The dam finally burst. After building up many burning questions in my mind, and with no one to ask, I created a Reddit account. What should I do to fix these withered plants? How do I stop my fridge from leaking? Which AI tools are actually working well for professional marketers? Finally, I was connected to the world’s largest community. 

Reddit gives this same thrill to its nearly 100 million daily users, increasing its revenue, content and visibility, thanks to consistently ranking high on Google—which I assume you’ve also noticed.

“We've long had a symbiotic relationship with the Google search platform…It's a great source of new users.” - Steven Ladd Huffman, Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director, Reddit

“Reddit is the front page of the internet,” says Ross Simmonds, CEO & founder of Reddit marketing agency Foundation, Inc. In a way, it’s become your local neighborhood—stop, chat, ask a favor and give a recommendation. “People trust people, they love Reddit’s community and human to human interaction.” Except that in this community, your neighbors have pretty silly names, probably live hundreds or thousands of miles away from you, and are all moderated.

Yep—emphasis on moderated. While you can’t moderate your next door neighbor and their advice on how you should raise your children, expect moderation on Reddit from whoever was early enough to claim that throne and power by creating the subreddit before you did. (You know: the Royal House of Reddit.)

Here my thrill of Reddit began to subside. The moderators deleted my posts because I hadn’t engaged in the subthreads at all. This was new to me—unlike X or Instagram, we can’t freely engage with users and communities on Reddit. So how can we, as individuals or brands, build a presence on Reddit?

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Reddit is relevant for marketing, but be precise with your targeting

The first question: is Reddit right for me? Yes. If you’re seeking support on r/Witchcraft or r/BabyNames, rest assured you’re not alone. 

But what about your brand? “Reddit is now capturing traffic for priority keywords and impacting almost every single sector you can think of,” says Simmonds. “We did an analysis of the top BOFU keywords that B2B review sites typically rank for and found that the overwhelming majority of keywords had Reddit ranking in the top 5.” So whether you’re B2C, B2B or B2Me, Reddit is relevant for your content and you’ll win visitors from Google. (Make sure to tap into these practices to create content that ranks.)

And note to B2B brands: it no longer vibes to look at Reddit as an informal or unprofessional space. “The gap between B2B and B2C content is narrowing,” says Mordy Oberstein, head of SEO at Wix, partially because there's less of a barrier between our personal and professional selves. “The way we consume content, the type of content and the tone of content have all changed.”

As any marketer knows—as well as any sample sale shopper—it comes down to being in the right place at the right time. “Thanks to subreddits, brands can speak directly to the right audience all the time,” says Simmonds. “Subreddits provide similar levels of precise targeting because people opt into communities that are relevant to them.” If you haven’t checked yet, head over to Reddit and use the search bar to explore relevant subreddits for your client’s brand. Sites like reddit reads provide an index of the highest-traffic topics, currently listing 1,289 subreddits.

Brands are benefiting from Reddit—but how?

Why are brands on Reddit? It’s simple: two-way comms help both brands and consumers. As long as brands act with intention, says Simmonds, users develop a positive perception, leading brands to additional gains, such as:

• Capturing high-quality leads

• Building 1-1 relationships

• Influencing opinion

• Driving more organic traffic

• Staying relevant with insightful, valuable content

How do you know if a Reddit strategy is working for you? Here are a few KPIs that Simmonds uses:

• Referral traffic from Reddit 

• Total Reddit impressions from content

• Karma from Reddit

• Number of ranking positions in the SERP for priority keywords

Unfortunately, getting started on Reddit now won’t make you a first mover. However, you can still make an impact provided you have fully-baked strategy—but leave room for improvisation.

What your brand can do on Reddit

What does a Reddit strategy look like, and why are we talking about improvisation?

Let’s start with the improv. Reddit is in the hands of the people, plus a few very particular moderators. Getting started on Reddit is like raising a teenager, so learn to let go and to roll with the unexpected. One example from Oberstein: “you can engage with the people who are giving you a hard time. Reddit is a great place to tackle negative sentiment.” Those conversations require intuition and adaptability, so make sure you source the right person for the task—more on that below. 

