Latest Reddit Tips, Trends, and Tactics Every Marketer and Business Should Know

A marketer is well aware of the pain of struggling to develop a new product idea or topic for your next blog post.

We have all been there. We have all started at a blank page with a dreaded blinking line.

Sure, there are several ways to come up with the next big idea. However, today, we want to talk about Reddit, a platform many of us already visit every day yet often overlook.

But, Why Reddit?

Yes, there are plenty of communities and websites online that you can use to get content ideas. And it would be best if you poked around the place where your target audience hangs out the most.

There are multiple other places you may as well look:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Slack Channels

Then, why Reddit? Well, it is a can’t miss resource, especially when you have only started to lurk around.

Below are three primary reasons why:

Reddit is the 19th-most visited website in the world (1)
Reddit has more than 430 million monthly (52 million daily) active users, a 30.3% increase from the previous year (2)
On average, 60k new subreddits are added to Reddit each month (3); as of September 2021, there are over 2.2 million subreddits on the platform, meaning Reddit is incredibly deep (4)

According to Google Trends, it won’t slow down anytime soon (5)

Considering its depth, engagement, and size, Reddit is certain to have something valuable for you to develop new ideas for your content.

The key is to know how you can effectively navigate this massive platform and extract the most specific and powerful insights from its users.

There are More Reasons Why You Should Be Focusing on Cracking Reddit

People who find Reddit for the first time will have their first impression based on which community they join. They could either be offended, disgusted, enlightened, or entertained. That is another testament to how diverse the platform’s content is.

If you are well versed with subreddits, they are the niches for each community of the Reddit platform. Some of these subreddits may have three subscribers, whereas others can have a whopping 20 million.

Within site, you may find something as insightful as r/DecidingToBeBetter, or even something as ridiculous as r/DogTalk. You will jump from a self-improvement page to a community of people that posts “GrrrRuuf” and comments “bark bark bark.” We are not making it up!

Even if it sounds too crazy, Reddit is a legitimate social media platform. Moreover, there are so many other things. You can use the platform for microblogging, collecting forums, and content aggregation. In addition, it is also a big pool of leads waiting to be tapped for business-minded people.

According to Statista (6), Reddit has millions of active users.

Such monthly traffic is not something you should ignore. For a business, it is more than a hundred thousand potential conversions. That’s one primary reason why Reddit owners are also changing the platforms’ multiple trends.

Steadily Rising User Base

In most cases, Reddit is not the first social media platform that comes to our mind. It is Facebook’s throne for now. However, Reddit is not a new player either. In addition, it is by no means a mid-size platform.

Over the last several years, Reddit has always remained in the top 15 positions (#14, a position ahead of Twitter) in social media world rankings (7).

Reddit was started as a platform for people who don’t know each other to geek out together. Gradually, it spiraled into a collection of all kinds of posts, including political debates, cat pictures, announcements, NSFW content, you name it, and Reddit most probably has it. It means that the platform has grown well out of its original niche, and it continues to do so as we draft this piece of writing.

There was a time when Reddit had over-throned Facebook in 2018 to be the most visited platform in the United States (8). Yes, the site did drop behind as time passed, but it is still a commendable achievement. After all, passing Facebook in any category is not an easy feat.

And even though Reddit doesn’t seem to be on the path of doing it again, the platform has been seeing a steady growth rate over the past years. It also had 53 million users in 2020, a 44% growth compared to 2019 (9). We believe that the trend is likely to continue throughout the year and possibly beyond.

Reddit for Research

Reddit’s user base is diverse, including older people, employees, students, hackers, etc. Hence, by extension, the platform has rich insights. And today, many people are taking advantage of it.

On Reddit, you can gain insights into which topics are getting the most attention, which topics receive the most hate, what is trending, etc. It is also a perfect place for finding relevant keywords.

Notably, Reddit for research is not limited to marketers. Various businesses can use it for different types of investigations and studies. For example, a study conducted in May 2017 on whether Reddit is a viable source of high-quality data or not fairly proves the point (10).

Marketing on Reddit

The statistics of Reddit, as we discussed above, are impressive. They are too impressive for any marketers to ignore.

However, numbers aside, Reddit has not been the most conducive platform for brand promotion. It is because Reddit is a heavily community-driven platform. It is made up of communities whose primary goal is to engage with others in their group. Hence, users won’t think twice before downvoting their posts when someone shows up and promotes a brand.

Of course, it is not impossible to promote your brand inside Reddit. However, you must consider that most users won’t appreciate posts that offer them no value. In Reddit, upvotes and downvotes are two of the most important things for a post’s engagement since lower rates would lead to lower placement. In short, users hold a lot of power, and you better not get on their bad side.

