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Have you considered Reddit as a source for valuable content?
Using Reddit will reveal unique and interesting content that helps you stand out from the crowd.
In this post you’ll discover how to use Reddit for content curation and inspiration.
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#1: Find Subreddits in Your Niche
Many marketers already know Reddit is useful for discovering content, but browsing its individual communities, called subreddits, can be time-consuming. Fortunately, you can make that task easier if you create a multireddit, which is a custom dashboard of content around a particular topic.
First, you need to find subreddits you want to include in your multireddit, and compile a master list of subreddit names, organized by topic.
Discover Relevant Subreddits
There are thousands of active subreddits, so it’s important to find those that share the best content in your niche. Here are some easy ways to search for relevant subreddits:
The subreddit search box lets you search for all subreddits related to a keyword (for example, fitness).
Use the Reddit site search to find site-wide mentions of your keyword, plus a list of subreddits where the term appears most frequently.
You can use advanced search operators to focus your search.
You can also combine advanced operators. For example, I did a search for posts with “paleo” in the title on the r/xxfitness subreddit. I then sorted the results by New to see the most recent posts.
To perform granular searches, use the Boolean operators AND, OR and NOT (or the minus symbol). You can also group keywords with parentheses.
Along with search features on Reddit, you can use metareddit to find subreddits. This third-party directory allows you to filter results by number of subscribers and last post, as in the example here.
The results are displayed in a word cloud, where the size of the words correlates to the number of subscribers.
Make a List of Subreddits
To keep track of the subreddits you find, create a spreadsheet of subreddit names organized by topic. As you find subreddits you want to add to your multireddit, note the subreddit’s name after the r/ in its URL (for example, http://www.reddit.com/r/HealthyFood).
Here’s a list you might create for health and fitness subreddits.
#2: Create a Multireddit
Once you’ve found a group of relevant subreddits, organize them as a multireddit. You can include all of the subreddits you found in one big multireddit or create a handful of more specific multireddits.
After you log into the site, go to the Reddit front page, and click on the dotted line on the left side. Click the Create button, and type in a name for your multireddit. (Note that you can’t use spaces or symbols in the multireddit name.) When you’re finished, click Create again.
Now that you’ve created your multireddit, you can begin adding subreddits to it in the upper-right corner of the screen.
Type a subreddit name into the Add Subreddit box and click the plus sign (or press Enter) to add it to your multireddit. You can also add a description for the multireddit and choose whether it’s public (other redditors can find it) or private (only you can view it).
Open the sidebar from the front page to access any multireddits you’ve created.
You can filter the content in your multireddit using the tabs at the top of the page:
- Hot: Posts that receive the highest engagement (upvotes/comments)
- New: The most recent posts
- Rising: Posts that are gaining popularity
- Controversial: Posts that receive an equal mix of upvotes and downvotes
- Top: The most popular posts of all time
- Gilded: Posts that received reddit gold
- Promoted: Sponsored content
You can also search for keywords within your multireddit. For example, if you’re looking for healthy recipes to share on your social channels, search for “recipe.” You can then filter the results based on popularity, recency and relevance.
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You can search public multireddits here for existing multireddits that others have already curated. Make sure you check the Limit My Search to /r/multihub box.
Pro Tip: Add Subreddits to Your RSS Reader
In addition to creating multireddits, you can create collections of subreddits within your RSS reader. To add a subreddit to your RSS reader, use the URL http://www.reddit.com/r/subredditname/.rss.
#3: Curate Content
One of the most useful applications of multireddits is to discover content to schedule on your social media accounts.
Find Evergreen Content
Multireddits are great for finding content to include in list posts and evergreen resources, such as ebooks or ultimate guides. Click the Top tab in your multireddit to discover the top-performing content within your subreddits.
Sort by All Time to find truly evergreen content, or use the Past Month or Past Year filters to see more time-sensitive curated posts.
The Top tab is also a good place to find timeless content to share on your social channels such as tips and tricks, how-to articles and images.
Get Content Inspiration
Keeping tabs on your multireddit allows you to do ongoing research on your target audience. Pay particular attention to the Hot tab for real-time insight into what your target audience is currently interested in:
- Look at what themes or subjects are mentioned most frequently.
- Discover what types of content (how-to, news, images, etc.) are shared most often, and what performs best.
- Find out what sites are most frequently shared. Consider whether you might be able to publish content on any of these sites.
Use the Top tab as a way to analyze the highest-performing content of all time within your multireddit’s subreddits. You can use these insights when creating content.
For example, suppose you notice a lot of images of famous motivational quotes among the most popular posts for the past year. You could collect some of these images to create a blog post featuring motivational quotes or to use for a “Motivational Monday” theme for social media posts.
Spot Trending Content
Reddit is often the home of the next viral hit, which is why sites like BuzzFeed, Upworthy and Gawker monitor it closely. To spot viral stories before they break, check out the Rising tab on the front page to see what content is gaining popularity across all subreddits.
Within your multireddits, look at the Rising tab to see what content is picking up steam in your niche. You can share this content on social media or take it a step further and use newsjacking to capitalize on a story’s growing popularity.
When done right, newsjacking can insert your brand into the conversation around a news story. This happens frequently with brands that quickly create social content related to a current event. Oreo’s clever Super Bowl blackout post is a famous example.
As you look through rising or hot stories on Reddit, ask yourself, “Is my industry/business related to the breaking story?” If so, follow these steps to broadcast your brand’s unique take on the story:
- Create social media content related to the news.
- Publish a blog post related to the news.
- Contact media outlets and offer to be an expert source.
The key to newsjacking is talking about the story between the time when the news breaks and when journalists are looking for more detailed information, as illustrated in David Meerman Scott’s newsjacking timeline.
#4: Schedule Posts
To quickly schedule social posts, you can queue up content directly from Reddit using Buffer and/or IFTTT.
If you have the Buffer extension installed in your browser, you’ll see a Buffer link for each Reddit post. Click this link to schedule the Reddit post in your Buffer queue.
You can also set up IFTTT recipes that connect your activity on Reddit to Buffer. For example, you can trigger Buffer to schedule a tweet for every post you upvote on Reddit.
#5: Credit the Reddit Community
There is no set standard for crediting redditors, and most sites give no credit to ideas or content taken from Reddit. This has caused some friction within the Reddit community, so it’s best to give credit where credit’s due, just as you would for any content you’ve sourced from elsewhere.
For example, BuzzFeed credited a Reddit thread in the introduction of an article.
And below each photo in the article, BuzzFeed linked to each redditor’s response.
Here are some ways you can credit Reddit when sharing content:
If you’re sourcing a Reddit post or comment thread within a piece of content (such as a roundup post of healthy recipes you found on Reddit), link back to Reddit to give credit.
If a Reddit user created the content, include “created by /u/reddit-username” when you share it.
While it’s less crucial to give credit to content a redditor simply found and posted, you can tag content with “ht /u/reddit-username” (“ht” means “hat tip”).
Conclusion
Reddit is a great a place to find interesting, useful content for sharing and inspiration. For additional content resources that can save you tons of time, check out this massive list of discovery and curation tools.
What do you think? Do you use Reddit for content curation and discovery? What tips can you offer? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.
