#SXSWi 2014 Recap: Reddit: You’re Doing it Wrong

Reddit is an online community that is completely user-driven. Posts and images are separated into subreddits based on various topics. Rohit Thawani, the Director of Digital Strategy at TBWA\Chiat\Day and Garrett Tillman, the Senior Social Media Manager at Trulia, kicked off the fourth day of South by Southwest Interactive 2014 by talking about all the ways that brands mess up (and kick ass!) on Reddit, which gets millions of visitors per day.

Thawani and Tillman gave several tidbits of information that could help in industry or vertical, which mostly included things that brands shouldn’t do. The overarching theme to their advice was for brands to be genuine and not try to hard. Regular redditors (Reddit users) will be able to tell when an account is fake or representing a company. Easy giveaways included posting memes with their own products featured or trying to post content with accounts that are only one day old.

Reposts of the same content, using hashtags (which aren’t clickable or used on the site), trying to use hip lingo that isn’t in Redditor vernacular in several different sub-reddits was also a dead giveaway that it was a brand or company account trying to be something they aren’t.

The Reddit Community

Knowing the community is one of the main things to having a successful Reddit presence as a brand or company. The common Reddit age range is 18 to 40, with the majority being male, according to Thawani and Tillman. Besides not using awkward language as mentioned above, brands trying to hard shows that:

¨You don’t know your community. This has no bearing, no meaning to the users of Reddit.¨

Again, knowing what interests the Reddit community is crucial, as is being open and honest. Sponsoring a post on Reddit is recommended for brands because it shows transparency that this is a post by a brand and they aren’t trying to hide anything.

One such example was Nissan, who created a post stating that they were from the Nissan marketing team and were new to Reddit. They told the community about their plans for selling a Nissan Versa on Amazon and what they thought. This lead to a discussion about the craziest things that redditors have seen on Amazon that they want, like horse masks or celebrity pillowcases. To further engage with the community, the Nissan team started buying the things users mentioned and shipping it to the people who wanted it. This generated great engagement and a positive experience for Reddit users, especially since Nissan wasn’t necessarily asking for anything in return.

Be Playful

Thawani and Tillman also recommended being playful and quirky on Reddit as a brand. For example, a redditor posted an angry image and message of his Fathead order, which was supposed to be a Tom Brady wall decal. Instead, he got Tim Tebow. Fathead saw the post and immediately overnighted the original customer every single Fathead of Tom Brady, which he then posted about it (unprovoked by Fathead).

Tillman stated that content like this shows that a company has done it right:

¨You know you’ve done it right when people from the community are organically posting or posting in other places your company hasn’t.¨

Other Reddit Marketing Tips

Here are some other tips that the panel gave us, in bullet form:

• Follow these subreddits: Heil Corporate, Shut up and take my money, Circle Jerk (NSFW, what the community is sick of talking about), Expectations Versus Reality (advertising versus actual products)
• Recommended tools, plugins: Reddit Enhancement, Metareddit, Reddit Visualizer, Reddit Investigator (look up information on Reddit users, use with discretion)
• Look at trending topics and what people are talking about and jump in to make it awesome (Wordbank is a good example where a zoo could have jumped in, or an animal artist)
• Lurk, then engage (take baby steps), and if you fail, redeem yourself

Main Takeaway

¨This is a community of specialists. People have obsessive interests…Redditors view Reddit as a safe place where they can go and be themselves. When brands try to intrude, they take it personally.¨

URL Shortening Giant Bitly Will Provide Click Data to Moz

Bitly, the Internet’s URL shortening leader, announced today that it will provide data and click-tracking technology to Moz.

Moz’s optimization software previously used link data from Twitter to rank web pages’ social media relevance but it is turning to Bitly to get a more complete picture of user behavior.

“The Bitly click dataset is hands down the broadest and most authoritative available to anyone looking for information on how their content and brand is performing across the web,” Moz co-founder Rand Fishkin said in a news release.

Bitly, which made the announcement from the South By Southwest Interactive festival in Austin, Texas, also announced two additions to its executive team. Rob Platzer, formerly of AOL’s Patch and Outside.In, is the chief technical officer and Melissa Wallace, formerly of Buddy Media, is vice president of marketing.