However, there is one key to running a successful Reddit campaign: genuine engagement. It means you will have to invest considerable effort and time to build a willing and organic community around your brand. There are also some paid marketing strategies on the platform, but organic is always a better way to go. There is also always an option to utilize both options well (11).

The Community Landscape is Changing

As we mentioned before, Reddit has extensively grown out of its root niche, mainly consisting of geeky and techie topics. While it still primarily caters to users in those subjects, the platform, the site is the birthplace of numerous viral content and memes, but the community landscape overall is changing.

In addition, the site is also undergoing various changes, with some of the things being entirely switched up. One example includes now brands can temporarily rent the front page or slot in the platform. Moreover, the developers have also revamped advertising on the platform in general.

Ad-Friendly Structure

As we mentioned earlier, several brands are apprehensive of Reddit, especially when it comes to ads. And they have a good reason too. The platform has not been handing ads as well as other social networks. And also, most of its users unwelcome promotions and ads.

With Reddit’s structure, as it is, users can easily downvote ads, and admins have major control over subreddits. Even though it may seem intimidating, the platform is too big to let it simply slide.

And even people behind the platform are well aware of it. Take one look at Reddit’s traffic compared to others, and it will be clear. Reddit clearly lags when it comes to ad revenue.

For instance, Reddit has the same number of monthly active users as Twitter and an even higher engagement rate than the latter. However, Reddit only earned about 100 million USD in 2021 in ad revenue (12), whereas Twitter netted 1,053 million USD (13).

Of course, the revenues of most popular sites are even crazier. For instance, Facebook raked in 84.2 billion from ads in 2020 (14), and Google pulled in a huge 147 billion USD from ads last year (15).

And to ramp up its advertising game, Reddit has made its platform more ad-friendly. Of course, without isolating their users’ interests. Looking at you, Facebook!

For one, Reddit started offering a spot for rent on the platform’s most converted front page. It has also built the so-called safe space for ads, which is under the constant surveillance of the site’s personnel.

In addition, Reddit is also mixing promoted posts with normals. The platform also offers engagement guidelines to assist marketers.

Has it worked for Reddit? The results are exceptional. In 2018, the platform made only 76.9 million USD (16), and as of 2021, it has netted over 100 million USD, despite witnessing a revenue drop in 2020 amid the pandemic (17).

It makes sense for the social media site to continue this strategy moving forward.

How to Mine Reddit for Content Ideas?

Below are five steps to get inspirations for your next blog post:

Finding the most relevant subreddits
Look for users sharing their struggles, problems you can solve for them with your content.
Once you select a topic for your content, dig deeper into conversations to learn more about it, creating a more comprehensive and rich article.
Once you create your content, think about how you can repurpose each of your ideas to drive the most ROI for your brand. For instance, you can use your content as a foundation for a Facebook Live session, tweetstorm, Instagram, or YouTube video.
Come back on Reddit to share the article to the threat that inspired you or send a private message to the original poster.

It is an entire circle you can reuse over and over again.

And since there are billions of comments to search through, you won’t be running out of ideas anytime soon.

Key Takeaways

While Reddit doesn’t have the same level of appreciation as other social media platforms, you can’t deny the steady rise of Reddit.
The platform offers a collection of highly specific subreddits, a perfect place for small or niche businesses to find and tag their target audience.
You can gain useful insights into your target audience and even their perception of certain subjects.
You can also use Reddit to find key keywords for their SME efforts.
According to researchers, one can use Reddit as a sample size for various studies (cheaper than surveying university students).
Reddit offers new ways for companies to promote their products within the platform without isolating their users’ interests.
The best way for brands to thrive on Reddit is to focus on genuine engagement and organic growth.
As Reddit is growing out of its root niche, it is becoming easier for businesses to join the platform to promote their brands and interact with their target audience.
As mentioned, Reddit is making several changes to make itself more appealing; businesses actively engaging on the platform should start leveraging those changes.

What Does All of These Mean For Your Business?

There are several ways you can leverage Reddit for your business. For marketers, it is a goldmine. It has monthly traffic of over a billion.

If we talk about the user base, it is among the top three social media platforms, right after Facebook and Instagram. It has the same active users as Twitter but with even a higher engagement level.

Fortunately, Reddit is slowly transforming itself to accommodate businesses. And several brands have already started testing the waters with new ads opportunities on the platform. It means we can expect more companies to expand their marketing efforts to Reddit in the upcoming years.

Have you used Reddit as a source of your content ideas or to promote your brand? How was your experience? Leave a comment and let us know.