Using Reddit for Business
Endless information exists about how to best use the big social networks for your business – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, to name a few. While the right combination of these networks is essential to one’s online outreach, there are also smaller, niche networks that many businesses can benefit from, too, such as Digg and Reddit. Today, we look at Reddit – what it is, where to find it, and how to use it to your advantage. Why? It is important to understand what Reddit is to determine whether it can be a useful social media tool for your business, and to understand how to use it effectively to drive prospects to your site.
So what exactly is Reddit?
Reddit is a large community of members that like to share interesting things with one another, such as news articles, blogs, videos, pictures, etc. Subreddits (communities within the larger community) help organize the information by areas of interest.
From computer security to world news, gardening to science, food to politics, there are topic based-communities for just about any interest – business or personal – you might have. Within these communities, users can share information they find interesting, start a conversation, answer a question or take part in a discussion. You can find a list of popular subreddits here (note: sometimes subreddits also have subreddits).
How can I use Reddit for my business?
There are two ways Reddit can help businesses. First, it’s a great research resource. Trending or hot topics in your area of expertise will tell you what people (potential prospects or clients) are interested in and talking about. This can give you ideas about relevant articles or blog posts for your content marketing.
Second, it’s a great place to raise your company’s visibility. When you submit a link, members of the community can comment and interact with you, and, if you’ve posted in a relevant community, you can send very targeted users to your website. If your links or discussions are helpful or valuable enough, you can get enough “up” votes and make it to the front page, where you will have even more visibility. (The reverse is true, too. Get enough “down” votes and you will be limited as to how much you can post.)
Where do I start?
The best way to start with Reddit is by familiarizing yourself with the types of topics that are being discussed, what items are being shared, and what type of protocols are used in these discussions. For example, as with most social media sites, blatant self-promotion is not acceptable, nor is “spam posting” (posting content that is not related to the subreddit or conversation).
After setting up an account, spend some time checking out the different parts of the site. You’ll see the following navigation bar near the top of the screen with each tab serving a different method of navigation through the site.
Here’s what each tab does:
- Hot: This tab skims through each of the subreddits you are “subscribed” to (each tab you’re following) and puts the most frequently visited topics of discussion within that respective subreddit.
- What’s New: This tab shares the most recently submitted items from each respective subreddit in one convenient location, allowing you to look at “what’s new.”
- Controversial: This tab shares the more controversial items submitted to each subreddit, items that typically spark additional discussion.
- Top: This subreddit shares the most “upvoted” (or most liked) items from each subreddit you are subscribed to in one convenient location.
- Saved: Registered Reddit users are able to “Save” (or bookmark) any item they find interesting to come back to later. This tab allows you to see all the items you’ve “saved” previously.
Ready to Jump In?
Assuming you have an account on Reddit and you are logged in, you will see the following section on the top right of the page:
When submitting a link, you’ll want to know in advance which community you want to target. Hit the Submit a link button, and you will see the following screen:
Fill in the following fields: Title, URL, Choose a Subreddit. Insert the title of the blog post, video, or picture you are submitting and its respective URL. Insert the respective community you are trying to reach in the “choose a subreddit” field. Hit “submit” and voila! You have just submitted your link on Reddit. You can check if the link was submitted by going to the respective subreddit and hitting the new button to see if your submission appears.
What’s next?
You now know the basics: what Reddit is, how to use Reddit and how to submit a link on Reddit, so it’s time to give it a try. If you find the site has communities that are relevant to your business (not all businesses are suited to Reddit) and when you’re comfortable with submitting links and following and participating in discussions, you can consider the next step, setting up your own subreddit and starting a community of your own. But be forewarned! This takes time, effort and a lot of management, and is something we will be addressing in a future post. You can download our Reddit tip sheet, or contact us if you’d like Sales Renewal to help you further your content marketing program with Reddit and other social media sites.
Sales Renewal’s insight:
Endless information exists about how to best use the big social networks for your business – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, to name a few. While the right combination of these networks is essential to one’s online outreach, there are also smaller, niche networks that many businesses can benefit from, too, such as Digg and Reddit. Today, we look at Reddit – what it is, where to find it, and how to use it to your advantage.
