Reddit: how it works for users and businesses

Reddit: Features, Functionality, and Key Figures

Reddit is a social network focused on social news and entertainment. Registered and active users, known as redditors, can share content in the form of text, images, videos, or links, which other members of the community can engage with through comments and shares.

Reddit’s Key Figures in 2024:

• Daily active users: 108 million (+47% YoY)

• Weekly active users: 365 million

• Active subreddits: 138,000

• Total posts in 2024: 550 million

• User demographics: 61% male, 38% female, 44% aged between 18–29

Reddit is also a functional channel from a business perspective and, if exploited optimally, can prove to be a useful marketing resource for increasing one’s brand reputation.

Reddit organizes its content through categories, which are called subreddits. When new content is created, users choose which topic to categorize their post under. For several years, Reddit’s main topics have been as follows:

• Entertainment
• Discussions
• Humor
• Pictures
• Self Improvement
• Technology

Users are empowered to create posts to be cataloged in existing subreddits or to devise new ones, automatically becoming subreddit administrators. Subscribed users can comment and share posts, while non-subscribed visitors (lurkers) can only observe without interacting with the content.

Reddit: how it works

Registered users can interact in several ways with the platform and its content. The most immediate interaction is through reaction, which consists of the ability to release a positive or negative vote. In addition, the system allows users to issue comments and share content on their profile or other social channels. Important is the Feed management, which allows each user to personalize their bulletin board by highlighting the topics of greatest interest.

1. Registration and profile

• Users create an account by choosing a username and password.
• Profile customization with avatar, bio, and “flair” to identify interests or subreddit memberships. Subreddits and feeds
• Reddit is organized into thematic communities called subreddits (e.g., r/italy, r/technology, r/movies).
• Each subreddit has its own rules and moderators.
• Users subscribe (+Join) to the subreddits they are interested in and populate the main feed with posts from these communities.

2. Creating and interacting with content

• Users can post text, links, images, and videos; or participate by commenting on others’ posts.
• Content is voted with upvote (+1) or downvote (-1), determining visibility in the feed (“hot”, ‘new’, “top” algorithm).
• Nested comments and organized threads enable structured discussions.

3. Reddit Karma and reputation

• Each upvote assigned to a post or comment increases the user’s “karma,” a reputational indicator (visible on the profile).
• Karma has no monetary value but incentivizes qualitative participation.

4. Notifications and messaging

• Notification system alerts on replies, mentions, rewards received (e.g., Reddit Gold).
• Possibility of private messaging between users.

Reddit: opportunities for Companies

Reddit is an extremely useful platform for disseminating one’s own content, whether it concerns editorial resources such as articles or blog posts, or in relation to the dissemination of photos and videos of company products and services. Important, however, is that the content disseminated goes in the direction of information and entertainment.

One of Reddit’s strengths lies in the strong dynamism of its community, which, although it is less numerous than that of other entities on the web, proves to be extremely cohesive and consistent in advocating its values based on confrontation and participatory information.
In the current scenario of search engines governed by AI bots that aim to feed on information, Reddit is a significant source and companies should use it to increase their organic visibility.

If you want to know how to do it and study the right business strategy for Reddit, ask Bruce Clay experts for a consultation.

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1. Advertising on Reddit

• Reddit Ads: PPC campaigns with “Sponsored Posts”, “Display Ads” and “Video Ads” formats.
• Targeting based on interests (subreddits), geolocation, devices and demographics.
• Performance measurement via native metrics (impressions, click-through rate, engagement).

2. Brand Community and Engagement

• Creating an official subreddit to build a proprietary community: space for discussions, feedback and product launches.
• AMA (Ask Me Anything): Ǫ&A sessions with corporate figures or testimonials to generate visibility and trust.

3. Market Research and Insight

• Monitoring conversations in relevant subreddits to identify trends, consumer needs and sentiment.
• Use of Social Listening tools to aggregate qualitative data on spontaneous user feedback.

4. Native content marketing

• Sponsoring experiential posts (storytelling, tutorials, use cases) that fit organically into the context of subreddits.
• Collaborations with moderators or niche influencers to increase credibility and reach.

5. Growth opportunities

• Beta testing of features: recruiting profitable users to test new products or services, leveraging the high vocality of communities.
• Affiliate programs: using discount codes and affiliate links within subreddits can bring tracked sales and increase ROI.
• Virtual events and contests: creativity competitions (e.g., design, meme contests) to increase engagement and achieve quality user-generated content.

Final Conclusions

On the user side, Reddit offers an ecosystem of thematic communities where content can be shared and discussed, driven by a voting and reputation system.

On the business side, on the other hand, it offers several opportunities ranging from targeted advertising to community building, from market research to the implementation of content marketing strategies. Finally, investing on Reddit means tapping into highly profiled and engaged audiences, taking advantage of the dialogic and participatory nature of the platform.

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