General Information
Reddit refers to itself as "the front page of the internet".
According to Wikipedia Reddit is “an entertainment, social
news networking service, and news
website” The Daily Beast describes
Reddit as “a bulletin of user-submitted text, links, photos, and videos.”
According to Reddit, “Anyone
can create a community on nearly any topic imaginable. Each community is
independently moderated by volunteer users.” Registered users can submit content, such as, text posts, direct links, GIFs,
videos, or almost any other type of content. Content submissions are organized into common categories called “subreddits”.
The subreddit topics include news, gaming, movies, music, books, fitness, food,
and photosharing, and numerous others. According to Reddit’s website, there are
over 10,000 active subreddits and 50 default subreddits.
Once content has been posted users can post comments and respond to other user’s comments. Users can
vote on the most important stories and comments by casting an “upvote” (positive
vote) or “downvote” (negative vote). Rankings of content are determined by the
age of the submission, upvoted to downvoted, feedback ratio, and the total
vote-count. Submissions with
the most positive votes appear on the main page or the top of a category. Users
will typically customize what is shown on their personal front page by
subscribing to individual subreddits. The site's general front page is also
accessible at the top of the individual user's customized front page.
Reddit describes the platform’s
features this way:
- · Discuss- “Redditors (term to describe a registered Reddit user) can comment on any post on Reddit. Comments are often the best part about Reddit content—they provide additional information, vigorous discussion, context, and often humor.”
- · Vote- “The global Reddit community votes on which stories and discussions are important by casting upvotes or downvotes. The most interesting, funniest, impactful, or simply amazing stories rise to the top.”
- · Share- “Anyone can create a community on nearly any topic imaginable. Each community is independently moderated by volunteer users. Community members can share content including stories, links, and images.”
Purpose
The platform’s management states “Reddit bridges communities and individuals with ideas, the latest digital
trends, and breaking news (...okay, and maybe cats). Our mission is to help
people discover places where they can be their true selves, and empower our
community to flourish.” In my opinion the purpose of the platform is to provide
users a tool to filter the internet’s content based on the user’s preferences to
eliminate the time wasted searching through everything the internet offers to
identify what they want to read about.
Use in
Business
According to the Pew Research Center six percent of
online adults are Reddit users. “Men are twice as likely as women to be Reddit
users, those under 50 are significantly more likely to use Reddit than those 50
or older.” Of all male internet users ages 18-29 15% use Reddit, compared to 5%
of women in the same age range and 8% of men aged 30-49. “The site is much more
common among urban and suburban residents than among those living in rural
areas.” Reddit’s website states it is the 9th largest site in the US, has 234
million users that produce 8 billion monthly page views and cast 25 million
votes a day, with an average visit length of 13+ minutes.
Given the volume of traffic to this platform there is the
potential for Reddit to become a positive component of a social media marketing
campaign. Gospaces.com
recommends firms use Reddit to get content ideas, drive traffic to your
website, create a community, and create a valuable backlink. Firms can
accomplish these recommendations by sponsoring a headline on Reddit, which is
posting an ad in the Reddit format and/or joining or creating a community from
scratch.
Assessment
Marketing
through Reddit can be effective if the firm’s target demographic is young
males, but it would not be effective for any other demographic. Targeting the young
male demographic via Reddit as a user is difficult due to the appropriate etiquette
for posting on the site. If that etiquette is not followed posts are quickly labeled
as spam and deleted. The direct criticism proved via Reddit can be used ultimately improve a product
or marketing strategy positively if managed correctly.
Overall, my assessment of Reddit’s use in business is
similar to most other social media platforms I have assessed in prior blog
posts. Its effectiveness cannot be quantifiably measured, to my knowledge,
therefore firms should be cautious when expecting significant results. It can,
presumably, be useful as part of a comprehensive marketing strategy using all
forms of advertising including other social media platforms, but only for the
young male demographic segment.
My Experience
Prior to this class I had never used Reddit. Given my
limited use of the platform my experience was not positive. Navigating the site
was confusing, a lot of content was packed into a small area, the layout was
distracting with my attention was pulled in multiple directions, and it was aesthetically
boring. I did like the content of the news page. After I became a user and made
a couple comments on news topics that interested me my home page did start
accurately selecting stories of interest to me.
References
https://about.reddit.com
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