Social media for charities 101: Reddit
You’ve probably heard of Reddit, but as one of the more niche social networks, you may not have visited it.
It often hits the headlines for unpleasant reasons. Recently a subreddit called r/HermanCain was set up to record the deaths of COVID-19 deniers who have contracted and died from the virus. Cain was a Trump campaign insider who contracted and died from coronavirus after the fateful Tulsa rally in June 2020.
In reality, Reddit is a vast community spread across individual message boards on hundreds of thousands of topics or interests. It’s moderated by volunteers known as ‘mods’ who are overseen by ‘admins’ that work for Reddit. Each message board or forum is called a subreddit and begins with r/, for example r/gofundme.
When you post on a subreddit, other Reddit users (redditors) can upvote or downvote your post. Your total upvotes and downvotes are displayed as a karma score on your profile – it’s a number other redditors will be clocking when they check you out!
Posts on Reddit use some old-school forum abbreviations such as OP for ‘original poster’ or TIL for ‘today, I learned.’ The style of chat is very informal, like a messaging platform.
You can join as a regular user, but unlike most other platforms, there is also a paid option called ‘premium.’ Users who pay the premium subscription get an ads free experience and access to an exclusive subreddit called r/lounge.
Reddit calls itself the “frontpage of the internet”. It has 480 million users worldwide; close to 50% are in the U.S. and 7% are in the U.K.
Charities can use Reddit to start conversations, advertise to niche audiences, join a professional community, do some social listening, or solve pesky tech problems!
Start a conversation
One of the most popular subreddits is r/IAmA which stands for ‘I Am a’. It has over 22 million members and has been used by celebrities and public figures such as Barack Obama to run ‘AMA’ (ask me anything) sessions.
You could use a celebrity patron, an expert or someone with lived experience of your charity’s work to host a live AMA session on the site. Promote the event on Reddit and through other digital channels.
Reddit is also an untapped source for case studies. Find subreddits that relate to your cause and ask if there are redditors who are open to sharing their story. Some charities are finding this approach more successful than others for finding stories.
What if the issue that your charity works on has come up in a Netflix series and you know people are talking about it? Starting a conversation on r/Netflix might give you an opportunity to share expertise and signpost redditors to your services, rather than waiting for them to come to you, for example.
Advertising
Reddit advertising can be really effective for reaching niche audiences. You can target using interests, locations and subreddits. Use the List of Subreddits to find subreddits that your audiences are likely to hang out on. Tapping your possible subreddit targets into the reddit search bar will tell you how many followers they have and give you a sense of popular topics.
There are two types of ads, link ads and text ads. They appear with a blue background and ‘promoted’ flag. Link ads connect with an external website and text ads connect internally with another subreddit.
The Teenage Cancer Trust are using ads on Reddit to promote their gaming product, ‘Stream and Support’. Gaming can be a distraction from treatment and space to be social for teenagers with cancer. Reddit is a great platform to target the gamers using subreddits to chat gaming and share tips.
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Social listening
Subreddits are searchable, so Reddit could be a valuable source for social listening about your charity specifically or public attitudes to charity in general – at least among Reddit users.
A few Google searches for “keyword + reddit” will turn up relevant conversations. At the time of writing, searching the term ‘charity’ brings up a lot of conversations about fundraising, the costs of running a charity, and issues around transparency for instance.
Join a community of peers
Reddit is all about finding your tribe and there are some subreddits dedicated to professionals in the charity sector.
Given the global nature of the audience, it can be an interesting place to get a diverse perspective on the issues you are battling! Check out:
Problem solving
As a hub for experts, especially techies, Reddit can be a useful problem-solving tool. You can save hours of Googling by popping onto a subreddit like r/outlook if you have little or no IT support in-house.
Reddit has been an untapped resource for charities, perhaps that is starting to change.
