As a Social Media Manager, I’m often asked what the most important Social Media platform is and my answer is always the same, “Depends, what do you want to do?”
We all know Facebook is good for reaching hyper-targeted audiences and mass marketing, Twitter is good to reach news junkies and TV influencers, Instagram is great if you have storytelling video and imagery that shapes your brand, and Snapchat reaches younger demos. The Social platform that is always left out in our discussions is Reddit. There’s a fear of Reddit in the Social Media Marketing landscape for two major reasons:
- It’s harder to own a presence on Reddit. There’s no page where you can illustrate your brand message with videos and images. There’s no one-on-one virtual customer service. It’s a conversation based on topics real people, not anthropomorphic brands.
- The interface is so basic it makes AOL chatrooms of the 90s seem polished:And while that’s true of the desktop interface, the mobile app which is a little easier to scroll through and ingest. The images associated with each post fit the screen and the threads of conversation are a little more obvious to click on. For example, today while I was scrolling I saw this post and got the full effect of why this photo was so hilarious:
And then when I clicked through to the comments I saw something more astonishing, the exact thing Social Media Marketers need to understand so they stop leaving Reddit out of their playbook:
It is happening, the audience tired of algorithm feeds, false advertising, fake and real news on Facebook are getting on Reddit. It’s an organic society of people sharing fun, interesting, educational, and stupid pieces of life.It’s not a coincidence that you’ll likely see the story of the above picture on a blog post that’s in your Facebook feed on Monday. Editorial sites are always trolling Reddit to find human interest stories and utilizing them for feel good pieces of shareable content.Social can take a play out of editorial’s playbook here. So often we discuss how we have to be disruptive on Social Media platforms. On Reddit, we shouldn’t disrupt, or interrupt the natural flow of conversation and posting that occurs. Instead, we should find ways to learn from it and start the discussion on our own platforms. Make Reddit a part of your personal daily Social Media usage. Review the trending stories and learn what tomorrow’s meme are going to be. Jump on the trends and utilize them in your content creation brainstorms.In my presentation at Social Fresh in Orlando, I’ll be discussing more ways to utilize this platforms and some ways to integrate into it and still be welcome. I hope to see you there!
