If you’ve been online for any time at all, there’s a strong chance you’ve heard of Reddit – even if you haven't actually used it yourself.
You may have been wondering how you can use it to increase your exposure and grow your audience, now's the time to educate yourself. It has a thriving and dedicated online community that generates over 25 million visitors every single day.
It's not the perfect fit for every marketer or business, but understanding this unique ecosystem is the first step in determining whether or not utilizing the power of Reddit will be advantageous.
It’s time to dive into and unveil its power...
What you need to know about Reddit
It's an extremely powerful social site. However, unlike most social sites, the community is very tough to break into and doesn’t take kindly to marketers and manipulation.
That being said, it’s important to have a basic understanding of how the community functions. It's a content sharing community based upon the users voting the submitted content up or down. The posted content usually ranges from links to pictures, videos and anything else that’s interesting.
By casting votes on each article that is posted, the community essentially decides what will become popular and rise to the front page every single day. Often, the comments of each post end up becoming more popular than the links themselves.
Overall, if a post of yours ends up reaching the front page on any given day, you can expect a flood of traffic back to your website. However, you don’t need to reach the front page of the entire website to reap the benefits from your work.
What is this unique community?
Although the community is extremely large, there are some general demographics and psychographics that will give you a better understanding of the community you’re dealing with.
Most Reddit users are within the 20 to 30 year old demographic and use the site as a means to consume daily news and interesting articles. Some users even frequent the site as a form of social media, to interact with their like-minded peers.
The community is very diverse, yet extremely dedicated. There is a prevalence of self-referential content on the site, including numerous inside jokes that only those who are part of the community would understand.
Overall, the community is very strong and has a massive amount of love for the website as a whole. This means that if your intentions aren’t pure, there’s a strong chance you’ll be driven out of the community. But don’t worry – we’ll outline below how you can ensure you remain in good graces.
Why your mindset matters the most
If you haven’t been an active Reddit member before, you’ll want to come into the community with a service-oriented mindset. If everything you post is completely about you and your business, there’s a good chance that you'll be rejected by the community. This means your content will be flagged and marked as spam.
There’s nothing wrong with self-promotion, but if your intentions aren’t based upon quality service, people are going to be able to tell. Most of the marketing that saturates the Internet is spammy in nature. You don’t want to make this mistake.
Whenever you post or respond to a user's question in the comments, your goal should be to help solve someone’s problems and provide them with solutions that actually work.
People will up-vote great and helpful content, which means that your post has a better chance of being seen. In the end, focus on delivering value and the results will come.
Reddit + SEO = A match made in heaven
If used properly, you can get a flood of targeted traffic. However, done incorrectly, it will simply be a waste of time. So, to get the most out of your Reddit experience, you’ll need to understand the type of content that ranks well.
The benefits of targeted traffic for your SEO strategy are two-fold. First, if more people are visiting your website and reading your articles, there’s a greater chance they’re going to share your content across other social media channels. Second, you’re also building valuable high-quality backlinks. There’s even a chance some of these links may send you direct traffic for a long time.
Post compelling content in the right places
Besides coming in with the intention of adding value, it’s important to have some of the posting basics under your belt as well. When you’re posting any piece of content, you’ll want to make sure you have a compelling title and use the correct website link. No need to use a link shortener here - in fact URLs using a link shortener will often be flagged as spam content.
When you’re starting to learn the ropes, you’ll come to understand that most of your efforts should be spent in the 'subreddits'. Subreddits are essentially smaller communities within the larger whole. It’s much easier to serve these communities and make a name for yourself as a user.
Reddit isn’t something you’ll want to use to post every single article you write. However, it can be used strategically. If you’ve taken enough time to browse the subreddits and get a feel for the site, you’ll intuitively know when an article is going to be a success.
In the meantime it can be helpful to build up a reputation by responding to comments and becoming an active member of the community. Who knows, you may have a product, blog post, or service you can recommend to a person in need.
As an added bonus, you can gain valuable information about your market by directly interacting with many of your ideal customers.
Conclusion
Even if you don’t think using Reddit will be a good fit for your marketing campaign, it’s important that you have an understanding of every option available to you.
In the end, effective SEO is all about the tools you’re using. Reddit can be an incredible tool that can help you build SEO outposts, while sending you targeted traffic time and time again.
Do you think it's an effective marketing tool? Share your experiences in the comments below.
