Red­dit, the so-called “front page of the Inter­net,” is far more fer­tile ground for mar­keters than sim­ply AMAs. Brent Csu­toras, CEO of web design firm Pix­el Road Designs, goes so far as call­ing Red­dit “mis­un­der­stood.” But by learn­ing a lit­tle more about the plat­form itself, as well as its users, mar­keters can har­ness Red­dit to ben­e­fit both their brands, as well as Red­di­tors them­selves.

Here’s what mar­keters need to know to get the most out of Red­dit:

1. Reddit Is Bursting At The Seams With Viral Content

“Red­dit is prob­a­bly the sin­gle source on the Web for things that go viral,” Csu­toras said. Look no fur­ther than memes like soror­i­ty girl self­ies, Over­ly Attached Girl­friend, or the unfor­tu­nate Beni­hana-esque engage­ment pho­to, to name a few. This means con­tent has poten­tial for huge vis­i­bil­i­ty if a brand can find suc­cess on Red­dit, Csu­toras said. “It’s where peo­ple are find­ing the sto­ries,” he said. “Jour­nal­ists have been using it to break news for years. I get almost every­thing from Red­dit.”

2. Reddit Is Growing

Fur­ther, Red­dit has had sig­nif­i­cant and con­sis­tent growth, more so than any oth­er social site. In fact, in March 2015, Red­dit had 150 mil­lion unique vis­i­tors, which had grown to 203 mil­lion by Octo­ber. “It’s an impres­sive audi­ence, but it might not mean as much when you look at oth­er chan­nels with bil­lions of users,” Csu­toras added. Check out this graph­ic, designed by Pix­el Road Designs, which pro­vides some use­ful data on Red­dit users:

3. Reddit Has A Desirable Audience Of Knowledge-Hungry Users

In addi­tion to size, the Red­dit audi­ence has oth­er desir­able char­ac­ter­is­tics for mar­keters. Per Csu­toras, that includes a medi­an age of 35 and income of about $68,000. Fur­ther, 81 per­cent of Red­di­tors are return­ing users who spend an aver­age of 12 min­utes on the site, 80 per­cent are Eng­lish-speak­ing and 62 per­cent come to the site look­ing for news. While con­sumers use plat­forms like Face­book to con­nect with friends and fam­i­ly, they come to Red­dit for anoth­er spe­cif­ic pur­pose. “Red­dit has cap­ti­vat­ed that research-dri­ven, edu­cat­ed audi­ence that wants to dis­cuss issues on a deep lev­el,” Csu­toras said. “The [Red­dit] audi­ence is large, it’s a great demo­graph­ic and it’s the audi­ence that makes every­thing go viral online.”

4. Reddit Is About Users, Not Profit

“Red­dit has nev­er been about prof­it,” he said. “It doesn’t have the same require­ments as oth­er sites.” Cus­toras doesn’t see this chang­ing any time soon. In fact, he said the site has not been redesigned in six years, so its cen­tral pur­pose has not dras­ti­cal­ly changed. “I don’t see them going pub­lic and putting restraints on them­selves,” he added.

5. Reddit Is Becoming More Welcoming To Outsiders

While Red­dit users may have a rep­u­ta­tion for being a bit of stand­off­ish, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it comes to out­siders, like, say, mar­keters, Csu­toras said Red­dit is chang­ing its rules to be more accept­ing – such as replac­ing shad­ow bans, in which con­tent is blocked from poten­tial spam­mers or trolls, with account sus­pen­sions. How­ev­er, Csu­toras not­ed addi­tion­al changes, such as the poten­tial removal of a rule about self-pro­mo­tion, as well as a new auc­tion-style ad sys­tem, also indi­cate Reddit’s view on mar­keters is shift­ing. “From my many years on Red­dit, there has been a clear shift in the way peo­ple views ads from being the worst thing ever to being quite accept­ed,” Csu­toras said. “Com­pa­nies are gen­er­al­ly being bet­ter accept­ed and users are more inter­est­ed in the abil­i­ty to pro­mote their con­tent and grow their com­mu­ni­ties. So in gen­er­al, we are just see­ing more oppor­tu­ni­ty every day for brands and com­pa­nies to have suc­cess on Red­dit.” At the same time, Csu­toras not­ed Red­dit is nev­er going to be a place brands can sim­ply adver­tise they way they can in oth­er com­mu­ni­ties, so mar­keters real­ly have to know what they are doing and have a plan in place before tack­ling Red­dit. So what exact­ly do mar­keters need to know to be suc­cess­ful on Red­dit?

6. Marketers Must Find The Right Subreddit

In order to get the most out of Red­dit, Csu­toras said brands must con­nect with the right audi­ence. “Red­dit is soft­ware and sub­red­dits are pri­vate groups based on Red­dit soft­ware,” Csu­toras said. “In a sub­red­dit, the mod­er­a­tors aren’t work­ing for Red­dit. They work on their own rules and struc­tures.” He used the exam­ple of the Toron­to Wing Fes­ti­val, which used the Toron­to sub­red­dit to pro­mote the event. In an easy-to-digest tile, the fes­ti­val men­tioned the date and price, as well as that the event was all you can eat. As a result, 53 per­cent of con­sumers con­vert­ed, the brand saw an 8,800 per­cent ROI and it drove five times the traf­fic, Csu­toras said. “They just found the right sub­red­dit and used a sim­ple-to-read title,” Csu­toras said. “It’s about get­ting a rap­port and look­ing for the right oppor­tu­ni­ty.”

