Reddit is a traffic powerhouse on the internet, with 400 million monthly page views and 80 million unique users looking for the neatest stories out there. It is being increasingly looked at as a source for content for news websites, and for websites fortunate enough to make it to the front page, the traffic can sometimes be overwhelming. I’ve even noticed a trend of media websites who experience the sudden increase of reddit traffic putting up welcome announcements for redditors, to try and capitalise on their visit.

With such potential, it can be quite tempting for PR folk to try and harness some of that power and promote a brand, but is there any place PR on reddit?

Well, it depends on the sub-reddit. There are thousands of them out there, discussing topics like programming and the economy, as well as more “niche” areas, and each one seems to have their own rules and level of acceptance for self-promotion. A good list of sub-reddits can be found here: http://subreddits.org/search.html

There are a few common rules, as well as points of common sense that apply across most of reddit when it comes to promoting a brand. There are some rules in reddiquette, reddit’s list of community values, which apply to promoting links:

DO:

• Link to the direct version of a media file when the page it was found on doesn’t add any value.
• Feel free to post links to your own content (within reason). But if that’s all you ever post, and it always seems to get voted down, take a good hard look in the mirror — you just might be a spammer.

Browse reddit for long enough and you’ll observe brands who are getting it wrong and some who are getting it right. You’ll see criticism being raised against users that seem to be posting only stories from one website, not contributing anything to discussions and perhaps, worse of all, not being completely transparent about their connection to a website. These users are called out for not contributing anything interesting and only looking to drive traffic.

Those that promote their blogs and articles successfully have a few things in common. They don’t spam reddit and only post articles of interest to the community, they don’t link to ad-heavy sites looking to profit from increased traffic and most importantly, they don’t only promote their material, they contribute other articles of interest and comment on other stories.

While reddit can be a hostile place for those looking for shameless self-promotion, for those with authentic contributions to make, there can be some great benefits to sharing interesting work on behalf of clients. And who knows, while you are there you might even learn something new.

That said, it always gives me a tingly feeling when I see a link to a press release or blog I’ve written posted to reddit organically. For that reason, I don’t post client work to the forums I visit, and personally feel that the best way to get the most out of communities like reddit is to help clients announce really interesting news.