How publishers are experimenting with Reddit — even without a formal publisher program

By Kayleigh Barber  •  September 3, 2024  •

Ivy Liu

But the effectiveness of Reddit in those efforts depends on an ever-evolving equation of knowing when and where to post, maintaining relationships with subreddit moderators, and, ultimately, keeping their brands in subreddit communities’ good graces.

Here’s how Reddit is being put to the test by publishers.

Reddit Pro

Reddit Pro is a free dashboard for brands and publishers that the platform initially rolled out in June 2023 and made more widely available this year. Sarah Rosen, senior director of media business development at Reddit, said it’s in its beta test phase and primarily used as a discoverability tool that allows brands to see where they’re being mentioned across subreddit communities. It also provides the context and sentiment of those conversations, which is helpful for identifying new communities that they can reach out to.

For political publisher The Hill, Reddit Pro has been helpful with “looking beyond r/politics, which is a great, but huge subreddit,” said Will Federman, The Hill’s vp of audience and content strategy. “Reddit has told us those communities are going to talk about your content and push your content, regardless of whether you’re there or not. It’s really all these other smaller communities … where you can see an impact.”

Tips for Reddit Pro:

• When a new subreddit is identified, reach out to the moderators first and see if they’re OK with publishers participating in the forum, or not. (See more tips for this in moderator relationships.)
• Keep a spreadsheet of subreddits that have had productive conversations with you as a publisher and return to those when there is editorial content that aligns with their niche.
  • Federman said his list is dozens of subreddits long and The Hill adds a dozen new subreddits monthly.
  • By comparison, Newsweek’s team interacts with far fewer subreddits — between six and 10 on a regular basis, according to Josh Awtry, svp of audience development at Newsweek.
• Not every subreddit is going to accept publishers. “There are communities that have been outright like, ‘Please don’t come back,’ …. and we respect that,” said Federman.

Posting on Reddit

Once a relationship has been established with subreddit moderators, publishers then have to impress the community — which is not always an easy feat. The best way for publishers to do this is to actually participate in the conversations happening on the platform, as opposed to just trying to get people to leave the forum by posting links to stories.

For example, The Hill will sometimes add more context to a topic people are talking about by pulling information from stories, but not necessarily plug the link in the response. “What can we do to add context to this conversation, or potentially drive this conversation forward. We don’t want to hijack the conversation,” said Federman.

Tips for posting:

• Not every subreddit is going to be the right place to engage.
  • “We’re a non-partisan, down the middle political news organization. And so we’ll oftentimes see communities that are very partisan, or have very partisan leanings, that are talking about our content, and those are just kind of no-go zones for us,” said Federman.
• Not every post is worth responding to, especially if there is a lot of engagement around an article from a specific publication that’s organically been posted in a chat.
  • “The amount of conversations we think that benefit from a direct interaction from a producer or reporter is pretty small. We’re talking about maybe a handful of posts every couple of hours,” said Federman.
• Don’t parachute in — drop a link and vanish.
  • “We have an internal policy that whenever we post a link, we’re also the first comment,” said Awtry. “We want to make sure that even if people never click the link, they get a few paragraphs, they get something that didn’t make it into the story, or an exclusive quote from a reporter. … We’re not just going to shake a cup asking for traffic.”
• It may take some trial and error, but publishers should figure out what communities are most interested in and tailor the links they post to the interests of those communities.
  • Awtry said that the r/politics subreddit tends to lean left in nature, so his team won’t post links in that chat that shed any favorable light on the right.
• Say thank you to users who share a lot of links to your site, Awtry said.

Moderator relationships

Entering a new subreddit is a balancing act between adding to the fun and crashing the party, according to Rosen. And the best way publishers can avoid making a bad first impression is by following the community guidelines before posting or reaching out to moderators.

“Some communities are very draconian on how to handle those rules,” said Federman, adding that it’s particularly important to see if there is a rule against contacting moderators about pushing out content.

But it’s not always starting from scratch with some moderators. For publishers relaunching their Reddit strategies, for example, they might have to repair a negative brand image.

A big hurdle for Newsweek when relaunching its Reddit strategy in January was reaching out to moderators of subreddits where it had been banned. While Awtry declined to disclose the exact reasons why the publisher had been banned in those circumstances, he said that many of the subreddit moderators did un-ban Newsweek after his team reached out and demonstrated the publication had changed under new ownership.

“You cannot really appeal a decision to Reddit. Subreddit [moderators] are the kings of their communities, and they can be benevolent kings [or] they can be difficult dictators, in some cases. But learning to work with them is key to making a brand successful on Reddit,” said Awtry.

Tips for building moderator relationships:

• Some of the large subreddits, like r/politics, have several moderators, so making inroads with more than one is important.
• Publishers who are trying to remove a ban should share samples of articles and who the journalists are who created the content.
  • “It’s really you do have to sort of prove yourself all over again, not just in a promise to be better, but in demonstrating the kind of work that you can do,” said Awtry.
• Moderators know what their communities like better than publishers do.
  • For example, Awtry said the r/UnitedKingdom subreddit moderators warned that the publication should not post content related to the British monarchy in the chat because many members were anti-monarchy.
• If a publication uses AI in any part of the editorial process, that could cause some moderators to ban them, according to Awtry, who added that Newsweek has felt the impact of this.

Ask-me-anything (AMAs):

AMAs take place in a specific subreddit and give a reporter or subject matter expert the opportunity to answer questions from community members over the course of a specific period of time.

Until earlier this year, AMAs had to be arranged through Reddit, but now publishers can set them up through a self-serve platform. New features on the platform also include the ability to set reminders for upcoming AMAs to drum up excitement among community members and allowing multiple people host AMAs.

Even though there are rules often excluding affiliate linking on the platform, The New York Times’ product review site, Wirecutter, has turned to Reddit as a way to build brand authority, especially among users who are looking for product recommendations.

Leilani Han, executive director of commerce at Wirecutter, said her team has done two AMAs in the Smart Home and Buy It For Life subreddits, which were aimed to “establish ourselves again as a credible, trusted source in these very active communities,” versus driving conversions.

The Hill has done three AMAs to date, one of which took place in the r/politics subreddit and was hosted by staff writer Brooke Migdon about LGBTQ+ policy, the focus of her beat. While the topic could be polarizing for a political chat, Federman said, “these communities are engaging in more productive conversation than any other platforms that we engage in consistently. We’re not seeing the same type of dialog on Facebook or X or Insta.”

Newsweek has only done one AMA so far, on the conflict between Israel and Palestine, but Awtry said they are in the process of planning more this fall.

Tips for AMAs: 

• Know the community rules about the frequency of AMAs a subreddit allows.
  • Federman said the r/politics subreddit limits the number of AMAs they allow from each publisher within a specific window so they don’t show a bias toward any one media site.
• Only put subject matter experts forward in AMAs. “Redditors are great at sniffing out when they’re not being given the straight story,” said Awtry.

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