Reddit is the 800-pound Gorilla in the room
By Chris Abraham. Filed in Social Media Marketing |Tags: abc news, Advertising Age, Christmas, CNN, Facebook, Fisk, flipboard, Google, iPad, Microsoft Surface, pinterest, Reddit, RSS, social media, twitter, YouTube
reddit is the 800 pound Gorilla in the room and has been for years. No one talks about the powerful and direct influence that this quirky, impenetrable, and oddly still-underground this social sharing site is. While people are writing post-after-post about Pinterest, So.cl, Google+, Facebook, Instamatic, and Twitter, reddit’s eating everyone’s lunch – at least when it comes to authentic bottom-up self-organization.
On reason why I don’t ever discuss it when I am discussing social media marketing and PR is because I just can’t get my foot in the door. I have been submitting links since before it had corporate owners and the only up-votes I have ever garnered have been forced, never organic. None of my pieces have ever resulted in a fire storm. If you look at my submissions, you’ll see ones and twos – I have pretty much given up. And this is part of the reason why I believe we in marketing and PR ignore it.
While I wear my promotional hat by day, by night I am a reputation manager – defensive stuff. When it comes to anticipating, identifying, and even responding to a crisis online, reddit cannot be ignored.
In a world where big media is becoming even bigger under mergers and acquisitions – federated, even – it is harder and harder for dissenting voices to find purchase in a mediasphere that is getting better and better at controlling the hitherto uncontrollable chaos called social media, where anyone, anywhere can supposedly, like David, handily take down Goliath with just a little honesty, integrity, and the benefit of some variation of the humble blog. Not so anymore.
It truly takes an SEO ninja to handily do anything online these days; unless, of course, you’re able to plug yourself into a disruptively-powerful amplifier, reddit.
Unfortunately, the old adage, “if you can’t beat it, join it” is impossible for most agencies and businesses who do not invest the time, resources, and risk to infiltrate reddit in a big way over time; or who are afraid of the risk associated with trying to “turn” a reddit high priest or priestess in an environment where outing that offer publicly (on reddit) is better than actually signing that industrial non-disclosure agreement and getting that big retainer – or it is in the reddit economy, anyway.
This is the same thing going on on Wikipedia and on message boards as well; however, unlike message boards, reddit ends up being mentioned in my RSS and mainstream news feeds almost every day these days.
OK, I will tell you how one could probably get a lot of moxie and mojo and even some clout-with-a-C from reddit – but only if you promise to use what I tell you for good and not for evil. Because reddit does not enforce real names – and in fact doesn’t reward using your real identity, actually – your authenticity and transparency needs to be on the honor system. That said, reddit’s rather paranoid and has the immune system of a retired janitor – they’re not afraid to Fisk you for what you are, based on your public history, which is readily-viewable. If you start ascending into high-Karma territory on reddit, there will be scads of people with Turing-class pattern-recognition skills who are going to put your nefarious dark-hearted plans together right before outing your true name, your associations, your agency, and al your clients before they summarily execute your reputation in a public square after putting you in stocks and tar-and-feathering you to within an inch of your life. And not just on reddit but also downstream in the Times and on CNN, ABC News, AdAge, and even PRNews. Consider yourself warned. Oh, and PS: in my work as reputation and crisis manager, I am the guy who is often sent to discover who you are and why you’re attacking my client’s client – and there are always enough clues for me to break your anonymity – and I’m not even that smart!
What I have yet to do (and really need to if I intend to ever influence at any level on reddit) is to give more than I take and listen more than I speak. What that means is what one really needs to do is vote and comment on 100 other reddit submissions before you ever submit your own. You need to hunker down and consume all of your news, your buzz, your rumors, your conspiracy, your conjecture, and your paranoia exclusively through either the reddit web site or the various reddit readers and reddit apps available for any and all of your mobile devices.