Now, to get started with your brand’s strategy on Reddit, here are what the experts advise:

1. Research your target users

This is more than identifying which subreddits you should post in. Analyze the posts and members in each subreddit to understand the style, tone and format, and ask yourself:

• What is the average length of post titles and bodies?

• Are there content gaps you can fill?

• How do these users write and interact?

Pro tip from Simmonds: we conducted Reddit research across thousands of subreddits and found that the average title of posts are under 120 characters.

2. Choose the right subreddits

Your channel choices within Reddit are a distillation of your larger comms strategy. Are you trying to build brand awareness or change brand perception? Do you want insights from potential customers, or from the customers of your customers? 

“As time goes on, the expectation that brands have a presence in the subreddits that their audiences are on is going to become more and more real,” says Simmonds. And keep in mind that the best matching subreddit might not already exist, and you need to create it. 

Pro tip from Simmonds: the number one thing brands can do right now is to create their own user account and subreddit.

3. Use keyword research to inform your posts

Keyword research can inform both your subreddit choices and your content creation. Thanks to the close connection between Google and Reddit, this approach is relatively friction-free. (Plus, you can use these findings to improve your website’s content by writing in the authentic language of your target audience and answering their questions on your pages.)

Pro tip from Oberstein: if your keyword is dominated by Reddit and your content is outranked by Reddit, you also need to be present in that Reddit result and thread.

4. Speak as a person, not as a brand

When you get to Reddit, make sure you sound like you belong on Reddit. What is it that users love most about Reddit? The people and the conversations. Leverage this in your content creation:

• Speak in the first person, not as an organization

• Stay around for a back-and-forth exchange, don’t write one-way monologues

Pro tip from Oberstein: depending on the intent of the conversation, don't go in as a brand. Go in as somebody from your company.

5. Be consistent

Like in any neighborhood or local community, it’s always nice to see a familiar face. Engage more to earn more Reddit Karma, and your content will be more visible. Users appreciate commitment and consistency, says Simmonds, which helps you make inroads organically and authentically.

Pro tip from Simmonds: build a strategy that is rooted in creating both content native to Reddit and content that supports the questions, feedback and discussions that are happening daily in various subreddits and threads.

6. Loosen up how you measure performance

Even though Reddit is classed as social media, you’ll find that the same metrics from Instagram and TikTok don’t apply. Traditionally social media looks at views, likes and comments. However unique to Reddit, are upvotes and extended conversations. 

Also, consider the halo effect of Reddit—even if your post doesn’t drive direct traffic to an included link, other channels might show a lift in activity. 

Pro tip from Oberstein: Reddit can function as top-level awareness. Even if users don’t engage with your post, they might do a branded search on Google. You need to correlate performance between the platforms.

What does the future hold?

Despite Reddit’s strong growth and SERP ubiquity, the company is aware that this advantage could change at any time. As Steven Ladd Huffman—co-founder, CEO, president and director of Reddit—says, “We’ve seen [Google’s] algorithm change a lot over the years, and of course, it always will. And Google experiments with all sorts of new search products. Some help, some hurt.”

Sure, now Google and Reddit have a mutually beneficial relationship—note the $60 million deal to train Google’s AI with Reddit content and feature more of its content on the SERP. But as Reddit more and more becomes a preferred platform to find content, instead of Google, we can assume the claws of competition will re-emerge and deals will be redealt. 

“Reddit is the fourth most trusted resource for product research (78%), only behind friends/family (88%) at # 1, review websites (86%) at # 2 and store Employees (83%) at # 3, but above Google and all other social platforms.” - How search marketers can keep up with Gen Z, Reddit

As long as brands see Reddit as one part of their strategy, and not as its entirety, they can maximize gains and minimize risk. (Let’s hope marketers have learned their lesson after going all-in on potentially-banned TikTok.) “Reddit is going to be the primary source for community and user generated content,” says Simmonds. This specificity is precisely what marketers need for their plans—let Reddit serve these goals while harnessing other properties like Instagram and owned-site content for their respective strengths. Think of your channel strategy as a constellation: individual stars that together form something cohesive and purposeful. 

And that leaves one final, unresolved item. Will I return to Reddit? Well, now that I know the right way to go about it, you might find me almost r/anywhere. 

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