JointSourcing in Action # 2: Sales Renewal’s Synergies & Cross Fertilization Kicks Up Client Sales
The Concord Flower Shop is doing very well in Concord MA, thank you very much.
Sales Renewal has been helping The Concord Flower Shop grow its sales since 2009, and thanks to its ongoing optimizing of the e-commerce site, it now captures a large share of the business of prospects searching for florists who deliver to Concord MA.
Having succeeded in Helen’s primary service area, Sales Renewal turned its attention to about a dozen nearby towns where the business also delivers. Sales Renewal chose to begin with the neighboring town of Acton, and-without charging for its research and time-created a new page for the ConcordFlowerShop.com website, specifically designed to attract natural search traffic and convert it to Acton-based flower sales (i.e., purchases from buyers who live in Acton, as well as from buyers who want flowers delivered there though they live, and are presumably searching from, somewhere else):
- To garner maximum traffic, Sales Renewal used best-practice search engine techniques to optimize the page for the carefully targeted keywords.
- To convert that traffic into as many buyers as possible, Sales Renewal used best-practice advertising techniques to set up the page along the lines of an advertising landing page.
Combining the two disciplines, Sales Renewal calls this type of web page design a Natural Search Landing Page.
Sales Renewal is perhaps unique in that, rather than being a specialist in just one narrow discipline, it operates as a Sales and Marketing General Contractor. In that role, its in-house experts regularly work with and oversee outsourced specialists, all cross-fertilizing each other’s thinking and planning on how to improve each client’s sales results.
In addition, Sales Renewal’s unique JointSourcingTM Solution sets it up to share the risks and rewards of its clients, so the company is heavily incentivized by its contributions to the client’s advertising expenditures and the commissions it earns on the client’s sales. As a result, Sales Renewal continually strives to produce long-term sales increases in cost-effective ways.
The new Natural Search Landing Page for flower business in the town of Acton went live in June, 2013.
After six months of activity, Sales Renewal’s analysts crunched the numbers and were happy to discover that The Concord Flower Shop‘s Acton-based business:
- Grew significantly faster than the company’s overall online sales.
- Ranked first in year-over-year sales growth, compared with its business in every other nearby town.
- Grew more than twice as fast as its business in the number two most-improved town.
Of course, no one can definitively prove the new Natural Search Landing Page caused these great results: because the page was totally new, there is no “before” to compare with the “after”. However, the circumstantial evidence is strong and persuasive.
Having proven the concept, Sales Renewal is now extremely busy putting up other carefully crafted Natural Search Landing Pages for The Concord Flower Shop and our other clients. We’ll report on those results as they become available.
JointSourcing Produces Win-Wins
The development and implementation of the technique that kicked up sales in the town of Acton for The Concord Flower Shop was a direct result of Sales Renewal’s unique and powerful JointSourcing Solution.
No conventional marketing service vendor – whether working in advertising, PR, social media, search engine optimization, content marketing, or anything else – would consider experimenting with a new marketing approach without securing payment for its billable time. Firms operating under conventional contracts have no incentive to invest the hours needed to conceptualize, develop, and fine tune brand new approaches to building business online. But JointSourcing automatically aligns Sales Renewal’s economic interests with those of each client.
The result is a series of win-wins that result from Sales Renewal’s innovative, cross-pollinated thinking and a willingness to take risks at its own expense.
JointSourcing continually drives Sales Renewal to consider new and better alternatives to existing online paradigms and best practices. When the chances of success look favorable, the people at Sales Renewal gladly break new ground and experiment with new techniques that offer the potential to help their clients succeed.
What Is JointSourcing?
JointSourcing is a unique business solution that effectively makes Sales Renewal a partner in a client’s sales and marketing success. As a partner, Sales Renewal charges significantly lower professional fees, and earns commissions on each JointSourcing client’s revenue. As part of the deal, Sales Renewal also pays a percentage of each client’s big ticket sales and marketing expenses, such as advertising and direct mail campaigns.