Learning to become influential on reddit is a good way to learn to be influential online and even in real life, interpersonally. There are some people who are naturally gifted story-tellers who can just walk into a room and immediately draw everyone in. Some call it charisma and fancy it a natural gift – and they’re only partially right. The other part is that I have yet to meet a naturally-gifted story-teller who doesn’t either spend a hell of a lot of time preparing and rehearsing or, or more often, telling lots and lots of stories to many different audiences in order to accrue the 10,000 hours of mastery. But yes, it generally does begin with a little bit of natural talent and positive feedback: laughing’s a much more positive feedback than and groans – believe me, I am groan-inducing in my pun-iness.
What’s more, I said listening. While I have not done any quantitative research, this is how I would have set up reddit if I wanted to make sure the biggest rewards went to those who contributed the most, I would have implemented attention economic indicators on each member. Each member would be rated, of course, on explicit things such as number of reddits, positive or negative, on other people’s submissions; number of reddits on other people’s comments; number of comments made associated with other’s submissions; comments associated with other’s comments; an also how many reddits, positive (good) or negative (bad) associated with your comments – that all seems pretty obvious and in the realm of explicit data: intentional votes.
Implicit data is less considered, which is why I said before that you should listen to what’s going on in reddit way more than you speak, and engaging is speaking even if it’s in the form of a comment response and not just in the form of being the OP: original poster (forum-speak). If I were reddit, I would not only judge your level of engagement, I would also rate your level of participation even of these is no intentional act associated with the action. We in the industry all acknowledge that 90%-99% of all your readers are lurkers. This means that only 1%-10% of all of your members (and guests – those readers who have either never registered or are reading while logged out or veiled in their own private privacy bubble) ever reddit up, down, comment, or submit anything!
So, what I think that reddit does – or should do – is follow Google’s model: give credit to someone for any and all unintentional interaction with the reddit site, whether or not that person is in the mood to engage or participate. So, if a member is logged in, he or she should get partial credit for just spending time on reddit in lurk or browse or stumble-mode. They hearty 1% who rigorously engage, reddit, comment, or submit should get partial karma for click throughs and page views and time on page and time on comment – anything associated with any action, no matter how incidental – that results in additional page views (and ad dollars, if that’s what floats your boat – call it profit-sharing or karma-sharing).
And, you know, reddit (and Google, et al) don’t even have to share this “credit score” with you. This implicit attention equity garnered from attention data in the attention economy can be simple internal bookkeeping – and also a way of monitoring for fraud as well. (Just based on the impatience of clients and campaigns and the cost of infiltrating, moles tend to do the least amount of work that result in the biggest reputation benefit. They also tend to participate in during working hours and via PC instead of mobile – there are so many tells! Their IP, their lack of IP, their association with an anonymizer service, their popping between different logins – all are suspicious; unfortunately, the top legitimate participants, especially those associated with the Anonymous movement, behave highly suspiciously but this is because of something much cooler than political operators and marketing infiltrator trying to reddit up or down a leaked or place story, this has to with global disruption and universal (forced) transparency, which is what the kids these days love, love love!)
So, just assume that you’re constantly being observed, under the omnipresent eyes of reddit’s panopticon and just play nice. If you’re transparent enough, you’re welcome to vote up (or down, but be careful) stuff that flatters your interests, you’re welcome to engage on the often-heated threads, sub-threads and all levels of nested conversations, and you’re even welcome to submit news, but just realize that once your behavior triggers the defensive measure that reddit employs (in the form of the “you have submitted too many links, please come back in an hour;” the natural immune-defenses of reddit activist community members, and in the form of the equity you have formed (or depleted) from both your explicit and implicit interactions with the reddit platform.)
If you can follow that advice, then hard work will take you the rest of the way–but reddit has its quirks also. Next week, I’ll give you a few more tips on the good and the bad with reddit. Stay tuned.
Tuesday, July 17th 2012 at 4:59 pm |
Hi Chris, nice post.
As a redditor (and marketing student), I wanted to ask you a follow up question: Have you seen what the reddit community does to viral marketing campaigns disguised as posts once they’ve been discovered? Maybe that’s another reason to shy away from certain areas of reddit.
