Marketing on Reddit: How to Do It Right [GUIDE]

Cats. Upvotes. Put those two things together and you get Reddit. Now you know the secret recipe to do marketing on Reddit the right way.

Okay… maybe that’s not quite true…

There’s more to Reddit than pictures and gifs of cats… or is it 🤔

Ah right…they also have pics and gifs of cute puppies too, silly me I forgot about them.

Look. Reddit is a fricking awesome social media platform, that can drive a ton of traffic to your content, but first, you should learn the proper reddiquette (more on this later) before you start marketing on Reddit.

But first…

How Does Reddit Work?

Reddit is basically one of the most unique social media platforms on the internet.

It’s basically like a large database of communities that work similarly to forums and groups.

These communities are called subreddits.

The only other similar social media that comes to mind would have to be Quora, but even that one is a stretch.

By the way:

Reddit has over 430 million users, that’s a huge number that you can’t really ignore, especially if you want to approach a more unique marketing strategy that many aren’t using.

What are Subreddits?

As I said, subreddits are the groups or communities of Reddit, that are niche or category-specific.

You could easily find tons of subreddits that are specific to your niche and get to know and connect with people and promote your stuff (if you know what you’re doing).

For instance, if you’re fixated on unicorns, you can find subreddits or communities with other random weirdos people like you, that are also interested in all things unicorns.

That way you get to share things and learn with other people that care as much as you do about the weirdest shit.

Ok, it doesn’t have to be weird. There’s a subreddit for everything, if you’re into nutrition, tech, fitness, etc… you got tons of subreddits to join.

But then again, there are indeed some freaky subreddits going on that I’m not going to go into too much detail about here, so yeah…weirdos man.

Reddit.com is the main page where you can find all the latest and trending stories from all the subreddits, but a subreddit will have their own unique URL like so: reddit.com/r/gaming

The /r/gaming is the subreddit, yes including the /r/ part.

Here are some popular subreddits that you might find, notice they are all niche specific, which makes it easy to connect with users that share the same passion as you or your business.

There are more though:

• /r/funny
• /r/AskReddit
• /r/gaming
• /r/aww
• /r/pics
• /r/Music
• /r/science
• /r/worldnews
• /r/movies
• /r/food
• /r/sports
• /r/space
• /r/gadgets
• /r/personalfinance
• /r/technology
• /r/fitness
• /r/NetHustler 😉

There are many, many more. That’s why Reddit is great to even come up with niche ideas, but not that many people know about that.

How To Market on Reddit Effectively

Reddit marketing can be a pain in the ass, especially if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Seriously. You. Will. Fuck. Things. Up. Big. Time.

For example, there are high chances that if you just try to go all-in guns blazing from the start and go submitting links to your blog or website to subreddits that are related to your niche, you will get roasted and buried, and sometimes banned.

Wait what? Why? What’s going on? Isn’t this the same as any other social media network?

No.

It’s not. It’s not the same. At all.

Let’s begin, young grasshopper and see how you can master Reddit marketing:

1. Understand Reddit

Reddit users or redditors as they are also called, are smart as heck. They smell the bullshit from a mile away.

They hate being marketed to, and they even have subreddits making fun of companies trying to advertise their shit on Reddit but fail miserably. For instance: /r/HailCorporate

That doesn’t mean it can’t be done. It means that you can’t just do it willy nilly as you would with Facebook or Twitter or Pinterest or anything else.

You have to befriend them first, tame them, soften them up, sing to their tune, add quality to the community, become one of them. Become a Redditor.

Then, and only then, you can try posting a link here and there to your brand, company, website, blog, project, or whatever the heck else you’re trying to promote on Reddit.

But Stephen, you said that you can buy ads on Reddit in your Cheap Traffic Sources. They wouldn’t be able to screw up my ads since I’m paying for them right?

WRONG. They absolutely can. Especially if you are a 0 Karma user, who has never even tried engaging with the subs (subreddits) before, and speaking to them in a salesy voice.

Look. I know, I know what you’re thinking right now.

Why the hell would you even try marketing on Reddit then if it seems such a hostile and awful place?

Because… when you do it the right way, oh boy it’s amazing. Either you win with Reddit Ads and you get a heck ton of cheap quality traffic or one of your links goes viral and your site could literally crash from the influx of free traffic.

Seriously, it’s fricking awesome. But like I said, you will have to become one of them, and I mean that shit. Otherwise, you will fail miserably and you would simply waste your time.

So if you want to start marketing on Reddit, be prepared for best or for worst (more for the worst part), and I sincerely hope that you really are passionate about your niche in order to have an easier time in the subreddits.

2. Understand the Subreddits

Reddit basically works the same as I’ve explained above in pretty much all subreddits.

HOWEVER.

Oftentimes, there are subreddit-specific rules that you will have to follow if you want to not ruin your disguise as a filthy marketer trying to infiltrate their brotherhood.

