Reddit: Key Social Media + Marketing Tool By Alysha Bindra and - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

MGSA & RBS Social Media for the Arts Fall 2015 - Professor Marshall Sponder Reddit: Key Social Media + Marketing Tool By Alysha Bindra and Marissa McCorkel

Overview of Presentation I. What is Viral Marketing? a. How to “go viral” II. What is Reddit? a. Understanding Reddit: A glimpse III. How to Create a Voice on Reddit? IV. Influential Redditors a. Online Presence Assessment b. Analytics V. Key Takeaways & Lessons Learned VI. Contact Us VII. Works Cited

What is Viral Marketing? Viral Marketing is any online strategy that that encourages individuals to pass a ● marketing message to others, creating the potential growth in the message’s influence and exposure. These strategies rely on the multiplication of exposure to spread the message to thousands, or even ○ millions. Off the Internet, viral marketing would be known as “creating a buzz” or “word-of-mouth”; however, they ○ are not the same thing Does not actually require Social Media but these tools “augment and amplify” ● messages, making them easier to start and scale Deliberate Marketing Action: designed to grow attention without further ● stimulus Implies something sensational ○ Video, Text Post, Image ■

How can your content “go viral” through Social Media? Different from the traditional approach of Viral Marketing: ● 1. Make sure your content is strong and appealing Titles and headlines should stand out and catch viewer attention 2. 3. Engage with the online community by hiring social media marketing professionals to ensure that content is pushed to the correct audiences What tool can be used to accomplish this? → Reddit.com ●

What is Reddit? Founded in 2005 by UVA roommates Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman, ● Reddit has become a major entertainment, news and social networking website Community members can submit their own content, share other content ○ Comparable to an online bulletin board system ○ The name Reddit is a play-on-words of the phrase “read it” ● The website content is divided into many categories or “default ● subreddits” of discussion Visible on the front page to new users and site browsers without an account. Some ○ examples include: Fitness, Food, Science, Space, Art, PhotoShopBattles, DIV, GetMotivated, etc. ■

A Glimpse into Reddit Sorting the Subreddit: a way of discovering new content when browsing on a new subreddit Subreddits: communities centered around a specific subject, can be very broad or super niche Search: this feature allows users to search within the Reddit community for certain topics or discussions Upvoting and Downvoting: how Reddit democracy works. Higher upvotes mean higher popularity.

A Glimpse into Reddit (cont’d) After frequent Reddit activity, users can gain “Karma” on their profile ● When posts and comments are upvoted, the upvotes translate into Karma ○ Karma boosts user standing within the Reddit community ○ Similar to many other online communities, Redditors have their own ● language. Some examples include: OP: original poster ○ TIL: today I learned ○ AMA: Ask Me Anything ○

How to Create a Voice on Reddit? Create a Reddit account! ● This may seem like a no-brainer, but one does ○ not need an account to browse Reddit. However, once signed-up the user can post content, comment, upvote, and begin to build their Reddit voice. Post new, original content ● Other Redditors are scrolling past thousands of ○ links, be sure to only post fresh content. Reposted content will be ignored. If adding a link, be sure to post the entire link. ○ Shortened links are assumed to be spam. Post visual content such as videos or images ○ ○ Take note of important visibility factors → time, day, subreddit, title length, et c.

How to Create a Voice on Reddit (cont’d) Reddit Gold is the site’s paid premium membership with ● features such as Secret subreddit ○ Previewed features before the wider Reddit ○ community Make the title as interesting and descriptive as possible ●

How to Create a Voice on Reddit? (cont’d) Use and post to the appropriate subreddits ● Posting to the wrong subreddits can have you downvoted to the Reddit abyss ○ Hold an IAMA ● Stands for “I am a…” and is a place where Redditors can ask you anything ○ Incredibly popular and gives you a place to market yourself or your brand without explicitly doing so ○ (since Redditors hate marketors)

How to Create a Voice on Reddit (cont’d) Post content other than your own ● Keeps you from looking self interested, gives a ○ balance to your posts This will keep other redditors to thinking ■ you’re just marketing spam Interact with others ● Comment, upvote, and interact as much as ○ possible This will get you followers, and build your ○ Reddit Karma Be generous--give Gold ($5 per pop) to those ○ who are talking positively (and driving noticeable traffic) about you or your brand. Will get you in good with Redditors

How to Create a Voice on Reddit (visual)

Examples of Influential Redditors Shitty_Watercolour ● A British painter who started posting watercolor paintings on Reddit in 2012 ○ Consistently listed as one of the most popular and influential REdditors ○ Portrait of President Obama posted during a 2012 AMA was published on the President’s ○ official Tumblr and on various news websites Has had books published including his work as well ○ Painted for the BBC, Intel ○

Examples of Influential Redditors austindlight ● an artist who began posting drawings in a thread that asked for movie titles with a letter ○ remove Each drawing was a recreation of the new movie title ○ Ended up signing a book deal with Chronicle Books to create “Movie Title Typos” ○

Online Presence Assessment - Radar and Paragraph We conducted the Online Presence Assessment for an Influential Redditor, Shitty_Watercolour . Shitty_Watercolour can be found as a user on multiple online outlets such as Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, as well as his own blog/website. After inputting the grades for each outlet and conducting the online presence assessment, we have come to the conclusion that when Shitty_Watercolour is present on an outlet, he has a mid-level presence. He does remain active on many social networking websites; however, what hurts his overall online presence is the fact that he is not present on Pinterest or LinkedIn and does not have a strong presence on Instagram, in SEO, and Locally. This assessment proved to be very informative and shed light onto how there is a possibility of Reddit users creating an online presence and influence.

What we learnt in this project and this class… Throughout completing this project, we learned several interesting things. While brainstorming a topic, we were not very sure if Reddit would be considered a viable Social Media and Marketing tool. Once we began to conduct research and perform analyses, we discovered that when used correctly, Reddit can be a very beneficial marketing tool. We focused on using Reddit as a promotional and marketing tool for artists; for example, we highlighted Redditors Shitty_Watercolours and austindlight within this presentation. These two artists were both unintentionally had their work go viral, which eventually landed them national recognition, new and exciting work, and eventually even book deals. While we found Reddit to be a great place to get your work noticed, we found that there are very specific ways to go about this. Reddit is unlike most other social medias, and the userbase is very unique. Redditors, unlike other social media users, are typically against marketing and self-promotion which makes using it as a tool difficult. We looked to Shitty_Watercolour as an example of how to best promote your work without actually promoting it, for he posted pieces of his work to be funny and for the enjoyment of others, and not for self-promotion which in turn caught the eye of Redditors and eventually made his post go viral. This project, as well as the Social Media for the Arts course, has definitely been a very informative experience. We both have a strong interest in Social Media as Information Technology and Informatics (ITI) majors and found this course to be a great balance between our ITI course load and internship experiences. Social media is an innovative, fast-paced and diverse tool, that can beneficial in various industries and fields. If implemented correctly, websites such as reddit.com can be excellent methods of viral marketing.

Key Takeaways: Marketing tactics on Reddit are much different than any other social media ● In order to use Reddit as a marketing tool, you must: ● Create an account ○ Use subreddits to your advantage to reach niche audiences ○ Post great, original content → do not double dip or explicitly self-promote. ○ Will not sit well with other Redditors and will result in downvotes, removal ■ Interact with others ○ This will help get you recognized, help build Reddit karma, and ultimately ■ expand your brand Reddit is an extremely diverse and effective Social Media tool ●

Contact Us Name: Alysha Bindra and Marissa McCorkel Major: Information Technology & Informatics Email: alysha.bindra@rutgers.edu, marissa.mccorkel@rutgers.edu Yes, we grant permission to share this presentation with future classes.