This is a guide on how Content Marketers working in B2B Technology can use Reddit to deliver better content to their clients.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way – Reddit is the last place where you should try to sell. Any communities where your prospective buyers could be lurking, are likely to have a “Do NOT Advertise” Rule. Which means that should you try to sell stuff, the mods are likely to get rid of it as soon as they see it.
Advertising: what's okay, and what's not.
If you are a Reddit user, you probably understand why no one wants to see posts or comments from salespeople in the subreddits they frequent. What could be worse than seeing a covert advert for a meme generating solution on r/Memes, or a therapist pitching their services on r/DeadBedrooms. The only way you should sell on Reddit is through Ads. But this article is not about digital marketing on Reddit.
Interestingly, all the reasons that make Reddit a bad place for posting sales content, also make it a great place for content marketers. On Reddit, people are candid. They are vocal about the problems they face, and the things they love. With that said, let’s see how you, as a B2B Content Marketer, can use Reddit to improve the results you deliver through your Content Marketing work.
DO use Reddit for these things
#1. Join relevant subreddits.
I write for B2B technology products and services. That’s why, I am on these subreddits:
The technologies I write about: r/cloudcomputing, r/artificalintelligence, r/machinelearning, r/virtualization, r/networking, r/cybersecurity, r/IoT.
Here, you are likely to find broader perspectives on these technologies. Mostly developers posting about the problems they face and others helping them out. Don’t pay attention to stuff like “AI is about to change the world.” This is not what you are here for.
Also dig a little deeper and join more specific communities. For instance, if you are working with a client that offers an IT support product, you might find helpful stuff on r/ITsupport. Similarly, if you are working with a customer support SaaS solution, join r/customerservice. Consider which roles your solution could be useful for, and get into those communities, if they exist.
Finally, products. For example, I write about ERP solutions very often – which is why I am on the r/ERP, r/SAP, and r/OracleCloud subreddits.
#2. Use Reddit to understand your buyer personas.
Sure, you have some basic attributes about IT support professionals. Your client may have shared these with you. But what are these people talking about? What’s giving them a run for their money through their workday?
This is what you will find on Reddit. Time for another example. I was writing a white paper for a virtual desktop infrastructure provider, who was trying to exploit the VMware acquisition to increase their sales. So I went to the virtualization subreddit, and searched for ‘VMware acquisition’. The intent was to understand how existing VMware users feel about the acquisition. Found a very useful post from a customer looking to switch – and what they were looking for in an alternative VDI provider. (Exhibit 1.)
Also, don’t restrict yourself to the subs you have already joined. Also run a general search on Reddit. When I was looking for perspectives on how users are being affected by the VMware acquisition, I found some very helpful threads using this strategy. Especially the highlighted post “If Vmware is acquired by Broadcom, run and do not look back” from a Security Architect. (Exhibit 2, 3.)
Understanding your buyers' responses to developments in the industry.
Similarly, you can use Reddit to understand the pain points of your prospective users. For instance, you see how frustrated this IT admin is, with Microsoft CoPilot bundling. 280+ upvotes too – means, it’s being felt by a lot of these roles. In fact, r/sysadmin has a tag ‘Rant’, which you can use to exclusively discover what’s troubling IT folks across a wide variety of orgs.
A bounty of rants from IT admins: a good deal of issues exist in the enterprise tech landscape.
#3. Build credibility in claims you make in your collaterals.
If you find relevant material on Reddit, there are more than one ways to make use of it. For instance, if I was working with an Azure competitor whose selling point is flexible pricing (think Google Cloud), and found this above post, I’d strongly consider using it in the copy. Not directly, but to frame the copy – for example, ‘no more useless products in discounted bundles – fair pricing, but only for what you really need.’
Sometimes, it also makes sense to use the content of Reddit posts directly. You could embed the screenshot of a post or a comment in a white paper, or even within a blog post. This helps you put the voice of tens, or even hundreds of enterprise users behind the claims that you make – be it the problems that you solve with your product, how valuable a feature is for the users. Just make sure that you mask the handle(s) of the user(s) whose content you are embedding.
#4. Read the Rules before posting about your solution/service.
While some subs have a strict no-advertising policy, others have more detailed explanations on what is allowed and what isn’t. For instance, the sysadmin subreddit does allow you to mention your solution, but only in the context of a specific discussion.
Generally, a good way to determine if you should post about your product, is to assess if it will really help someone. For instance, if a Redditor is asking about VMware vSphere alternatives, you could mention your solution and its upsides. In such cases, always disclose your association with the brand/product that you are mentioning.
DONT use Reddit for these things
#1. Selling your product or services.
While I have already covered this in the introduction to this article, this deserves a second mention. Just because you aren’t getting enough traffic to your blog or your landing page doesn’t mean you should start posting them on Reddit. In some cases, you may get banned or booted from a sub if you don’t follow the rules! Even if you don’t, you are not going to get any engagement here. See some examples below.
You won't get any engagement on promotional content. Stop trying already!
#2. Lurking on Reddit without intention.
Seriously, don’t doomscroll through these subreddits. In fact, if you are a Reddit user, make a separate account for using Reddit for work. You are not using Reddit for learning about new developments in a field. For that, you have other sources which will not waste so much of your time.
#3. Getting news to cite in your content.
If you are thinking of citing someone’s statements about a product or a service in your marketing copy, don’t. Afterall, Reddit is a social media platform, not a trusted source of information that you should be citing in an ebook or a white paper. Notice that embedding a post, and citing a user’s statement are not the same things – the former adds transparency to your claims, whereas the latter obscures its validity.
To sum it up…
Reddit is an excellent platform to understand your prospective users and their pain points. Discussions on the right subreddits can help you find these perspectives, which in turn, will help you understand what your buyers are really looking for.
But it is also important to acknowledge the limitations of such an approach. For instance, the buyers of enterprise software are sometimes disconnected from its users. These gaps can be bridged by analysing reviews on platforms which are typically used by buyer personas – like G2, Capterra, Gartner, or TrustRadius.
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