For example:

Let’s take /r/CatsStandingUp subreddit, as I find it pretty funny:

As you can see, this Reddit sub, is all about images or gifs or videos of JUST cats, standing up.

That is it. That’s the “niche” or the community.

Guess what, if you look closely in that picture, in the right sidebar, you will see that there are over 576,000 CATS (meaning users) that are active in that sub.

Fuck me, I just joined them too… now I’m trapped.

HELP. I mean… CAT!

Here’s the part where it gets even weirder, I told you that you also need to follow each subreddit rule, since they act as independent communities they have their own separate rules on TOP of regular Reddit rules.

I know…it’s getting confusing.

So for the /r/CatsStandingUp subreddit, users are ONLY allowed to communicate or write: one. single. word.

What’s the word?

CAT. (who would have guessed it huh?)

There’s literally ZERO else that you as a user on that subreddit are allowed to write in a comment or in the content.

And hundreds of thousands of people adhere to these silly rules, because… cats.

If you go to that subreddit and start posting links to your cat blog, or write anything else other than cat in the comments, you will get banned and essentially removed from that sub.

So it’s important to know about this before you start up any conversations. Usually, the rules will be on the right-hand side of the subreddit, for anyone to easily see and grasp.

3. Share and post quality content

It goes without saying that you should only post and share unique and quality content on the subreddits of your choice.

Try to be as authentic as possible. If you suck at it, and you will… try lurking first, meaning… watch what others are doing and posting, before you start engaging.

You don’t want to say or do the wrong things before you start posting links to your site or blog, or whatever else.

Build that karma first, and then you can start posting links here and there.

4. Build Reddit Karma

What the heck is Reddit Karma?

Glad you asked.

It’s basically your profile’s score. Each Redditor (Reddit user), starts out at 0 points when they first create their account.

There are many subreddits where before you can post a link or create your own threads (meaning posts on that sub), you will need to have a certain number of Karma points (positive ones).

Every time you post something on Reddit, whether it’s a link, image, piece of text, or write a comment, people will be able to either upvote or downvote you.

If everything you post is crap, you will quickly find out by the number of downvotes that your ass will get.

But if you post good shit, you will get upvotes instead.

So… upvotes = good, downvotes = bad. Every upvote or downvote will play a role in your total account Karma points. So you get 1 point for an upvote and -1 point for each downvote.

The goal is to have positive Karma and not a negative number like -3123.

Karma is the first thing a Redditor will notice when you post something.

If that son of a bitch is low, you won’t be able to either post links, or the users will simply flame you and make fun of you or your products / whatever you’re trying to promote.

I know. Friendly community 🙂

But hey, it kinda makes sense… if only you could see in real life -5123 on a person’s head, you’d knew to stay the FUCK away from that person.

Because they are obviously up to some bad shit that you don’t want to get involved with.

Right?

Hey, maybe we’ll get there someday… I know a certain place in the world where they have already working on this… so we’ll see how it turns out.

Read my full guide on: How to Get Reddit Karma to learn more.

5. Add accurate links

After you have gathered some Karma points and you’ve been active for a while in your favorite subreddits, it’s time to try your luck at adding some links to your stuff here and there.

Carefully though, you don’t want to spam the damn thing. Just post 1 link or so for every 9 other non-link content that you add. I don’t know, I just came up with this ratio, but seriously keep it a low number.

You can get banned if you post links too much. No, not just from a subreddit, but from the whole platform.

Also, add only relevant and accurate links that make sense for the subreddit that you’re in.

Meaning: Don’t post dog pics in subs that are about cats. Or your food recipes in tech communities.

6. Don’t bullshit

Never try to lie and give false info on purpose on Reddit, as I’ve said before, these guys are kinda smart, and tech-savvy, so they can easily identify if you’re making bullshit claims.

Example: How to lose 30 pounds of body fat in 7 days.

That shit might work on Pinterest, not on Reddit though, so be careful, only add what you know for sure it’s true and possible, that means we all know you can’t really lose 30 pounds in 7 days, not unless you wanna die or some shit like that.

So if you are promoting, scam affiliate products, that have bogus and fake claims, don’t try that on Reddit.

7. Don’t create fake accounts

If you thought: Hmm.. I’ll just create accounts and upvote all my posts that way my Reddit posts will go viral and I’m going to get a ton of website traffic.

Yeah, you’re going to get caught and flamed, and roasted, and laughed at, and banned.

Don’t, for the love of God try that. Sure, there’s a small possibility that you would be able to pull it off, but most of the time they will catch your ass.

If your posts and content got downvoted into oblivion, well, it sucks but…accept that and move on. Better luck next time, and watch out what you’re posting from then on.

Create a subreddit for your niche/brand

Alright, so those were some tips on how to try and do marketing on Reddit. It might work, it might not work, you only know if you try it out.

Give it a go and see what happens.

But also, another great idea would be to create a subreddit for either your site, your brand, or your niche.

For example/r/NetHustler I made that subreddit specifically for posting my blog posts automatically to Reddit.