CEO Mark Josephson, who joined the company last summer, said the partnership with Moz is part of Bitly’s effort to unlock more value from data supplied by the 600 million active Bitly profiles.

“I think people sometimes take Bitly for granted as the shortener for the web,” Josephson said. He said Bitly is working to change that perception by reminding marketers to about how useful the data can be for understanding customer preferences. Among the changes on the way is a resigned dashboard that will more clearly display the comparison between a brand’s social efforts and organic sharing.

Google Sees Deeper App Content As Key To Mobile Usage

Google is the dominant mobile search engine with nearly 90 percent of the market in the US and an even greater share internationally. The problem is that search engines aren’t used as often in mobile. Large volumes of content are consumed in apps.

Google is trying to address that challenge by indexing more app-based content, including deep links according to an article appearing in the Wall Street Journal. Since last October Google has been indexing deep links for Android apps, though not iOS.

Mobile search and app discovery platform Quixey announced a deep linking initiative last month. 

Google has produced considerable research over the past few years showing that the overwhelming majority of mobile users do search on their smartphones. However there’s also evidence that they don’t search as often as on the PC or think of search as the “front door” to the mobile internet.

One such piece of evidence comes in the form of recent survey data (n=500 US adult mobile users) from financial industry research firm Consumer Intelligence Research Partners. The chart above shows the most frequently used mobile apps. While Gmail is in the top 5 Google’s search app is not.

Facebook dominates in terms of usage frequency and time spent.

However, according to comScore, the Google Search app is number four on the firm’s most recent top-apps list. Those data show reach rather than usage frequency: number of users that have the app on their devices vs. how often they’re used.

At a conference earlier this year a Google speaker made a statement suggesting that mobile search query volume would exceed PC search volume by the end of the year. I wasn’t there to hear it directly. The remark likely referred to global query volume.

I was a little surprised by the comment, given empirical and anecdotal evidence that “search” is less intensively used in mobile. Yet in many developing countries mobile devices are used instead of or a lot more often than PCs. So it’s certainly possible.

We followed up with Google and the company did not embrace or affirm the statement (nor was it disavowed). We don’t know much more than what was tweeted.

While it’s not implausible on a global basis, it’s unlikely that “mobile search” in a North American or EU context is about to exceed PC query volume. Yet it we consider the directional lookups and similar activity happening within apps to be part of “search” then it’s entirely plausible.

Whether or not mobile search at Google is actually on course to exceed PC search query volume this year, it’s clear that if the company can become a more viable tool for mobile content discovery (within apps) consumers will use it more often.

SMX West Speaker Interview Series: Greg Sterling Discusses Mobile SEO

As part of SEJ’s partnership with Third Door Media, I was given the opportunity to interview five marketing experts who will be speaking at SMX West. This was a really awesome opportunity to pick the minds of some of the best in the industry! Be sure to visit SEJ’s booth in the exhibit hall!

Bio: Greg Sterling is the founding principal of Sterling Market Intelligence, a consulting and research firm focused on online consumer and advertiser behavior and the relationship between the Internet and traditional media, with an emphasis on the local search marketplace. He’s also a contributing editor at Search Engine Land.

What are 3 key points or takeaways your SMX West session will focusinon?

I have two sessions that I’m moderating: “Best Practices For Mobile SEO” and “Capturing The Mobile Paid Lead”. The Mobile Paid Lead session is broader and will discuss a range of issues including driving calls and measuring campaigns through call tracking, mobile commerce and mobile retargeting for in-app advertising, and mobile search/PPC campaigns. Mobile SEO will be relatively advanced and focus on ranking and optimization. In that session will be limited discussion of responsive design vs. other approaches.

You mentioned wireless sensors in your session summary, do you think the growing activity tracker/wearable technology will eventually cross paths with mobile marketing efforts and big data? Furthermore, how do you see wearable tech influencing the way we interact with our smartphones?

Wearable tech is in its infancy. Health monitoring and related functions have the most interest and adoption right now. Google Glass is not a mainstream consumer product but smartwatches and heath monitors are or will be in the near term. I could see people’s real-world movements and activities being tracked, captured, and factored back into personalization (across devices/platforms). There’s also an attribution aspect too — did person X go into the store after exposure to the campaign?

