Today Benjamin Beck of SEER Interactive gets friendly with the reddit community, explaining how to make friends with moderators and stay clear of Reddit trolls.
With the recent news of Digg being sold to become a part of New.me, it now means that marketers have one less place to use for their social media success strategies. More than ever, companies are striving to find where potential customers are meeting, and figure out how to be a part of the conversation.
This is why marketers need to get familiar with Reddit.com. The site’s slogan is that it is the “Front page of the internet” and boasts millions of active users a month who submit, comment, and vote on everything from Fitness to Ninja Turtles. Both of these categories are located on what are called “Sub Reddits” or little communities where people who are interested in a subject meet to share and discuss the topics they care about.
Sounds like a marketer’s paradise right? It can be, but “Redditors” don’t appreciate being marketed to and will turn into Reddit trolls, trolls who like to bad mouth marketers and brands.
You can avoid all of that by taking the following steps to find your community, engage them, and build your brand’s presence on Reddit—while avoiding getting “trolled.”
Steps to finding and engaging your community on Reddit
1. Go to MetaReddit.com and search for your keyword
When using this tool, always start with broad keywords first. For example “snowboard” returns 28 sub reddits, where “Burton snowboard” returns 0. Also use the filters to eliminate sub reddits with very few subscribers.
2. Find the Biggest / Most Active Sub Reddits
When you perform your search you’ll be shown the best sub reddits around that topic. The bigger the title means more followers, and the darker the title means that the sub reddit is more active.
3. Pick a Sub Reddit and Get to Know the Community
Once you pick a sub reddit look around to see what people are talking about. Look to the filters at the top of the page to see what is hot, new, and controversial. I personally like to look at the “top” tab for the last month to see what has gotten the most upvotes and comments.
4. Read the Rulebook
After reading the top posts and comments, the next place I like to look at is the rules of the sub reddit. Each sub reddit is different so be sure to get familiar with them.
5. Research the Moderators
Since moderators decide whether your account gets banned from the sub reddit community or not it’s always smart to be on their good side. So again, know and follow the rules.
Then look to find the moderators who are in charge of the sub reddit. You can usually find and click on their user name found in the sidebar, which will take you to a screen like the image below. Look to see what the moderators like, dislike, comment on, and post to Reddit. After a few minutes of skimming these fields you can get a good idea of the moderators’ personality and interests. You’ll be amazed how much you can find out about people with this simple tip
6. Introduce Yourself
After you’ve spent some time getting to know the community and its moderators your marketing brain will probably be spinning with ideas on how to use this newfound community to reach your goals
Before diving in try to talk to the moderators, they know the community better than anyone else. They can tell you what the community will upvote, downvote and troll. When introducing yourself to the moderators follow these steps:
• Introduce yourself and comment on something they’ve done recently
• Be transparent with your plans for the sub reddit
• Offer ways to help the sub reddit. For this snowboard example you could offer to buy and give away stickers of the sub reddit logo
• Ask the moderators for tips
7. Start Contributing
Now that you’ve researched the community, know the rules, and have talked to the moderators. You are ready to start voting, commenting, and submitting content to the sub reddit.
If you have a brand or product I suggest creating a sub reddit of your own. Like a domain name you don’t have to use it right away, but you want to have control of it. An example of a great brand/product sub reddit is the Xbox page.
Conclusion
When it comes down to marketing on Reddit or marketing in general on social media, it’s not about shouting your message over and over, but rather connecting with your target audience on their terms. If you follow these tips you will be able to find and connect with your audience on Reddit. If you already forgot some of the steps, don’t worry here is a slide share deck review.
For the Reddit regulars, what was your best experience with the site?
For those who haven’t tried Reddit, what’s stopping you?
Look forward to seeing your answers in the comments.
The views expressed in this post are those of the author so may not represent those of the Koozai team.
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