Facebook is the clear leader, and Instagram is the hot platform of the moment, but don't overlook the growing potential of smaller players, with lower priority as marketing options, when it comes to planning out and diversifying your social media marketing strategy.
Case in point: Reddit.
While Reddit doesn't get the coverage of other social platforms - and it's long been seen as less than advertiser-friendly - the app is slowly going from strength-to-strength, with an increasing number of users turning to the platform to get ahead of the latest trends before they flow through to Instagram, Twitter and other networks.
Indeed, Reddit now serves more than 330 million monthly active users, which is more than Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn and Pinterest. And now Reddit, which long touted itself as 'the front page of the internet', is also looking to provide new opportunities for brands in order to capitalize on that attention, and maximize its potential. And that could mean new considerations for your business.
Along this line, Reddit has this week announced the addition of CPC ads.
As per Reddit:
"With the rollout of CPC, we now offer four different campaign objectives - reach, video view, traffic and conversions - associated with a complete suite of bid types, including CPM, CPV and CPC. With the launch of CPC, advertisers can now more reliably achieve their direct response objectives."
While CPC ads are not new in a general digital marketing sense, they do offer another consideration for Reddit - and they have, according to the platform, performed well in testing:
"For the last several months, we’ve been beta testing CPC bidding with more than 50 advertisers across a number of verticals - including Hired and Kabam to name a few - and most advertisers have seen an improved return on advertising spend of up to 50%."
Of course, they're not exactly going to report them being useless - but still, it expands Reddit's ad offering, and the fact that advertisers will only have to pay when someone clicks on their ad should provide additional assurance, particularly given the aforementioned resistance to marketing from the Reddit community.
In addition to its expanded ad offerings, Reddit has also this week outlined a range of 2018 best of lists from various subreddits, highlighting the engagement and key interests among various groups.
If you're interested in getting a taste of what Reddit's all about, and what the various communities are looking at, these lists could be a good way to start - and the fact that Reddit's communities are moderated by actual humans, as opposed to algorithms (there are now over 20,000 active moderators sitewide) also gives the platform a boost in terms of relevance and quality.
Like all platforms, Reddit won't be for everyone - not every brand will see a fit, an opportunity to connect with an audience on the site. But there is potential there. Effective, narrow targeting is key, as is having some understanding of platform etiquette. But, with so many active, engaged communities, there may well be opportunities waiting.
And with Facebook squeezing reach, the need to diversify your strategy is more relevant than ever.