Crowd Marketing on Reddit. Does it work?!

Crowd marketing is just one of many marketing strategies. It focuses on large audience groups, who are targeted with the use of different techniques. The audiences are used to build referrals, generate leads and increase website traffic. In the end, this could result in reliable exposure being formed. Because crowd marketing focuses directly on the target audience, it differs from social media marketing and other marketing techniques.

The benefits of crowd marketing are:

• Raising brand awareness - By posting blogs and posts from or about your company, you get your name out there.

• Lead generation - Lead generation is the process of generating consumer interest for a product or service with the goal of turning that interest into a sale. By crowd marketing, you get people to your website where you converge the traffic into sales.

• Drive engagement - It engages and inspires the audience to take action based on your posts.

• Build business authority - By posting high-quality in the right place, the content placed helps build on the business’s authority. This helps segregate from the market.

• Boost of your website traffic - The more people engage, the more traffic will follow through towards your business

Generally speaking, there are five main categories in which you can differentiate crowd marketing. Based on the desired result you want from the campaign, you chose one of the following.

• Classic crowd marketing - Approach the target audience by placing high-quality content where you know your fans will notice it.
   

• Building quality backlinks - Maximise website traffic and inspire other content creators to publish backlinks leading to your site. Search engines know when a website gains attention. Therefore, when your post gets shared, it builds towards your credibility.
   

• Content distribution - Content creation generates over three times as many leads as traditional marketing and costs 62% less. Therefore, this is a great way of crowd marketing since the costs are low. Keep in mind though that the cost in time is higher.
   

• Reputation management - Reputation management requires you to create all the relevant business accounts on the internet. Behaviour is key. You are a reputable organization promoting your values and beliefs. This needs to match the audience. If not done properly, negative feedback and dislikes can ruin your campaign.

 

• Crowd influencer marketing - Crowd influencer marketing is a big trend nowadays because consumers tend to trust reliable figures more than a brand. Find an influencer that fits your company. An appropriate figure is recommended for your appropriate business.

Finding questions, or interesting topics is up to you. However, the upvoting depends on the community. Therefore, you must become part of the community, which we will come back to later on.

There are multiple platforms that can be used for crowd marketing. Some of the best platforms to use are:

• Quora

• Facebook

• Reddit

• Medium

Using Reddit as a research tool

Reddit is totally different from Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. Nevertheless, Reddit can be a great addition to your company, if worked with properly. There are multiple ways to make Reddit beneficial for your company.

This geek platform has over 300 million active users and it definitely has an audience for your target group as well. Reddit can help with your market research by just asking in the right sub-Reddit. For example, I did research about web domain usage in the UK. Both .co.uk and .uk can be registered. Doing research online, we came to the conclusion that .uk would be best fitted for our goal. However, when putting up a small quick poll on Reddit, we quickly changed our minds to use .co.uk.

After just one hour, this post exploded. The results are really clear as can be seen above. Because Reddit has a target group for every poll or questionnaire, Reddit is a good way of extending your market research.
 

Get more traffic from Reddit

Just post content interesting enough to people that they click. Sounds easy. But there is a lot that comes with it.

Reddit is a free platform with thousands of communities (sub-Reddits). Members can share links, posts, images, and polls. Everything can be posted as long as it complies with the guidelines the sub-Reddit has put up. As mentioned, there are thousands of sub-Reddits. For almost every subject you can imagine, there is a community. Every community can set its own rules and guidelines. Therefore, it is always smart to read if your post complies with these rules.

There are some rules on profiles that are able to post as well. These cannot be found in the community itself. These rules are to make sure the amount of spam is limited, and are moderated by an automated bot. But there are also communities moderated by individuals. These communities are highly trusted and more active compared to those moderated by bots For example, if your account is too young, your post can be automatically deleted. 

Furthermore, Reddit works with karma. Karma points one can gather that show the reliability of the user, through likes and comments on your posts. Most sub-Reddits will only let you post if you have a minimum of 50 points. Since these rules are not displayed, it is just trial and error to find out if you are able to post or not.
It is recommended to first start off by building karma. At the same time, there are multiple sub-Reddits to be found, like /AskReddit, where no karma is necessary. 
With more than  300 million active users on Reddit, there are definitely opportunities for you.
An important thing to keep in mind is that everyone can see the history of your posts and comments. If you repost your same post over and over again, people will start to notice and dislike your posts. Even worse, if this is done too many times you might get banned from the platform.

Personal Experience

Reddit is perfect for both crowd- and content marketing, creating valuable content in the process. It took me approximately 5 days to get started. During these days, I was busy trying to build up my karma and creating an overview of potential sub-Reddits which might be interested in my content. During these days, I was able to find communities where I could already post my content as well. Because the communities where I was able to post were niche, the interaction was high. Therefore, the process of karma building went rather quickly.
Throughout my journey with both Reddit and Quora, I was constantly fine-tuning which posts would be beneficial and which not.
The lesson I learned is that people hate ads. No one is interested in a post that even smells a little like an ad. What does work, however, is a post that is informational and beneficial to the reader.

For example, I wrote a post about a hot topic nowadays of which I knew a lot of people would like some free lessons and information. Since the post was informally written, people just read it and enjoyed it. This generated likes and comments which both helped build my karma, and create a valuable backlink. This is where I knew what kind of posts I should write.
It is important that, before you post, you look at the target audience of that specific post. If not done properly, one might find your post upsetting. People are proud of their community. Everything that might harm this might be banned. As mentioned before, you have to be part of their community and therefore, post only something that you, as part of their community, find beneficial for them. 

After just one week, 0.24% of the total traffic already came from Reddit.

How not to use Reddit in Marketing

• Do not use obvious ads (unless paid for). Posts that are obvious ads will be removed quicker than you can blink. As I have experienced, informal posts work best. 

• Do not repost the same post too soon after each other. If your post gets deleted, you can find another sub-Reddit for your content. However, do not spam on multiple subs since people can see your history and know what you are doing.

Barriers that some may encounter in Reddit

• Confusing. This is something one can encounter once they start off. As mentioned before, subreddits have different rules. This applies to self-promotion as well. 

• Toxic. Redditors are straightforward. They will tell you exactly what they think. Don’t let this hold you back. Start the discussion and defend your post. Not only will this result in your post being more popular due to the interactivity, it also strengthens the information posted. 

• Time. It takes a lot of time to start building your account value (Karma) and trying to find out what posts catch on. You have to keep this in mind. There is no shortcut to starting off.

 

Reddit Metrics for Crowd Marketing

• The number of members in a subreddit - How important the number of members in a sub-Reddit is is totally dependent on the results you are looking for. To build karma, it can be a good idea to start with the niche subs. However, if your account has enough credibility, you can easily aim for subs with a few hundred thousand subscribers to a million.

• The active number of members in a subreddit - The number of active members gives an indication of how interactive the community is. A sub-Reddit can have millions of subscribers, but if there are a few hundred active then it is not as useful. A sub-Reddit with 1000 active members is way more valuable than.

• Response time in a subreddit - Reddit shows a short-term reaction. If your post doesn’t show the desired results within 48 hours, then it won’t do much later on as well. Engaging with comments helps a lot to boost your post. Your response time should be short. Engage as soon as possible, best within an hour, to maintain traffic.

Final words

The biggest advantage of crowd marketing on Reddit is the ease with which the results can be seen. Furthermore, because Reddit is so big, there is an audience for everyone. This is really beneficial as well.
The biggest disadvantage is the time. A company must not underestimate the time it takes to start- and maintain their Reddit. In the end, though, the results are most definitely worth it.