Why? Well, for a number of reasons:

1. I wanted to build a community over there related to internet marketing (but haven’t had the time to give it a go yet)
2. Faster indexing times from Google, especially when this blog was new.
3. Chance for the links in my subreddit to rank in Google, bringing me more traffic
4. If I want to create Reddit Ads, having my own subreddit makes more sense, to invite people over.
5. Because I didn’t want others to use the “NetHustler” username or subreddit over there in bad ways.

So as you can see there are a couple of good reasons to create a Reddit subreddit for your brand.

You can also create a subreddit for your niche, like for example if you have a brand and company about bicycles you could come up with cool ideas for a subreddit and gather more bike riders to join it.

That will make it easier for you to market your brand on Reddit and bring quality users to your site or business.

For example, you could create: /r/ThisIsWhyWeBike where you and other users could share reasons and either memes or truths about the benefits of biking.

Marketing on Reddit Ads

Reddit Ads are cheap as heck, this makes marketing on Reddit one of the cheapest and affordable ways to bring exposure to your brand.

Careful though, the same shit still applies here, remember… your ads on Reddit will be nothing more than regular posts, that will appear featured at the top of the subreddits that you choose.

Users will still be able to upvote, downvote, and comment on it with either positive words or negative ones.

So before you start creating ads on Reddit, it’s best to first study what the others are doing and how they are formulating their ads before you try and do it too.

Reddit Ads are seriously as cheap as $0.10 per click, or $0 to $100 for 1000 Impressions (CPM). You could also just start with a $5 budget.

The pricing of course depends on the subreddit, niche, location, etc. But yeah, a $0.5 CPM is not unusual.

Reddit Marketing: Extra Tips

Even more Reddit marketing tips, so that you can have a better time doing it.

CAT

Sorry, it slipped… I got CATourettes now.

Anyway:

Reddit Terms

Here’s a list of Reddit terms that you need to get familiarized with:

• Cake Day: It’s the date you’ve created your Reddit account (like a birthday)
• Circlejerk: A group of redditors or subreddit that consider themselves superior.
• ELI5 – Explain like I’m 5. Used when you need someone to better explain things to you, in words that even a 5-year-old could understand.
• AMA – Ask me anything. If you’re knowledgeable about something you can do an AMA, where users ask you questions about your or your staff.
• TL;DR – Too long; didn’t read. A shorter version of a much longer wall of text.
• IRL – Stand for In real life.
• NSFW – Not safe for work. If you see things with the NSFW tag, don’t open them in places where others might see that, as it’s usually something for 18+ meaning adult stuff or grotesque pics.
• FTFY – Stands for: Fixed that for you.
• Mod – The moderator of a subreddit. Basically, this is the boss that can ban people for breaking the rules.
• TIL – Stands for: Today I’ve learned.
• OP – Original post or the original poster. Meaning the user who first created the post.
• Repost – When a piece of content was already shared on Reddit in another subreddit.
• Shitpost – A shitpost is basically a post that lacks any substance or real value.
• Sub – Shortcut for subreddit.
• WIP – Work in progress.

Reddit Gold

This is Reddit’s premium currency that you can buy for real money. You use these Reddit coins to gift others when they post something insightful, useful, funny, or anything else.

Users with Reddit gold or coins can then spend that on unlocking extra perks on the platform.

Reddiquette

Stands for Reddit etiquette or rules. You should try your best to follow the Reddiquette whenever you engage with the Reddit community.

Keep in mind like I’ve said previously, subreddits will also have their own set of rules on top of the regular Reddit rules.

Check out more about the Reddiquette here.

Reddit Karma

Reddit Karma stands for the number of total points whether positive or negative a user (Reddit account) has. In general, it’s good to have a positive number.

Although in some meme scenarios, you will find Redditors who pride themselves in having the lowest Karma score (negative points) on the platform.

Karma is important if you want to maintain a non-spammy profile and be able to do marketing on Reddit the proper way.

Reddit Upvotes / Downvotes

The system on which the Reddit karma is based on. Every Reddit post and comment will have two arrows next to them, one is the upvote the other one is a downvote.

Reddit users can either upvote or downvote content, and they usually upvote it if the content is good and downvote it if it’s bad.

Basically it’s a way of for the community to either agree or disagree with something or someone.

Marketing on Reddit 101: Conclusion

There you have it, now you know the basics on how to do marketing on Reddit. Congrats on making it to the end.

As a reward, I’m going to leave you with this sub: /r/FiftyFifty (click at your own risk)

It’s basically a form of Russian roulette but with content, so you have a 50/50 chance of a post to either be option A or option B.

The game is that one option is good that has nice content and the other one is NSFW (not safe for work or for life) type of content, like brutal images of diseases, and other nasty shit like that.

You’re welcome.

Let me know down in the comments if you’ve ever tried Reddit marketing, if you would give it a go or if I scared you even more haha.

Until next time, stay hustlin’
Stephen

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