By design, JointSourcing automatically aligns Sales Renewal’s economic interests with those of its clients.
The natural result is a lighter burden on the client – with no need to select and oversee specialists, help in prioritizing and paying for sales and marketing expenses, and reduced demand for nuanced judgments and decision-making – combined with improved sales and marketing effectiveness.
Simply put, JointSourcing allows any company to “outsource” its sales and marketing functions to Sales Renewal, instantly adding a new layer of marketing intelligence a client organization can rarely equal. The company literally functions as a “general contractor” for all the client’s sales and marketing efforts, continually assembling and managing the specific team of “best-of-breed’ in-house and outsourced experts that each client needs to grow at the best possible pace for their budget.
JointSourcing puts Sales Renewal in position to oversee and control all the client’s sales and marketing service vendors, to replace poor performers with better ones, and to upgrade performance across the client’s entire marketing effort.
Under JointSourcing, the key members of the client company team have enhanced freedom and opportunity to remain focused on what they do best, while Sales Renewal takes full responsibility for developing the most successful sales and marketing strategies possible, cost-effectively driving up the client’s sales volume and profitability.
Going Big by Going Local
At Sales Renewal, we work with a number of clients who have a national presence and others who are strictly interested in the local market. Each requires a different set of online marketing strategies, services, and tools.
Local business can be tough to promote, as they need to stand out from the crowd in order to gain traction with their online presence. And there are so many listings options to keep track of. For this reason, we use Yext to manage much of our local efforts, as it provides single-entry access to over 45 listings, along with an easy-to-use, consolidated interface for updating and promoting the business across all the listings.
Earlier this month, I (reluctantly) agreed to attend a seminar that Yext was holding to demonstrate a new feature called Content Lists. Despite my reluctance, it turned out to be great. The premise behind Content Lists is that Yext customers can make their business listings stand out by taking advantage of any “extras” available – not only answering the basic “where”, but also the who, what and when of their business.
After the seminar, I immediately launched in to gathering the information, falling into four different categories, that I needed for our local clients and updating their listings. Here are just a few examples of what we can now do for our clients:
Products/Services – I was able to create a portfolio of a local business sign company’s work, showcasing some of the company’s specialties, which will now be displayed. What better way to show the quality of work they do than with photos of their products?
Bios – We can now display full bios of the dentists and other staff for our dental office clients – very useful since it will help them stand out when people do a search for dentists in their area.
Menus – Yum! Now we can tempt customers with (virtual) samples of your delicious fare!
Calendar – When our florist clients hold floral arranging workshops, I’m able to set up a “clickable” event to bring prospects directly to the sign up page on the businesses’ respective websites.
Now, almost all the “new” information I used for the enhanced local listings is also included on our clients’ websites, so it was very simple to gather. And we expect the benefits to be exponential – being able to also display the bios, portfolio, and calendar events in their local listings is sure to increase visibility and traffic, and it adds value to prospects and current customers. Stay tuned for the results!
Sales Renewal’s insight:
At Sales Renewal, we work with a number of clients who have a national presence and others who are strictly interested in the local market. Each requires a different set of online marketing strategies, services, and tools.
Local business can be tough to promote, as they need to stand out from the crowd in order to gain traction with their online presence. And there are so many listings options to keep track of. For this reason, we use Yext to manage much of our local efforts, as it provides single-entry access to over 45 listings, along with an easy-to-use, consolidated interface for updating and promoting the business across all the listings.
Nate Silver, Marketing’s Wake Up Call
We’re tempted to call it the Nate Silver effect: In the last few weeks a handful of industry watchers have suggested that what companies really need to succeed is a chief marketing technologist.It’s not a bad idea. Obviously, sales and marketing functions are increasingly dependent on technology. The technology choices available today are roughly double what they were last week – and some say they’ll quadruple by Thursday. (That’s a ballpark estimate, you understand – we didn’t run it by Mr. Silver.)