Tuesday, July 17th 2012 at 10:24 pm |
Tarred and feathered, I am pretty darned certain. I don’t recommend it. Though if you’re bold and engage reddit honestly — and are really willing and able to put in the time — it very well could and should be possible. I surely do not recommend it.
Wednesday, July 18th 2012 at 8:31 pm |
(Different Chris but I’ll reply nonetheless)…
One of my sickest pleasures is watching the feeding frenzy that occurs when AMA or other such self posts turn out to be viral marketing. That being said I think there is room for self posts in marketing as long as the submitter is up front about it initially. They may get less interaction but they won’t have the horde turn against them.
Tuesday, July 17th 2012 at 5:31 pm |
This is that rarest of things: a PR post that deserves to be on reddit. And I say that as someone who’s been using that site for over six years; if I’ve learned anything, posts about how reddit is too smart and unfriendly for spammers will always do well.
Anyway, this, from the most recent reddit blog post, is apropos.
“On reddit, “being respectful” involves doing things such as upvoting good content, downvoting irrelevant content (but don’t downvote good discussions just because you disagree!), marking your submissions as NSFW if they might get someone else fired for viewing at work, and so forth. And don’t litter — that is, when you submit something, it should be because you think that it is genuinely interesting, not just because it’s something you made. Many subreddits prefer that you submit stuff that’s NOT yours, while others prefer it if you only submit items that you’ve created. You should always make it clear whether a submission is your content or someone else’s — don’t try to pass off someone else’s work as your own!”
Especially the part about not littering. Reddit calls itself the front page of the internet. It’s very unlikely that the standard PR blog fluff piece will ever be front page material. So go post that someplace else.
And remember, as good as reddit’s spam filters are, there will always be people like me who are better. We bookmark the new queue, see all posts as soon as they are submitted, report spam to the moderators and all spam submitters to the authorities. It’s like a game, where the prize is a really cool front page with good submissions and all the “10 best ways to reach out to your blog audience” posts are deep-sixed out of sight. I’ve been playing it for years and I’m still not bored.
Tuesday, July 17th 2012 at 10:26 pm |
Well, it would be so awesome if this post were to make it to the first page of reddit but given my track record, it won’t. Thanks so so much for your awesome words!
Wednesday, July 18th 2012 at 8:28 pm |
I whole-heartedly agree with your statement. One interesting thing about reddit is the dichotomy of the frontpage vs. the sub-reddits. The frontpage is good, relevant, interesting information about a variety of subjects but if I wanted “10 best ways to reach out to your blog audience” I could still get that on MY frontpage if I was subscribed to the proper subreddits.
I think that posting to reddit is still a good idea but only to subreddits that are a close match for the content being submitted. That way the people that see it, see it because they want to.
Keep up the good work filtering the crap and promoting the gold. You’re doing great work.
Wednesday, July 18th 2012 at 8:24 pm |
Same boat here…
I admit when I first started my company I was not into reddit. Then when I first started going there I would link every article any of my clients posted. Of course once I became a redditor I realized the error of my ways and I deleted the previous posts.
I am now working on the advice I was given when I asked the reddit community the best way to publicize content on the site. To paraphrase they told me to make stuff they are interested in…or buy advertising.
Excellent article and I wish you good luck.
Sunday, July 22nd 2012 at 12:36 pm |
“make stuff they are interested in…or buy advertising” — best advice EVER!
Thursday, July 19th 2012 at 12:47 am |
You’ve done a bit of cargo culting in your analysis about how to work reddit. You’ve looked at what is successful, and suggested that by copying what they *do*, you will reap the same effects. This is like those “how to make sales” manuals that have folks going through the motions without understanding the why.
If you are in SEO or marketing, you cannot afford to ignore reddit. However, you should never plan on “working” reddit. The best thing to do is to be part of reddit. Join, find some subreddits that interest you *personally*, and participate in the conversation. Be a redditor. Post comments. Understand what gets upvoted and downvoted, and that sometimes it’s the flip of a coin.
