Using Reddit for Organic Marketing

If Google is the place where people go to search for things, Reddit is the place where people go to see what they’ve found. And the last thing you’d like to find is someone using those lazy and annoying marketing tactics.

What is organic marketing?

Think of it as word-of-mouth marketing. To be more specific, organic marketing involves the publishing and promotion of content that’s informative, entertaining and highly relevant to your target audience.

If your audience loves long book reviews, share your newest review on Reddit. If they love funny videos, share that hilarious video that your best friend sent you the other day. Play to the crowd. But wait…

Marketers beware

Redditors have a keen eye for anything that seems like traditional marketing or a sales pitch. Rest assured, if this is what you plan on using Reddit for, expect your posts to be downvoted into oblivion.

Focus on providing value – real, genuine value – before you even think of asking for anything. Many marketers/brands have done the opposite, and it was a complete waste of their time and their effort.

Participate in subreddits that have nothing to do with your business. It’s important to be a part of the community before you start posting. And always follow the rules of the subreddit.

Learn about the site and some popular terms

Reddit is an entertainment, news, and social networking site all wrapped up into one. Registered users can submit links or posts to subreddits. Other users can then comment, upvote or downvote those submissions.

Subreddit

A subreddit is a subset of the Reddit community. For example, r/books is the subreddit for books. There are hundreds of thousands of subreddits, from the day’s breaking news, to resources that will help you translate websites. Each subreddit has its own rules. So before you post in a subreddit, familiarize yourself with their rules.

Commenting

Don’t even think about leaving generic comments on subreddits. They will get downvoted in a heartbeat. Do your best to leave well-thought-out, engaging comments. Leaving comments like these will help build your credibility.

Upvotes

Upvotes are similar to “likes” on Facebook.

Downvotes

Now imagine if Facebook had a dislike button. Well, that’s what downvotes are.

Karma

With every upvote you receive, 1 karma point is earned. Increasing your karma is going to be very important going forward. Having a lot of karma makes you look more trustworthy to other users. However, when you receive a downvote, you lose 1 karma point. Be careful about getting too many downvotes because your account will be restricted.

Aim for your target

Do you know your target audience? Do you know what they like? And since we’re focusing on organic marketing on Reddit, do you know what they’re favorite subreddits are?

Hopefully, you are able to answer these questions. If you’re unsure, there are a few tools that you can use to figure out those answers.

If you’re going to be spending a significant amount of time on Reddit, I’m sure that you want a return on your investment. So it’s important to know what’s working and what isn’t working.

Here are a few tools will help make things clear.

• Reddit insight is a very simple analytics tool. It’s best used for real-time post tracking and/or tracking a single user.
• Reddit metrics shows you the fastest growing subreddits of the day, the last 7 days, and the last 30 days.
• Snoop snoo is very similar to Reddit Insight.
• Theory of reddit is a subreddit dedicated to understanding what makes Reddit great and how to improve it.

Those lazy and annoying marketing tactics don’t work anymore. People want to be informed, entertained, and catered to.