Thoughts on the Pros & Cons of Reddit

With over 243 million unique visitors (in a given month), from over 200 countries and millions of user accounts, there could be some truth to their claim, “Reddit The Front Page of the Internet.”

Reddit is full of images, tons of topics, discussions, opinions and just about everything you can think of. Its diversity and variety attracts individuals from a wide demographic range (a lot of - males 18-24) and geographic locations, making it one of the most powerful social forums on the internet.

Reddit provides an ideal location to promote comments, opinions and potentially brands, due to the large user audience, many of which are in search of entertainment, news and everything the front page of the internet offers. From a marketer’s perspective, Reddit should be considered ideal for generating traffic to a brand website or a blog and even, promotion of a brand to a tailored and customized audience, yet they're not.

Let’s take a look at some pros and cons, and reach a conclusion of the benefits and costs of Reddit to online users.

PROS

It’s incredibly simple to use. Go to the front page and look around.
It’s extremely easy to set up an account on Reddit, and even simpler to use it. If you feel overwhelmed and confused on social media sites such as Twitter, Reddit will come as a delightful surprise.
You will find the /r/selfserve page will answer most of your questions, and it helps beginners better understand how to promote a successful ad campaign on Reddit.
Reddit is extremely effective at driving traffic.
Indeed, advertising on Reddit can generate greater traffic than Facebook, Twitter or many other social media networks.
Reddit allows you to pick the audience for your ads by choosing between all of Reddit, which is basically untargeted, or specific sub-reddits to pick a targeted audience.
Finding your niche in a diverse and vast audience.
Reddit has an amazingly diverse audience and it caters to those diverse tastes with an entertaining variety. Even though most entrepreneurs and marketers fail to recognize its great importance, Reddit has the potential to help you create a flourishing niche for your business.
Reddit provides you the opportunity and platform to set trends and reach out to a large audience of the consumer population looking for entertainment and news.
Reddit allows an effective and simple ranking system that lets you examine and evaluate how well your ads are being received by your targeted audience.
This ensures that you are not wasting your time and resources, but actually, generating real time ROIs.

CONS

Distributed Wisdom
Although there is a lot of data, information and knowledge on Reddit, that is provided by a large group of people, the way it is distributed leaves you wondering will it ever reach the person or persons who are looking for it?
Overflowing with content, making it hard to get above the Noise and find like-minded collective intelligence.
Reddit users are always seeking original and fresh content, which I times can feel overwhelming if you don’t have a consistent process to produce a constant stream of content.
Even though you can effectively tailor your audience to make sure you target your ads at the most interested users, it is very likely that your articles or content may get lost in the extensive feed. The front page of the Internet can be filled with a lot of stuff, that may not be that interesting to your target audience.
Reddit users can make or break you.
Indeed, if users like your content and article, it may even be made a star and lead to a great deal of traffic generation for your website.
If they do not agree with your content, be prepared for a serious dose of criticism.
Requires a lot of work to find what you want.
At times it can feel overwhelming just looking at the front page of Reddit. If you feel that way, how must others feel? You have to hunt for the content you’re really looking for. This can be a real time vacuum.
Fit for brands representing a casual feeling.
Reddit states in their best practices for ads: “stay casual” in your message. For some brands this may be an impossible task, if your brand has a casual vibe, then go for it. If not, Reddit may not be the best place for you.