What Is Reddit? The Marketer’s Guide to Unlocking Viral Power

So you’re wondering, “What is Reddit?”

If you don’t use it, you might have stumbled on a Reddit thread in search results or noticed someone online using subjects with ‘r/’ at the start. This can happen for just about any topic. Reddit bills itself as the front page of the internet. In essence, this is because Reddit is the most popular forum-style platform around. In other words, it’s where people go online to discuss the topics they care about.

In June 2005 when Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian launched it as a simple online forum, Reddit has transformed into a global social media behemoth generating multiple billion pageviews per months. With over 100 million daily active users and more than 100,000 active communities called subreddits, with an estimation of 2.2 million in total, Reddit has evolved from a small discussion platform into something far more significant for businesses.

If you’ve decided to write Reddit off as too difficult to understand or not relevant for your business, this guide provides all the information you need to make the most of Reddit for market research, content strategy, and authentic customer engagement.

So, For Real, What is Reddit?

Reddit is more of a social aggregator than it is a social media website. That is, the individual users aren’t front and centre in the same way that they are on social networks. Rather, Reddit is all about content and opinions. Users are even allowed to remain anonymous.

People create an account with a username and search for sub-Reddit communities of like-minded people to talk with and get around the social interactions that come with friends, family members, and other random people on Facebook.

Let’s take an example. Say you have a funny picture of your cat you want to post, but you don’t want to share it with people you know on Facebook. Maybe you don’t want your work friends to know you dress the cat up in a Darth Vader costume.

Your best alternative would be to create an account on Reddit, go to the r/Cats or r/Aww subReddit (or both) and post the picture of your cat. People tend to react favourably to cat pictures and are likely to upvote your picture so it gets more visibility.

Get enough upvotes, also known as karma, and you might find your cat has made it to the front page of Reddit! Often, Reddit is where content which goes viral on other platforms originates. For businesses creating video content, animations, or social media campaigns, understanding how content goes viral on Reddit can inform your digital marketing strategy across all platforms.

From Humble Beginnings to Global Phenomenon

In 2005, Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman, two young entrepreneurs with a passion for online communities, launched reddit.com—a simple website that aimed to revive the spirit of discussion and debate that had once characterised online forums.

Reddit’s initial design was straightforward, featuring a simple interface and a focus on threaded conversations. Users could submit text posts, links, and images, and other users could upvote or downvote content to determine its visibility. This democratic approach to content curation resonated with users and quickly attracted a dedicated following.

The Rise of Subreddits: Communities Within Communities

As Reddit’s user base grew, so did the diversity of its content. To cater to this expanding range of interests, the concept of subreddits was introduced. Subreddits, essentially dedicated forums within Reddit, allowed users to organise around specific topics, hobbies, or communities.

This decentralised approach fostered a sense of ownership and belonging among users, who actively participated in moderating and contributing to their respective subreddits. The result was a thriving ecosystem of communities, each with its own unique culture, rules, and norms.

Each subreddit functions as an independent forum with distinct rules, cultures, and moderation standards. For businesses, this means you can find highly targeted audiences. A web design agency might engage in r/Web_Design or r/WordPress, while content marketers participate in r/Content_Marketing. Digital marketing agencies can find their audiences across dozens of relevant subreddits, from r/SmallBusiness to r/Entrepreneur to r/DigitalMarketing.

Getting Karma on Reddit

But what actually is Reddit karma? When you see a post on Reddit, it has a number and an up and down arrow on the left-hand side that you can click. If you like the post a lot, you can press the up arrow and add what’s known as an upvote to the post.

And when you add an upvote, the number goes up, whereas a downvote makes the number go down. The original poster, or OP, gets a boost or drop in karma, which in turn increases their credibility or sinks it.

At least, that’s how it works in theory.

In practice, someone will often post an embarrassing story only to garner thousands of upvotes and be even more embarrassed that their confession of one of their worst moments in life has entertained so many people that they upvoted in droves.

