Guest post by Ann Smarty.
When businesses embark on a blogging journey, there are many roadblocks that can pop up, such as:
- writers’ block!
- limited time and resources
- lack of creativity
- no theme/focus
- not appealing to the target audience
Not to mention the super-hard task of convincing your CEO that, “Blogging produces an ROI. We can achieve business goals with blogging!”
Despite these obstacles, businesses from across industries are blogging. According to recent research, roughly 65% on consumer businesses and 69% of B2B companies have active blogs.
Lawyers have blogs, eCommerce sites have blogs, and even plumbers have blogs.
Some sites step it up a notch and create a documented content marketing strategy. This involves a creative team that designs images, infographics, and sometimes videos that are audience-friendly and easy to share on social media channels.
With this acknowledgment of blogs as a business asset and the core of content marketing activities, it’s imperative to not just write haphazardly but to create a content strategy that will appeal to our target audience and drive results.
How are we supposed to magically know what our target audience loves? It’s not as if we can read minds…
That’s where Reddit comes in.
Sorting Subreddits and recording content models
Despite its “weirdly ambiguous status on other platforms,” Reddit has become one of the most powerful social monitoring tools. And as daunting or confusing as it may seem, Reddit is remarkably simple to get the hang of.
Just picture it like this: Subreddits collectively make up what is known as Reddit, along with Redditors (users) interacting with each other.
Essentially, Subreddits are categories. So a Subreddit labeled /r/construction is conclusively about construction and remodeling-related information. Discussions arise, questions are posed and answered, along with the sharing of ideas. Here is a screenshot of the most popular content over the past month.
Ranging from pictures and inquiries, we start to get a feel for the preferred type of content. Reddit is a great way to find content inspiration as well as to put your content in front of link amplifiers.
AI tools like Giga can also summarize Reddit discussions on any topic allowing you to re-use and re-package that content on your site and elsewhere:
To relate this back to a business: how might a construction-related biz make use of this information?
For starters, we see pictures that tell a story, such as dig sites, modeling processes (start to finish), and even humor are voted up. One of the most popular businesses in this industry, as I’m sure you’d recognize from their black, yellow, and white “CAT” is Empire CAT. Their equipment powers constructing projects, and thus, opens up a perfect content-sourcing opportunity. Just off the top of our heads, there’s plenty of room for content creativity, such as:
- A video series showing their equipment in the field, testing how powerful they are with exciting examples (kind of like MythBusters, but more demolition).
- A blog catalog showing the progression of projects, from start to finish (the before and after format).
- An infographic that showcases all of the most common trucks and equipment, citing interesting statistics about the construction industry.
- Guides, tips, and advice from experienced construction workers.
- Interviews with experienced construction workers.
With Reddit climbing in organic search so quickly, being on Reddit is also important for organic visibility.
It is a good idea to create your own Subreddit to use for customer support and create a user-generated content source which can also rank. Platforms like Beacons.ai help you consolidate all these channels, so that there’s a consistent brand-driven context to repurpose and promote.
Pick an industry, any industry
Pick any industry for a business that has started blogging and see if they have related Subreddits.
You’ll be surprised at the sheer amount of variety. You think you know what niche means, but after circling the whole spectrum of Subreddits, that meaning will be redefined.
Let’s take a brief tour – I guarantee some of these Subreddits will change the way you think about online communities, social content, and digital good.
This Subreddit, /r/random_acts_of_pizza, or RAOP for short, has been rapidly growing to the tune of 30,000+ subscribers.
The basis of this community is simple: A place for strangers to send and receive pizza.
Their motto is, “To have fun, eat pizza and help each other out. Together, we aim to restore faith in humanity, one slice at a time.”
Along the same vein, there are Subreddits such as Random Acts of Amazon, and broader spaces, such as Random Kindness.
You might find it hard to believe a bunch of strangers will go out of their way to help each other. But these Subreddits disprove the idea of pure internet volatility on a daily basis. Redditors will share their stories, such as getting laid off or in a financial slump, while others just express a deep passion for a hobby. If another Redditor is inspired, they’ll contact each other and help out where they can.
“Frugal Male Fashion” is a stream of discounts, sales, coupons, deals, and all frugal-related things to male clothing.
“Ask Science” is one of the most popular Subreddits, sitting at over 2 million subscribers.
This is a place where all science-related questions can be explained, discussions can be held, and knowledge can be shared.
Subreddits have unique content formats and because they are unique, they are strict. This improves the quality and direction of Subreddits.
For example, Depth Hub limits all posts to the Reddit domain, such as to individual comments and text posts. Furthermore, the comment/post must demonstrate high-quality and in-depth knowledge about a particular subject. The subject can be anything, but the knowledge must be meaty – Redditors have exceptional flack detectors, so it’s easy to tell when someone is blowing smoke and when someone has years of experience.
The range of Subreddits is a close reflection of the range of public interests in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Australia (these are the primary geo stats for users). However, if you dig around, you’ll discover that all walks of life find a place on Reddit: Homeless people who’ve turned their lives around, celebrities, underground artists, high-caliber programmers, professional athletes, surgeons, lawyers, plumbers, construction workers, mechanics, etc.
A relevant Subreddit is like your local community
It’s amazing that so many businesses and companies have yet to participate in Subreddits.
While there are clear and easy entry paths for businesses running a philanthropy or fundraiser, blogs can be fueled directly by Subreddits.
Just think of them as if they’re part of your local community. We treat everyone with respect, and we participate and contribute.
Business bloggers just need to make a list of their most relevant Subreddits. First, participate in those Subreddits naturally – ones unrelated to your business. Then, after getting a deeper understanding and appreciation for the content, brainstorm blog topics.
Use the top content and hot content as models. These are positive signals that influence social performance.
This is just the tip of the iceberg.
We can source great content ideas and make them unique to our business, but we can go even further by contributing to a Subreddit (in addition to social monitoring).
Maybe the Subreddit is small and needs a header image – sweet, let’s make one!
Maybe the Subreddit is growing but needs better content – perfect, let’s contribute more and help promote the Subreddit!
Nothing builds a strong community better than becoming a helpful and dedicated part of the group. Hari Ravichandran built a billion-dollar startup by staying away from Silicon Valley and spending time and money networking and meeting people. Being part of a community is a great marketing strategy.
There are dozens of avenues to contribute. In turn, relevant Subredditors will notice. If our blog content has been consistently on par with the preferred type of content, we can earn natural submissions (since it is not allowed to just submit unsolicited links to our site).
At any rate, the most important tip I can give to business blogs is to just run a search on Reddit. Reddit is one of the alternative search engines that cannot be ignored.
Search for relevant topics and within seconds you’ll discover a goldmine of creative ideas. Make these ideas your own and use your experience to upgrade/tweak them.
Ann Smarty is the founder of Smarty Marketing, a boutique SEO agency based in New York, and Viral Content Bee, a social media promotion tool. Ann’s search engine optimization career began in 2010. She is the former editor-in-chief of Search Engine Journal and contributor to prominent search and social blogs, including Small Business Trends and Mashable.