Our point is that while most organizations understand that they need to use technology and social media to grow their brand (and more importantly, sales) few can afford to add a chief marketing technologist to the staff.The problem that many companies fail to address is that embracing social media without employing all of the analytical tools available is a waste of time, and a sure way to misdirect your advertising and marketing budget.
You need to incorporate everything you know about your customers’ buying cycle into your online (and offline) sales strategy. It’s not hard to use Facebook, Pinterest, Reddit, and LinkedIn, and Adwords campaigns – but it is hard to use them effectively, honing them to reach and convert prospects that are in different places in the buying cycle.
We spoke about this last spring in our Concord Chamber of Commerce Series. The example we used highlighted our sales strategy for an electric fence company. (See the sample site here.) The company had a good understanding of its prospects, their decision criteria, and buying cycle, and they knew where to find those prospects – but it wasn’t enough. The company wasn’t using that knowledge effectively.
We helped by optimizing keywords for prospects at each stage of the buying cycle, tailoring content to meet them where they were – for example, identifying prospects even before they knew they were in the market for an electric fence. We reached out to those prospects differently than we did to those who were already shopping for fences. We optimized content for them and analyzed their visits to the company’s site. We tracked other prospects – those who came to the site through organic search – and adjusted our online ad campaigns to improve their impressions and interactions with the fence company. Merely posting a special offer on the company’s Facebook page wouldn’t have had the same results.
We know, because we measure those kind of things – and you should, too. Subscribe to our Growth Spurts blog, or contact us now to find out more.
Sales Renewal’s insight:
We’re tempted to call it the Nate Silver effect: In the last few weeks a handful of industry watchers have suggested that what companies really need to succeed is a chief marketing technologist. It’s not a bad idea. Obviously, sales and marketing functions are increasingly dependent on technology. The technology choices available today are roughly double what they were last week – and some say they’ll quadruple by Thursday. (That’s a ballpark estimate, you understand – we didn’t run it by Mr. Silver.)
Our point is that while most organizations understand that they need to use technology and social media to grow their brand (and more importantly, sales) few can afford to add a chief marketing technologist to the staff. The problem that many companies fail to address is that embracing social media without employing all of the analytical tools available is a waste of time, and a sure way to misdirect your advertising and marketing budget.
How Well Do you Tell Your Story?
So you’re good at updating posts on Facebook and you’re targeting prospects on LinkedIn? Tip of the hat to you. Maybe you’ve even got 1, 000+ followers on Twitter and you’ve figured out how to connect with prospects on Pinterest. Congratulations; you’re in the minority of small businesses that use social media effectively.
So how well do you tell your story? If you’ve accomplished all of the above, storytelling is the next tool you should sharpen in your social media kit.
Author Jonathon Gottschall makes a convincing argument that storytelling is the ultimate weapon for small businesses. (And big ones, too.)
Need help managing your social media (or other marketing) activities? Let us tell you our story… our clients agree, it has a happy ending.
Quick Tip: Google Offers
Google is far more than just a search engine and when it comes to special offers, discounts or deals Google is an untapped resource for far too many businesses. Sales Renewal, for example, has long leveraged Google Places (now Google + Local) as a high traffic, free promotional platform, and more recently began similarly taking advantage of Google Wallet.
Now, Google is beta-testing a new promotion option that we’re considering adding into the mix (and so should you if we’re not doing this for you). Google Offers makes it easy to set up a special offer to reach existing customers and prospects who view your listing via Google Maps, Google Offers app, Google Wallet app (or through your Google + Local listing, if it’s connected to Google Maps). Businesses can choose from the three types of offers to provide:
- Money off – used to specify a dollar discount, such as “$20 off package”
- Percent off – used to specify a percentage discount, such as “25% off warranty plan”
- Free product – used to provide a free product or gift with purchase, such as “free flower bouquet with purchase of club membership”
As the Google listings are often at the top of organic search results, utilizing the Offers feature is an excellent way to draw visitors to your listing and set you apart from the competition. While the Google Offers for Businesses is currently only available in a select number of cities, you will soon be able to create an offer that will sync across Google Offers, Google Maps and Google Wallet.
Stay tuned!
Sales Renewal’s insight: