Reddit has traditionally been a social media platform that PR professionals avoid. The communities and subreddits can be crass, the platform isn’t the most user-friendly, and it doesn’t really lend itself well to marketing images, videos or other collateral. But, are B2B PR pros missing the big opportunity of Reddit marketing by avoiding the platform?
The answer is yes, and here’s why:
There are communities for everything: On Reddit, there really is a community for nearly everything, which means there’s unlimited potential to tap into the thoughts and preferences of your target audience. From just a social listening standpoint alone, there’s a lot that a PR pro can learn about the daily challenges their audiences face just by scrolling through a Reddit thread.
This is especially true for B2B industries. For example, there’s a whole community of system administrators who share ideas, answer each other’s questions, and even share their thoughts and recommendations on which vendors might be best for particular IT needs. Getting access to this kind of unfiltered dialogue is invaluable, and can become a source of knowledge to anyone who’s looking to gain a deeper understanding of the problems their end users need help solving.
You can own the conversation: Not only can companies glean knowledge and insights from the communities that already exist on Reddit, but they can also create communities of their own. Users can come directly to them with questions or speak with other users about their experiences. It can be a great way to foster connectedness between members of a customer base and can also become a tool for sifting out potential brand ambassadors. Microsoft, for example, has a massive community of dedicated users that are moderated by Microsoft Support and a Microsoft employee.
However, creating a community isn’t something that should be taken lightly. You’ll need community managers to keep tabs on the conversation, answer questions, and quell any complaints or concerns that users comment about. If you’re a technology company, a typical social media community manager might not be the right fit. Questions will likely be specific and technical, as users aren’t constrained by the character limits found on Twitter. So, someone will need to be on staff to make sure answers are not only timely, but technically accurate, too. This could also be a great opportunity to get happy customers or sector experts to respond to questions about your product/service so they can provide third-party validation. But again, a reference program of this caliber requires significant time and resource investments!
You can get real: Reddit isn’t the place to give your sales pitch. Period. However, this could be a place to test out some thought leadership ideas so you can see which ones resonate, and which don’t. By posing a question to a problem in a subreddit, you can easily determine if others in the community struggle with the same issue or have similar questions. The people in Reddit’s communities are passionate and honest, so if you’re getting crickets on your posts, it’s likely because the content misses the mark. If the topic doesn’t matter to the audience you’re trying to reach, it may mean you need to rethink your thought leadership strategy and re-assess the topics that are going to pique their interest.
While dipping your toes into the Reddit-sphere can be daunting for polished B2B marketing and PR pros, there really is a wealth of insights you won’t want to miss out on with Reddit Marketing. If you omit this social media channel from your tactical toolkit without first assessing how much of your audience is there, you might be kicking yourself down the line later.
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