You probably don't need to hear me telling you how popular Reddit has become in recent years, largely thanks to Google surfacing results from their site a lot higher and a lot more frequently.
Google went into partnership with Reddit a while back - apparently that's not the reason for bumping up Reddit's pages so high on Google - but that's a story for another day.
In this article I'd like to share a few examples of brands that are currently using subreddits to build community, building loyalty and helping to make their brand more memorable and relatable.
I plan on keeping this page up to date - if you find a brand on Reddit that is doing good things feel free to notify me and I'll try and include it on the page.
A brief intro to Subreddits
A subreddit is basically a category within Reddit. There are many existing ones, which aren't owned by brands or specific people - but will be moderated by Reddit users. An example of one of the most popular subreddits would be /r/TIL (today I fucked up) - where users share ways in which they messed up, usually with hilarious consequences.
Not many brands or marketers probably realise this, but you can create a subreddit for yourself or your brand if you wish to do so. Ego aside, you probably can't create a subreddit for yourself (unless you're a notable celebrity) so here we'll be focusing on brands that are making use of subreddits they control.
It's worth noting that there may be many subreddits that have been setup for brands but which are fan/user owned - for example /r/mcdonalds. Some communities work quite organically, where users will share content and engage with each other all based around a particular theme (McDonalds restaurant in this case).
So - even if it looks like there's a branded subreddit, it might not actually be owned/controlled by the brand. But it's likely someone there might keep an eye on it, for example to judge customer sentiment around the brand.
Brands using Subreddits to build community engagement
Before I jump in here it's worth noting that creating subreddits for every brand won't make sense.
This is important so I will reiterate; there may be no value in creating a subreddit for your brand - it depends on many factors, such as:
- Topic of your product/service - nerdy/geeky products and services do really well here (see /r/cloudflare) largely because of the type of users they attract.
- Typical user demographic - Reddit users are typically quite young (mid 30's?) and quite digitally savvy. It's unlikely to find many elderly users here.
- Range of your products/services - If you just have one product or service offering, even if your brand is big you might struggle to encourage engagement/activity. Coca-cola might be a good example here - everyone knows about them, but how/why would a subreddit work for them? If Coca-cola was a popular restaurant chain things would be different.
- Discussion factor - you could be the biggest fan of the Delux paint brand, but how many people are going to spend time discussing tones of paint on the internet?
Brands winning on Reddit - #1 CloudFlare
Members: 23K
CloudFlare are a great example here as it's a very techy product/service (they provide CDN's and security solutions for websites/apps) and because it's such a technical topic there are bound to be lots of questions/issues its users will encounter.
Having an easily accessible place where you can go as a customer, post a question, and get a response from another CloudFlare user is such a great experience for the customer. CloudFlare doesn't even need to have a forum (although they do still have a very popular one).
Maybe with CloudFlare they could even look to sunset/kill their own forum, saving resources and staff costs, as the subreddit is so popular anyway?
Brands winning on Reddit - #2 Nordstrom
Members: 5k
Although this is a far smaller community than CloudFlare it was still worthy of inclusion here, IMO.
r/Nordstrom1901 is a line of clothing that the luxury department store known as Nordstrom stock, 1901 being the year they first opened their doors.
You might wonder what people would use this space for - it's actually popular for questions relating to the policies of the shop, issues customers have, tips for finding work at the company, and lots more.
It looks as if this community was setup by Nordstrom and like with CloudFlare it's great that they provide a facility for people to discuss life at Nordstrom plus other topics.
Brands winning on Reddit - #3 Marvel Studios
Members: 4.2M
This is probably the perfect example of a brand that completely matches the typical user profile on Reddit - young, probably male, likely to be American, and interested in comic books / action hero movies.
With over 4 million(!) members, it's definitely the largest "branded" subreddit in use. And probably the best thing about this community is that it's completely organic - it's not as if one day Marvel decided to build the subreddit and moderate/manage it - this would have been created by fans.
And ultimately this is the dream for brands that fit the bill - having fans that are so obsessed with your product (or movies in this case) that they actually want to go and talk about it with other fans.
There are no shortage of similar fan-created subreddits like Marvel Studios, such as /r/Minecraft (7.6 million members), /r/LeagueofLegends (also 7.6 million), /r/Tinder (5.9 million) and r/PS4 (5.6 million).
Brand's winning on Reddit - #4 SEMrush
Members: 4.1K
SEMrush is one of the most popular pieces of SEO software out there, and whilst this community isn't the largest it is definitely very active and is a great example of good product fit with regard to Reddit.
Because of the nature of the SEMRush software (SEO) there is always something to be discussed, from new software updates, problems with user's websites not ranking well, algorithm updates, and much more.
In the case of the SEMrush subreddit there's also active moderation from the SEMrush team - so in effect this is an extension of their help desk/support team.
This is a great way for SEMrush to keep a pulse on product feedback - learning the features people love, what might need improving, and what features might be lacking at present.
Brand's winning on Reddit - #5 LifeOnPurple
Members: 4.3K
I wanted to include this community as it's a bit different from many of the others above - Purple is a popular brand of mattress - and so /r/LifeOnPurple is a subreddit dedicated to discussion of the brand and mattress.
You might be asking what kind of things go on in such a community - in this case Purple regularly offer giveaways and prizes to stimulate engagement, and just generally use it like they might use another social channel like Twitter/X.
I wanted to include r/LifeOnPurple because it's a nice example of a non-typical way of a smaller, quite niche brand/product that is taking good advantage of Reddit to engage with their customers.
In conclusion - should my brand have it's own Subreddit?
I think this would be an emphatic no; unless you meet all of the required criteria, as I've listed previously in this article. It definitely is not for everyone - and to give a rough idea it's probably a good idea for less than 1% of all businesses out there.
If you feel you are a good fit for having and managing your own subreddit you should think long and hard about your Reddit strategy. Ask yourself questions like:
- Will I be able to have someone on my team to moderate the subreddit effectively?
- Will there be people on my team who can afford to engage with users on the subreddit (think internal social media teams)
- Will I need to kickstart conversations - and how can we tell our fans that we're now active there, in order to build up the subreddit?
- Should we utilise giveaways to encourage engagement and to build loyalty with our Reddit users?
- What kind of rules will we apply to the subreddit?
- How could this benefit our larger digital marketing efforts, including SEO?
Get Help with your Reddit Strategy
In this article I've focused on highlighting the brands out there that are doing a great job using subreddits as part of their larger social media or digital marketing strategy. Do shout if there's a brand/subreddit I might have missed, and I'll try and add it in here.
Reddit is a lot bigger and more complex than this article might let on - you don't need to have a subreddit to market your brand. Some companies might just have their own branded Reddit profile and post in existing subreddits instead of going the branded subreddit route.
On Reddit you have to be really, really careful about shilling (promoting someone without declaring it) as if you're expected of doing so it can heavily backfire on your brand. Reddit users are very tech/business savvy for the most part - so you need to be really careful about how you approach this.
If you are considering the use of a subreddit for your company, or would like to speak further about growing the reach of your brand using Reddit, don't hesitate to reach out.
To be very up front, for most of the Reddit consultancy enquiries I receive the majority get turned down because a) I don't think their brand/product is a good fit for the site, and/or b) it's not really something I want to support (eg it is crypto / nogirls related) 🙂