7. Marketers Must ‘Redditize’ Their Ads

When cre­at­ing ads for Red­dit, mar­keters need to cre­ate con­tent specif­i­cal­ly for Red­dit and per­son­al­ize it, Csu­toras said. In oth­er words, brands should talk direct­ly to Red­di­tors – such as say­ing, “Hey, Red­dit,” or the like – or risk get­ting glossed over, he added. Csu­toras also said Red­dit-only con­tests specif­i­cal­ly for the Red­dit com­mu­ni­ty are also a good way to encour­age par­tic­i­pa­tion as Red­di­tors know these con­tests are exclu­sive­ly for them. That’s what Mar­riott did when post­ing about its #Get­Tele­port­ed effort on Red­dit. It also designed a Red­dit-spe­cif­ic con­test in which it asked users to tell the brand why their city was awe­some for a chance to receive Marriott’s first tele­porter. “They were speak­ing to the audi­ence – ‘We have this cool prod­uct, maybe we’re a bit biased’ – so they made it jok­ing­ly,” Csu­toras said. “[But they said,] ‘We think this is cool and want your opin­ion and want to run a con­test just for Red­di­tors.’” In addi­tion, Csu­toras said one of the keys was ask­ing a ques­tion in the title, which drove a 60 per­cent high­er CTR. Over­all, the effort yield­ed 317 com­ments from Red­di­tors who stayed ful­ly engaged through­out, which, in turn, increased brand aware­ness.

8. Marketers Must Be Helpful On Reddit

But it’s not just ask­ing ques­tions. Brands can also engage Red­di­tors by iden­ti­fy­ing pain points and then try­ing to solve those prob­lems by invit­ing inter­ac­tion and/or offer­ing deals or coupons, Csu­toras said. That’s what TransAmer­i­ca did with a Red­dit-spe­cif­ic cam­paign that asked Red­di­tors for sug­ges­tions on finan­cial top­ics they’d like to know more about. “They said, ‘We under­stand there are dis­cus­sions on Red­dit,’ and con­nect­ed the brand to Red­di­tors – ‘We want to help you, so we are ask­ing peo­ple to give sug­ges­tions on what they would like to know more about,’” Csu­toras said. Fur­ther, TransAmer­i­ca used Red­dit fonts and col­ors to empha­size the con­tent was Red­dit-spe­cif­ic and even includ­ed the Red­dit alien in some posts. What’s more, TransAmer­i­ca reached out to each com­menter to share the con­tent that was cre­at­ed for them as a result of their posts. Csu­toras said the brand walked away with increased brand aware­ness, con­tent ideas, direct cus­tomer engage­ment, focus group feed­back and tons of arti­cles and links.

9. Marketers Must Constantly Monitor & Engage On Reddit

In addi­tion, brands must not only par­tic­i­pate in com­ments, they must mon­i­tor the chan­nel con­stant­ly. “Keep the com­ments on – that’s part of the expe­ri­ence,” Csu­toras said. “And you need to answer the com­ments. You need to check all the time and get into it. You need to par­tic­i­pate. It’s not some­thing you can post and then come back to lat­er.” That, Csu­toras said, was part of the prob­lem with the REI AMA that recent­ly went awry. “There’s noth­ing about any­thing in social media that should be easy, like ‘set and for­get,’” he added. Fur­ther, brands on Red­dit must embrace tough ques­tions from Red­di­tors. “They wait for you to ignore tough ques­tions on Red­dit so they can rip into you hard­er,” Csu­toras said. “The quick­er you answer, the less they have of an oppor­tu­ni­ty to strength­en their over­all resolve.”

10. Marketers Must Use A Reddit-Appropriate Tone

It’s incred­i­bly impor­tant brands choose the right per­son to inter­act with Red­di­tors on their behalf. That per­son must not only be knowl­edge­able enough to answer ques­tions, but also not rigid and bor­ing, Csu­toras said. Fur­ther, he or she must always main­tain a light­heart­ed, good-natured tone and nev­er get defen­sive. “Red­dit doesn’t let you get away with being infe­ri­or or slop­py. On Red­dit, they will tell you you’re doing a bad job,” Csu­toras said. “But don’t get too defen­sive or emo­tion­al. That nev­er works out. It’s best to be light­heart­ed. A lot of times, you have to appre­ci­ate the snark­i­ness and the ban­ter and if you get defen­sive, they will drag you through the mud.”

11. Marketers Can Incentivize Redditors

In order to encour­age par­tic­i­pa­tion, brands can offer to give par­tic­i­pants incen­tives like Red­dit Gold, which is Reddit’s pre­mi­um mem­ber­ship ser­vice and gives users access to addi­tion­al fea­tures. How­ev­er, Csu­toras cau­tions brands may want to lim­it the offer to a cer­tain num­ber of par­tic­i­pants to avoid hav­ing to buy Red­dit Gold for a huge num­ber of com­menters should a large num­ber of respons­es come in. That is how whiskey brand Dewar’s solicit­ed feed­back for a video with a vir­tu­al walk-through of its dis­tillery and end­ed up with 428 com­ments from engaged users who pro­vid­ed opin­ions, Csu­toras said.