How can a Brand Activate on Reddit?

Filled with passionate communities that are eager to connect and limitless branded content opportunities, Reddit can be a powerful platform for brands – if they use it right. When building a community on Reddit, brands find the most success creating a variety of engagement prompts and following a community engagement cycle that helps authentically introduce them to the Reddit community. Here’s how brands join that cycle:

• Start with Fans: Identify vertical communities that align to your target audience and build a relevant feed of content. Start engaging there to connect with the community and engage with Redditors about the ongoing topic(s).
• Secondary Audiences: Brands can run promoted prompts and takeovers on Reddit’s front page, trending page, or can target their desired audience in any category They can run a promoted post as their Reddit debut, but taking a full funnel approach increases favorability.
• Mass exposure: At this stage, brands can be more openly promotional creating new product launch or announcements threads, or Reddit-specific content like AMAs (Ask Me Anything). These increase brand transparency as users ask anything and expect honest answers.

The Real Value for Brands

Research Tool: The homepage identifies some of the internet’s top trending conversations, and yields honest consumer sentiment around trends, niche topics, and brands/products.

Unique Fan Engagement: An informative and/or playful thread of engagement with fans can yield positive results, but passionate fans can turn on you with one wrong move.

Creativity & Variety in Content: The post options and engagement prompts connect brands with fans adding value to both the larger community and the brand.

Getting Started

In the Short-Term:  Run a promoted post utilizing Reddit interest targeting & join known, relevant Reddit communities to establish a regular cadence of engagement.

In the Long-Term:  Set up ongoing monitoring of brand or product-related subreddits & begin posting engagement prompts in popular subreddits, or on your profile.