Reddit’s Diverse Capabilities: A Comprehensive Overview

Reddit, the self-proclaimed “front page of the internet,” has evolved from a simple online forum into a multifaceted social media platform catering to a wide range of interests and user needs. Beyond its core feature of threaded conversations, Reddit offers a plethora of capabilities that enhance its appeal and functionality. Besides the ones we mentioned in the previous section, let’s delve into some other key features that set Reddit apart:

Reddit Talk: Live Audio Conversations

Initially launched in April 2021, Reddit Talk expanded Reddit’s functionality into the realm of live audio conversations. Subreddits could host live discussions, interviews, and AMAs (Ask Me Anything) sessions, fostering real-time engagement and community building.

However, Reddit decided to officially shut down the Reddit Talk feature on March 21, 2023 and rather focus its efforts on improving core functionality like search and building better subreddit infrastructure.

Additional Reddit Features

• Reddit Predicts: Launched in October 2021, Reddit Predicts taps into the competitive spirit of users, allowing them to make predictions about various events, from sporting outcomes to political elections. This gamified feature adds an element of fun and engagement to the platform.

• Reddit Public Access Network (RPAN): RPAN, introduced in August 2019, transformed Reddit into a platform for live video broadcasting. Users could stream live content, share their talents, and connect with viewers in real-time, adding a new dimension to Reddit’s interactive capabilities. However, RPAN was a limited-time experiment and was, too, shut down in early 2022.

• Awards: Reddit’s virtual awards system allows users to recognise and appreciate outstanding contributions to the platform. These awards, ranging from wholesome to humorous, provide a non-monetary way to show gratitude and encourage positive interactions

• Saved Posts: The “Save” feature enables users to bookmark and organise posts they find valuable or entertaining, allowing them to easily revisit and share content that aligns with their interests. This feature promotes personalised content consumption and knowledge retention.

• Private Messaging: Reddit’s private messaging feature facilitates direct communication between users, enabling private conversations, collaborations, and discussions beyond the public forum setting. This feature enhances the platform’s versatility and caters to personal interactions.

• Multi-Reddit: Multi-Reddit allows users to create personalised feeds by combining multiple subreddits into a single, customised view. This feature empowers users to tailor their Reddit experience to their specific interests and preferences, streamlining content discovery and engagement.

• Search: Reddit’s robust search functionality enables users to find specific content, subreddits, or users based on keywords, topics, or interests. This feature facilitates efficient navigation and content discovery, ensuring that users can easily locate the information they seek.

• Filters: Reddit’s filtering options allow users to personalise their feed by filtering out unwanted content, such as specific keywords, subreddits, or user types. This feature enhances content control and ensures that users see content that aligns with their preferences.

• Emojis: Reddit’s integrated emoji support enables users to add visual expression and nuance to their comments and posts. This feature enhances communication and adds a touch of personality to online interactions.

• Custom Themes: Reddit offers various customisation options, including custom themes, allowing users to personalise the platform’s appearance to suit their individual preferences. This feature promotes a sense of ownership and enhances user satisfaction.

• Mobile App: Reddit’s mobile app, available for iOS and Android, provides seamless access to the platform’s features.

Do You Have to Pay to Use Reddit?

The site is absolutely free, although the site owners use display advertising to monetise their users. Despite this, the admins of Reddit came up with Reddit Gold to help pay for server time.

Reddit Gold

Essentially, this is like a more valuable form of karma you pay for via Reddit coins. It’s something you can buy for yourself or buy to give to a user who’s delighted you with their content to the point you want to show your appreciation for their post.

When you “gild” someone on Reddit, they get access to something called The Lounge and a gold star next to their username to show they’ve been gilded. And if you’re broke, but want to show appreciation, there’s always Reddit silver!

BUT Reddit Silver is actually a running gag on the site. Sometimes, people want to gild a user, but they are unable to pay for gold. Instead, they put in an image link to a poorly drawn coin that says “Reddit Silver” in poorly drawn lettering.