As part of the community, you will have a better understanding about how to work with reddit.
Now comes the tricky part, and even I continue to struggle with this – *if* you want to manage a campaign on reddit, the *only* way you will be successful is with complete transparency. And that means finding the right subreddit, being part of the conversation, and seeing if there’s a way to work your goal in. You may not always be able to. Think of it this way – reddit is like a bar you go to every night. When you get a campaign, sometimes it’s something you think your friends might be interested in, so you’ll tell them – “Hey, I just got this account for flashy gizmos, and they’re kinda cool. Anyone interested?”
But there are other accounts you’ll get that you know from square one you can’t get into reddit: “Hey, uh, guys – I just got this account for tampons. Anyone want to buy some for your wives?” Keep this up and pretty soon you’re “that guy” – “here comes Joe. Wonder what he’s flogging this week. [sigh]”
Of course, what I’m talking about here is proper networking – joining a community and learning their interests, then working with the community when it’s appropriate. That is the only way you’ll be successful.
- Gimli_the_Dwarf
Sunday, July 22nd 2012 at 12:38 pm |
You’re correct: you need to either commit yourself to becoming part of the community and part of the family or you really need to stay away… or, to quote Chris Maloney, “make stuff they are interested in…or buy advertising” — best advice ever, by the way. But don’t fake it ’til you make it, though. Spend lots and lots of time reading (listening) way before you try anything shamelessly self-promotional.
Saturday, July 21st 2012 at 3:53 pm |
Yeah, Reddit is interesting. I’ve used it successfully to promote my site about hobby robotics, CNC, electronics, and other stuff that I’ve done in my spare time. That being said, some stuff that I think it awesome doesn’t get much attention, and other stuff that I think is kind of stupid gets a lot of upvotes. It’s weird to see what people like.
Either way, I think because of my content being pretty much all new (since I made most of it) people generally like it. I’m not selling anything either, but do get some money from ads, so that’s probably thought of well. I did get reported to “report the spammers” using my first account thought, so I guess figuring out the system is a must!
Sunday, July 22nd 2012 at 12:39 pm |
Jeremy, you’re also a geek’s geek, a techy’s techy, and a lad’s lad — so your stuff is right down reddit’s alley, if we consider reddit as /.’s child. Good job and I am so happy you’re finding such success.
Sunday, July 22nd 2012 at 2:22 pm |
Good post, and I agree: This one actually deserves to be ON Reddit.
Because of Reddit, my little book-promo blog saw an enormous spike in hits last month. But it was not because of anything •I• did on Reddit. It was simply because I linked a couple of posts the Reddit crowd liked, and promoted. From my POV, creating more such posts makes more sense (and is more personally satisfying) than trying to ‘infiltrate’ Reddit and ‘work’ it. Whenever/however I ring Reddit’s bell again, it’s good to remember that there are Reddits *and MetaFilters and StumbleUpons and InstaPundits and BoingBoings, etc.) out there that are not only looking, but actually dependent upon, great new content. My approach now is to focus on such content, tweet and Facebook them, and hope that the Reddit Effect occasionally catches hold. There’s nothing on the ‘net quite as potent as an Authentic Like.
Thursday, July 26th 2012 at 3:03 am |
Wow, I have to say as a Reddit rookie, this is a frightening dialogue. Chris, I very much enjoy reading your work on Bizology and retweet it all the time. Admittedly when I saw the article about Reddit being the 800 lb gorilla I didn’t read it because I only know of one 800 lb Gorilla and that is Facebook. I’m not sure what to do with all of this information. Just stay away from Reddit?
Thursday, July 26th 2012 at 4:50 pm |
If you aren’t already a reddit rockstar — or have the time and temperament to become one gladly — then I would avoid reddit like the plague as a vehicle for shameless promotion of yourself or your clients. Yes.