The best subreddits to promote your content

Reddit is one of the best places on the internet to do some marketing magic. But since you’re here, you probably already know that. ?

We all wish promoting on Reddit was as easy as posting a thoughtfully designed graphic — much like how you’d promote your brand on Facebook or Instagram — but we all know it’s not that simple. 

This article is part of our extensive series on Reddit Marketing. If you haven’t read our Complete Guide to Reddit Marketing, we suggest you start here. Enjoy!

Now, before we dive deeper into the intricacies of Reddit marketing, it’s crucial to first have the basics covered. All successful Reddit campaigns start with one thing:

Finding the best subreddits to promote your content.

Simply put, finding the best subreddits for self promotion will put your content in front of lots of people (and the right ones at that!).

We understand that sorting through more than 130,000 subreddits (and counting) to find the best Reddit community is a daunting task, but worry not.

In this article, we’ll give you a step-by-step breakdown of how you can find the best and most interesting subreddits to market your brand. You’ll learn:

• What to look for in a subreddit
• How to come up with a list of relevant subs
• What makes some subreddits a better match than others

Let’s jump in!?

The anatomy of a good subreddit

One of the best things about Reddit is the ease with which users can create new subs and niche communities. Admittedly, this is also one of the worst things about the website since it leaves a lot of room for subreddit redundancy and duplication.

It’s not uncommon for one general niche to encompass dozens of related subreddits. For example, anyone searching for travel-related discussions will likely find themselves on the following subs (and the list below is far from exhaustive):

• r/travel
• r/wanderlust
• r/solotravel
• r/backpacking
• r/adventures

So how, exactly, do you know if a subreddit is good enough to promote in? 

The most important rule of all is to stick to subreddits that are relevant to the wants, needs, and interests of your target customers.

We’ll discuss this in more detail in the next section; but basically, self promo in the wrong subreddit is one of the worst mistakes you can make on Reddit.

Here at Soar, we make sure to do our due diligence to ensure that we’re pushing our clients’ content only on subreddits that have:

✅ Lots of members

You can spend hours upon hours crafting the most genius, most creative, most groundbreaking Reddit post of all time. But what good is a great text post if no one’s around to see it?

The best subreddits for your content should have a healthy number of other members. The user count doesn’t have to be in the millions, though it’ll certainly help widen your reach if it is.

Some niches will naturally have bigger communities than others. But a good rule of thumb is to go for as big a sub as possible without sacrificing relevance (with all other things being equal). 

✅ Active/receptive users

The number of members in a subreddit is only one part of the equation. Having a high member count is one thing, but if most of these “members” are abandoned or inactive accounts, then you’re probably better off promoting elsewhere.

A subreddit’s sidebar will show you the number of online users of the sub at any given time. Use this information to determine if this is the right community for you!

It gives you a clearer picture of how many of the sub’s members are actually active. Additionally, you can use this detail to determine the best time of the day to post on the sub for maximum exposure.

✅ Robust activity

Aside from having a healthy number of active members, the best subreddits are those that consistently see lots of activity with amazing content. When you land on a subreddit, ask yourself:

• When was the last post made?
• Around how many posts does the sub get per day?
• Do the posts get a good number of upvotes and comments?

Sticking to active subreddits will give you better engagement and more exposure. Simply put, you don’t want to promote your content in a ghost town. 

✅ The right atmosphere

The type of culture that pervades your target subreddit tells a lot about the nature of its members.

Paying attention to the sub’s atmosphere will help you determine if promoting on the sub is a good idea. Make sure to pay attention to:

• The types of content being shared
• How the members respond to different content types
• Whether the community is more combative or supportive
• The nature of the posts that get the most attention

For example, some popular subreddits favor discussion-type posts, while others are big on memes and graphics. Some subs (like r/videos, for instance) only allow one post type.

That said, the marketing approach you’re planning to take and the content type you want to promote should greatly influence your choice of subreddit.

Finding the best subreddits to promote in

We’ve broken down the process into five steps:

1. Identify your target audience. ?

Your audience should always be at the core of your marketing efforts, and it’s no different when you’re promoting on Reddit. 

To zero in on the best subreddits for promoting your content, you have to clearly define who your target customer is.

What demographic are you targeting? What are your customers’ common interests? Where do they go to discuss their passions and find information? Answering these questions will prepare you for the next step, which is defining your goal.

2. Define your goal. ?

The best subreddit for a campaign will vary depending on what you’re trying to achieve. 

Let’s go back to the travel niche example. Suppose you own a website selling all sorts of travel gear and all you want to do is grow your email list. In this case, targeting bigger and broader subreddits like r/travel could result in a wider reach and more signups.

But what if you’re running an irresistible sale specifically for tents and other outdoor gear? If that’s the case, then you might want to promote your content with more posts in specific subreddits like r/CampingandHiking.

3. Search for the most relevant subreddits. ?

There is a multitude of tools you can use to look for relevant subreddits.

The most obvious one is Reddit’s in-house subreddit search bar. Make a list of the most popular keywords in your niche, plug them into the search bar, and see where the search results take you.

You should be able to find several potential subreddits using this technique.

There’s also r/FindaReddit which — you guessed it — is a subreddit dedicated to finding other subreddits. (Subreddit-ception, anyone? ?)

But if you want to take your subreddit search to the next level, go ahead and use more specialized tools like SubredditStats or Sayit. We did an entire article about these subreddit finder tools, so feel free to check that out to learn more.

4. Analyze and evaluate your options. ?

At this point, you should already have a pretty healthy list of potential subreddits. All that’s left for you to do is to narrow down your options.

Analyze the subs on your list and evaluate their strengths and weaknesses according to the criteria we’ve discussed previously. Rank your options by considering their:

• Relevance
• Member count
• Activity level
• Subreddit culture
• Popular posts

The factors mentioned above are all important, but you might have to prioritize certain criteria over all the others.

For example, you might find yourself having to choose between a subreddit with a huge member count (but a harsher atmosphere) and another sub with a smaller but more supportive community.

Go back to your target audience and end goal and use these to guide you in whatever decisions you have to make. You’re the one who knows your content best after all. With time and experience, making the right choices should become easier.

And if you’re simply not confident about your decision-making skills, you can always opt to leave it to the experts at Soar. ? 

Additional criterion: Subreddit rules ?

Here’s another factor that you should be looking at when deciding on a subreddit to promote in: subreddit rules.

All subs are managed by moderators and governed by a set of rules.

The mods and rules work hand-in-hand to help safeguard the quality of the content being shared on the subreddit and maintain a certain level of harmony in the community for all who subscribe

Some subreddits have stricter rules than others, especially when it comes to sharing site links and self-promotion. As a result, a piece of content that you can easily share in one community may be impossible to link or promote in another.

5. Get your promo pants on. ?

Now that you’ve narrowed down your list, it’s time to start promoting your content!

Obviously, you have to use tactics and strategies that are appropriate for Reddit marketing. You can’t just take the same marketing materials you use on Instagram or Twitter and expect great results by using a plug-and-play approach.

Marketing on Reddit requires a more sophisticated MO, but that’s an entirely different topic altogether, involving answering questions and other techniques to drive traffic.

Conclusion

And that’s it! You’ve made it to the end of the post. ??

We’ve covered the step-by-step process of finding the best subreddits to promote your content. If you want more Reddit marketing know-how, check out the rest of our blog.

Creating subreddit for your own business is definitely a great decision and the sooner you start the better. Check out our Subreddit Development service that offers setting up your own subreddit and growing your community within.