It has no benefit other than being annoying, or funny, depending on your point of view. Also, there are users who do the same thing when they want to annoy another poster by putting the link to Reddit silver in their reply.

Reddit Premium

Reddit Premium is a subscription service, which is aimed at giving hardcore Redditers a better user experience. This costs $5.99 per month, with the money going towards the hosting costs of the site.

Essentially, Reddit Premium has two main benefits.

Firstly, premium users don’t see display ads while they browse Reddit. This gives a much more enjoyable user experience, and eliminates the need to use an ad blocker while on the site.

Secondly, you’ll receive access to a premium-only subReddit called r/Lounge. This does not have an overarching theme or topic, but allows premium members to meet and talk to one another.

Reddit and Advertising

You may be wondering how Reddit could be making money from all this activity. After all, there are no visible ads like there are on Facebook, right? Well, that depends on your use of an adblocker for your browser, or if you’re viewing the site on your smartphone or tablet.

If you’re not using an adblocker on your desktop browser or looking at the website on your mobile device, you’re going to see advertising. But it’s just not as in-your-face as Facebook and other sites. What you will see are promoted posts that an advertiser pays for, along with banner ads here and there. Reddit Gold is also another source of income, as the servers are funded for decades to come, and the extra income is used for operational expenses.

Reddit Advertising for Businesses: Reddit offers traditional advertising options for businesses seeking direct promotional channels. These ads appear as sponsored posts in user feeds, clearly labelled to distinguish them from organic content.

Targeting Capabilities: Advertisers can target specific subreddits, interests, locations, devices, and times. This precision allows Northern Ireland businesses to reach UK-based users interested in specific topics without paying for irrelevant impressions.

Ad Formats: Available options include promoted posts (appearing in feeds like regular content), display ads (banner placements), and video ads. Promoted posts typically perform best, as they integrate naturally into the browsing experience.

Community Response: Even clearly labelled ads face Reddit’s critical community standards. Ads must offer genuine value or entertainment to avoid negative comments and downvotes. The most successful Reddit advertising doesn’t look like traditional advertising—it provides useful information, solves problems, or entertains authentically.

For most digital agencies and small businesses, organic community participation delivers better returns than paid advertising. The investment required to create genuinely valuable ad content often exceeds the cost of dedicating staff time to authentic community engagement.

Ultimately, Reddit has yet to turn a profit despite taking on millions of dollars in venture capital. The latest redesign of the website has been controversial due to its Facebook-like appearance and poor delivery of advertising. It remains to be seen if the redesign will bring in more people and encourage advertisers to spend money targeting their desired audience.

Using Reddit’s Mobile App

Reddit took its time launching an official app, but it was poorly designed and unpopular. This prompted Reddit to buy Alien Blue, which was an iOS-only app. Android users were left out in the cold and resorted to using third-party apps like Reddit is Fun and Bacon Reader.

By modern standards, the desktop design is also fairly old-fashioned and clunky. In this sense, it’s not surprising that the mobile app is also somewhat behind the times.

Reddit has since created an Android app, but many users are avoiding its use in favour of the third-party apps, which are considered clean and efficient in comparison. Perhaps the biggest failure of the official Reddit app is the ability to do things like buy gold and give a username “flair”, things that are done regularly on the desktop version.

How to Use Reddit for Marketing

When considering any online platform, one of the most important things is how it can be used to increase profits for businesses. Like other major social media sites, Reddit can be a powerful sales and marketing tool.

However, in other ways, it’s a bit of an exception. Unlike Facebook or Instagram, simple product-focused sales content is unlikely to perform well. This is because the average Reddit user is a little bit more skeptical.

This means you can’t just post nice-looking photos of your products to Reddit and hope for the best. Reddit users tend to have a more in-depth knowledge of their area of interest. As such, you need to provide a lot more substance to get them on your side.

