Reddit is a massive online forum that sees billions of clicks each year.
Its users source content from all over the internet and post that content to Reddit, where other users interact with and comment on it. Users even create content themselves for the sole purpose of posting to Reddit.
This dynamic environment means that Reddit is one of the best places to find ideas for your content and PR campaigns. In fact, reporters and journalists regularly rely on Reddit’s front pages to find topics and sources for their stories.
Here’s how you can leverage Reddit to earn coverage in major news outlets.
Set up an account and learn how posting, upvoting, and commenting works
Even if you’re a digital native, Reddit can be an intimidating place when you first start using it. Its interface is a little clunky and confusing. The culture is full of self-references and meta-humor. And even once you get used to it, the Reddit landscape is constantly changing.
So, to make sure you can get the most out of your time spent on Reddit, it’s best to create a personal account and start doing what Redditors do: post, upvote, and comment. In other words, learn by doing.
Adding content to Reddit’s forums is called “posting”. You can post URLs to other websites’ content, you can upload pictures, or you can write and post text. Once you’ve posted your content, other users will decide if they like it or not by “upvoting” or “downvoting” it. They can also comment on the content, with the comments often becoming more entertaining than the content that prompted them.
The upvoting and commenting are especially valuable to teams trying to earn media coverage. When content receives lots of positive votes, it’s a signal to you that that type of content or that topic is popular and something your target audience might be interested in. Think of Reddit as a test audience where you can verify ideas and concepts even before creating the content and pitching to journalists. It saves a lot of time!
Reddit’s search function is also incredibly useful as it allows you to sift through millions of posts to find the most popular, most successful content that has to do with your query. The top four or five content pieces around a topic often have something in common, a theme you can borrow to create your own content that your own audience wants to talk about.
Follow this process
Our team at Go Fish Digital has been able to reliably find success with press placements and social promotion using the following steps to create content:
- Identify your content topic (could be a trending topic on Reddit or in the news cycle, or something related to your business/client).
- Use Reddit’s search functions to find top performing content around that topic.
- Identify common themes, layouts, or ideas present in the top performing content.
- Read the contents’ comments to gather data around audience reception and identify any productive adjustments that could be made to the content.
- Based on the identified themes and adjustments from steps 3 and 4, create your own content that captures the attributes that made the Reddit content successful.
- Pitch the content to journalists and promote on social media.
Understand the limits
Reddit does have a few limitations to keep in mind. The Reddit user base is more than two-thirds male and skews far younger than the typical demographic. By no means does this disqualify Reddit as a viable source of ideas, but it is something to keep in mind while you use it.
With the proper context, process, and understanding of Reddit’s limits, your team can find content that has already been verified as something that people and reporters will like, making it that much easier to earn coverage from top outlets.