In terms of marketing or advertising this whole area is going to be pretty sensitive. It will all have to be very transparent to the end-user and permission based — totally opt-in.

How do you think advertising has been influenced by online media platforms (video, social, mobile)?

Broadly speaking: segmentation, data, and targeting. In terms of mobile’s specific influence: you can now follow people as they move through the “real world.” That is, or soon will be, a revelation. You can now fairly reliably track the impact of digital impressions on offline or in-store sales. That capability is going to have a radical impact on attribution and media buying and planning. Also, the data being thrown off by people’s movements and behaviors in the offline world will make online and email marketing much more sophisticated, personalized, and richer. By the same token, the multi-screen complexity of consumer behavior today has challenged marketers like never before.

How has local SEO been impacted by mobile?

A heavy part of the consumer mobile experience is retrieving and acting on information about the physical world. In terms of mobile, SEO location is a significant ranking factor for sure. I’m not an SEO practitioner; so the degree to which mobile devices have impacted PC-internet based SEO is more opaque to me. However, there’s not as much mobile impact on local SEO as there is local impact on mobile SEO.

What do you like most about being in our industry compared to your “past life” as an attorney?

It’s hard to summarize it all. The dynamic nature of the industry. The technology itself and the fact that we can see society and culture changing around us nearly in real-time. Some of those changes are very positive, some much less so. The immediate access to information and global communication tools are amazing.

Bonus question: What was the last great book you read?

You make the question hard by including the modifier “great.” However . . . I recently read “I Am Malala” about the celebrated Pakistani girl who almost gave her life advocating for girl’s education. I’m also finishing “A Guide to the Zohar,” about that great work of Medieval Jewish mysticism. Next up after that is Hemingway’s “A Moveable Feast”.

Register for SMX West here and see Greg in his sessions below:

The Coming Paradigm Shift In Mobile Marketing (#smx #1AMobile)
Thanks to the proliferation of mobile devices, the necessary ingredients for a complete paradigm shift are in place: decreasing cost of wireless communication and wireless sensors, combined with the increased ease of access to cheap data storage and data processing means major changes in both online and offline marketing. Smart companies are planning for the future by thinking about cross-device compatibility, but also thinking about big data, and how it will change the way we think about marketing. Attend this session and join their ranks!

Best Practices For Mobile SEO (#smx #21C)
On the small screen, ranking high is critical. But do conventional desktop SEO techniques cut it? Some advocate distinct mobile SEO tactics, while others question the very notion of “mobile SEO.” Google is explicit in its advice: be sure to correctly map and optimize your site for mobile users and their intent rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach – or else! In this session, you’ll get the fresh tactics you need to maximize the enormous mobile search opportunity.

Report: Only 6% Of Buyers Claim Social Media Impacts B2B Buying Process

According to a recently published B2B Website Usability Report surveying buyers, social media and blogging have little influence on the B2B buying process.

Only six percent of the respondents claimed social media impacted their B2B purchases “a lot” and a meager 22 percent said they were interested in vendor blog content.

Conducted by Dianna Huff of DH Communications and KoMarketing Associates, the survey focused on what B2B buyers expect from a vendor website. With a very small pool of respondents – only 175 surveys were completed – participants included C-level executives, managers and directors, along with other professional types.

The study found that a lack of social media presence rarely impacted the B2B buying process, with 30 percent of respondents claiming it was important, but not a deal-breaker, and 37 percent saying social media wasn’t a factor.

Of the 175 survey respondents, only 24 percent said they look for social media icons on a vendor website. Even less – 22% of the respondents – look for a blog on a vendor’s website, even though 85 percent of the buyers polled said a blog does help establish a vendor’s credibility.

At 90 percent, an overwhelming majority of respondents said they expected to see product and services content on a  vendor’s homepage.

Again, it’s worth noting the survey only included 175 responses, with 49 percent of the respondents claiming they did not use a smartphone to look for B2B products or services. When asked about responsive websites, 18 percent of the respondents said they didn’t know what “responsive” meant.