“The businesses that succeed on Reddit are those that understand they’re guests in someone else’s living room,” notes Ciaran Connolly, Director at ProfileTree. “You can’t walk in and immediately start selling. You need to contribute, listen, and earn the right to participate in these communities.”

With that in mind, let’s take a look at two ways that Reddit can be used to boost revenues.

Reddit for Content Marketing Inspiration

Many content marketers use forums and Q&A sites like Quora to come up with original ideas to populate their content calendar. Reddit is an amazing resource for this kind of content inspiration.

Users on an average subReddit are highly invested and knowledgeable in whatever topic they’re interested in. In other words, they’re a bit nerdier than your average customer. This makes them an excellent source of content ideas.

That is, their questions tend to relate to issues which are more specific to your industry, product or service. Often, these are questions you might not have thought of yourself. More importantly, your competitors probably haven’t thought of them either.

Market Research Through Reddit: Reddit’s authentic conversations provide business intelligence that focus groups and surveys struggle to capture. Users discuss products with brutal honesty, share detailed purchasing experiences, and collectively identify industry problems that businesses often miss.

Competitor Analysis: Search your competitors’ brand names or products across Reddit to find unfiltered customer opinions. Users freely discuss product failures, customer service problems, and feature requests—information rarely visible through official channels.

Pain Point Identification: Industry-specific subreddits constantly surface problems users need solved. A web design agency monitoring r/SmallBusiness might discover that business owners struggle with specific website accessibility issues or find certain platforms confusing—direct insights for service development and content creation.

Trend Detection: Emerging topics gain traction on Reddit before reaching mainstream awareness. Businesses monitoring relevant communities can identify shifting customer priorities, new competitor offerings, or technological changes requiring response.

ProfileTree regularly monitors subreddits related to web design, SEO, digital marketing, and AI implementation to identify questions that Northern Ireland and UK businesses actually ask. This intelligence directly shapes our content strategy, training programmes, and service offerings, creating resources that address real needs rather than assumed ones.

The key here is to actively seek out these kinds of questions, rather than waiting for them to filter through your customer support channels. We’ll cover exactly how you can go about this in the following section.

Generating content ideas using Reddit allows you to strike while the iron is hot and publish totally original content that your competitors who don’t use Reddit would never have thought of.

Brand Loyalty and Engagement

Of course, the more questions you can get out of your Reddit audience, the better. This requires you to cultivate an active following on the platform. One easy way to do this is to start a subReddit for your customers.

For example, Apple users can meet and discuss their products under r/iPhone, or r/AppleWatch. Once your sub is up and running, you’ll also benefit from a lot of user-generated content. However, in the early stages, you’ll have to do the legwork to get people talking. That is, users will be put off by a subReddit which lacks active users or good content.

When to Create a Subreddit: Only create dedicated communities after establishing substantial customer base or user interest. Empty or inactive subreddits damage brand perception rather than enhancing it. Consider creating a subreddit when:

• You regularly receive support questions that would benefit from community answers
• Customers already discuss your offerings across various platforms
• You can commit to active moderation and participation
• Your product or service has passionate users willing to engage

Ask Me Anything (AMA) Sessions: A popular way to boost user engagement on Reddit is using Ask Me Anything sessions. Essentially, this is when you give your users screen time with a senior member of your team, or product expert and give them a chance to field questions.

Once you’ve established community presence, consider hosting an AMA in relevant subreddits. These sessions allow direct engagement with potential customers whilst demonstrating expertise. Successful AMAs require subreddit moderator approval and genuine willingness to answer difficult questions honestly.

For digital agencies, AMAs can focus on specific expertise areas—a web design AMA might cover WordPress best practices, accessibility requirements, or SEO fundamentals. A video production expert might discuss YouTube strategy, animation techniques, or content planning. These sessions build thought leadership whilst providing genuine community value.

A Platform to Build Communities

Reddit may have strayed from its original intentions in some ways, but its core of anonymous interaction and sharing of information is still very much intact. At the same time, it feels like a throwback to a different age of the internet.

