experience Officer at Reddit. She spoke about Reddit user behavior and marketer opportunities on the platform. I left feeling inspired to develop more Reddit strategies for my clients. Let’s dive into the ins and outs of Reddit and how you can utilize its niche audiences to grow your brand.
What is Reddit?
To make a long story short, Reddit is a community of communities. It was established in 2005 as a content sharing platform. According to them, “Reddit is a home to thousands of communities, endless conversation, and authentic human connection. Whether you’re into breaking news, sports, TV fan theories, or a never-ending stream of the internet’s cutest animals, there’s a community on Reddit for you.” By the numbers, it has...
- 97M+ daily active users
- 100k+ active communities
- 16B+ posts and comments
How is it used?
To use Reddit, you can post text posts, links, images, and videos or comment on others’ posts. Comments provide discussion and often humor. Comments and posts can be upvoted or downvoted depending on if the audience resonated or appreciated the message. The most interesting content rises to the top through upvotes.
Reddit is organized by communities, called Subreddits. If you can think of a community, it probably exists on Reddit. For the Boomers reading this, Subreddits are like a public Facebook Group. The current top communities on Reddit with the most members are r/funny, r/AskReddit, r/gamming, r/worldnews, r/todayilearned, r/aww, r/Music, r/memes, r/movies, r/ShowerThoughts.
While those communities are broad, there are also very niche communities, such as: r/SEUT (which stands for Squirrels Eating Unconventional Things), r/CarpetsforAirports, r/ggggg (a community of 35,000 members who only post things with the letter G), and my personal favorite r/BreadStapledToTrees which boasts 334,000 members.
How can brands use Reddit?
Just like other social platforms, brands can use Reddit for organic engagement and awareness, paid advertising, social listening, and trend spotting.
Organic engagement: There are many ways for brands to engage on Reddit. You can find relevant communities and engage there with other users to spark conversations, answer questions that are posed from an expert-POV, or provide insights. AMAs (Ask Me Anythings) are popular on Reddit.
For our client Harney & Sons Fine Teas who we helped launch a Schitt’s Creek product collaboration for, we posted in the r/SchittsCreek community which has 161,000 members. We used a meme and a casual tone to fit in with audience behavior on Reddit.
Paid advertising: Advertising on Reddit is a great tool to target very specific audiences. Brands can run ads that are displayed in the feed, among organic posts, just like other social platforms. Promoted posts are prioritized higher up in Subreddits and target specific groups and users.
Remember when I said r/gamming was in the top 10 of largest communities on Reddit? Ally Financial created this ad to promote their business in a way that is understandable to a Reddit audience.
Social listening: If you’re not ready to take an active role on Reddit, try being a fly on the wall in communities that fit your brand. Monitor relevant communities to see what is being discussed, what questions are being asked, or what types of conversations are getting the most engagement to spark ideas for marketing campaigns or product development.
Trend Spotting: Marketers with a Reddit account for their brand can use Reddit Pro, a free suite of tools designed to help businesses grow. There you’ll find Reddit Pro Trends which helps uncover what people are saying about virtually any topic. According to Reddit, “businesses now can track virtually any keyword or phrase – their brand name, product name, category, or even the latest viral trend – and see when, where, and how redditors are discussing it in real time.” At CVR, we use Reddit Pro to track trends in the r/tea community for our client, Harney & Sons Fine Teas which helps inform our social content strategy and blog topics.
How can marketers personally use Reddit?
In addition to social listening for brands, Reddit is a treasure trove of knowledge and learning opportunities for marketers. There are Reddit communities for business, marketing, technology, SEO, career and more to make your work and life easier. There is r/SEO, r/socialmedia, r/affiliatemarketing, r/PPC, r/web_design, r/GrowthHacking and r/careerguidance just to name a few.
If you’re interested in leveling up your digital marketing strategy and want to discuss Reddit opportunities for your brand, give us a shout!