You may not know it firsthand, but Reddit poses some serious threats for social marketers. It wields an aggressively anti-ad user base and a spam filter that shoots first with no questions later. It's dangerous, but so very tempting: in December of last year, they reached the benchmark of 2 billion page views per month. And with a community that divided itself up into specific subreddits, a lot of the work seems to be already done for marketers. These five tips should help secure some of that sweet referral traffic from your Reddit account.
1. RES - Using Reddit without The Reddit Enhancement Suite compares to watching TV without a DVR. It's possible, but things could be much more fluid. RES makes navigating lightning fast and boasts a ton of little enhancements to the UI that make managing a casual or power account much easier. Download it for free here.
2. Participate - Do stuff besides business. Much like Stumbleupon or Pinterest, Reddit is fun enough to be a full-time hobby. Genuinely posting and commenting about stuff besides what you're promoting also makes you immune to the spam filter. If you try and submit three links related to your product in your first week and other users don't respond well, your account could get locked up. Have a good time, get some upvotes (or, karma), and only then start to incorporate business.
3. Mostly Harmless - This useful little app sits in the top of your browser (Chrome only) and tells you if the site you're currently on has been submitted to Reddit. This can be used to gain quick upvotes by submitting good content as you surf. Download the app here.
4. Be helpful - When appropriate, give advice that gently leans towards your product or client. Don't talk like a salesman, but with a casual, knowledgeable tone. Here's a great example of users being helpful and promoting products.
5. Actual Ads - Reddit has devised an innovative and affordable system for their ads. A full explanation of the system may be found in this comic (via The Oatmeal!). If ads work with your social strategy, give Reddit a shot. Be wary though, these ads appear on the site as posts so the title is crucially important. If you aren't familiar with the Reddit dialect, you could be throwing throwing away money. Another excuse to actually engage with the community, am I right?