While sites like Facebook and X/Twitter are transparently all about the money, Reddit still feels like a great place to meet like-minded people, and discuss your favourite topics. Because of this, it’s a great indicator for what content will perform well on other platforms.

Reddit is free to use, and third-party software like Reddit Enhancement Suite tames the website to make it more readable if you’re staying off the redesigned part. After all, Reddit has become a part of the fabric of the internet.

It’s also a great source of entertainment and procrastination for millions of people—but more importantly, for businesses, it’s an invaluable source of market intelligence, content inspiration, and authentic customer feedback.

Latest Statistics Demonstrating Reddit’s Immense Influence and Reach

Understanding Reddit’s scale and impact helps businesses appreciate its potential as a marketing and research platform.

Traffic Milestones

• Monthly Active Users (MAU): Reddit boasts approximately 1.1 billion to 1.36 billion monthly visitors/users, placing it among the top 10 most popular websites globally.
• Daily Active Users (DAU): Reddit’s daily active user base is around 116 million, indicating a highly engaged and loyal user community.
• Pageviews: Reddit generates an astonishing 5.9 billion mobile visits per month (plus desktop), showcasing its massive traffic volume and user engagement.

Influential Demographics

• Age: Reddit’s user base skews towards younger demographics, with over 60% of users falling under the ages of 35. This aligns with the platform’s appeal to tech-savvy, socially engaged audiences.
• Education: Reddit users are highly educated, with approximately 40% of adult users having a college degree or higher. This indicates the platform’s appeal to informed and sophisticated individuals.
• Income: Reddit’s user base also boasts a significant income bracket. Around 26% of US adults who earn $75,000 or more are active on Reddit. This underscores the platform’s influence among affluent demographics.

Subreddit Guide Adoption Rates

• Subreddit Creation: With over 116,000 active subreddits, the platform showcases its vibrancy and the ongoing development of niche communities.
• Subreddit Activity: Subreddits generate over 3.14 billion comments per year, showcasing the active engagement and discussions that take place within these communities.

Overall Influence

• News Source: Reddit is a significant source of news and information for many users, with over 70% relying on the platform for news updates. This highlights the platform’s role in shaping public discourse and opinion.
• Trendsetter: Reddit is a breeding ground for viral trends, memes, and cultural phenomena. Its ability to amplify and spread content has made it a powerful force in online culture.
• Community Impact: Reddit communities have played a pivotal role in social movements and activism, demonstrating the platform’s real-world impact and ability to mobilise users around causes.

FAQs

Conclusion

Balancing community-first engagement with brand promotion is crucial for success on Reddit. By prioritising genuine value, respecting community norms, and adhering to guidelines, brands can cultivate positive relationships, enhance their reputation, and effectively utilise Reddit as a valuable marketing tool. Over-promoting and infringing guidelines can lead to negative consequences, so it is essential to approach Reddit with a mindset of authenticity, respect, and community-driven engagement.

By following the best practices outlined in this article, brands can navigate the social media landscape of Reddit effectively and reap the benefits of connecting with a highly engaged and influential audience.

How ProfileTree Can Help Your Business Succeed Online

While Reddit provides valuable market intelligence and community insights, translating those insights into business growth requires expertise across multiple digital disciplines. ProfileTree specialises in helping Northern Ireland, Irish, and UK businesses turn digital opportunities into measurable results through web design and development, SEO and local SEO, AI solutions and training, content marketing and strategy, video production and YouTube strategy, and comprehensive digital training and workshops for SMEs.

Based in Belfast, we understand the unique challenges facing businesses across the UK and Ireland. Our team develops strategies informed by real customer insights—including intelligence from platforms like Reddit, where your customers discuss their needs openly—creating solutions that drive genuine growth rather than just looking impressive. Ready to grow your business online? Contact ProfileTree to discuss how our services can help you achieve your goals.