The Essential Guide to Content Curation

In this guide, we’ve collected some ways to get started with content curation and to do so as efficiently and expertly as possible.

Like many small businesses, I had essentially zero marketing budget when I started my PPC (pay per click) agency Getuplead.

Even though my colleagues and I are experts in handling paid marketing for other brands, it wasn’t something we could initially afford to do ourselves.

But with so many competitor agencies out there, it was hard to stand out without getting our brand in front of customers via ads or by ranking at the top of search results. Instead of hustling to try and compete on the channels everyone else was using, I decided to turn to an underutilized social network for marketing: Reddit.

I spent a lot of time on Reddit myself, and I noticed that business owners would frequently ask questions about pay-per-click and social ads and only get answers from random people, not experts. 

And, while my competitors were busy posting on other social media platforms like LinkedIn, writing articles for SEO and content marketing, and doing webinars, none of them were showing off their expertise on Reddit as a marketing strategy.

So, I jumped in and started participating in as many open threads as I could that related to the services my company offered. I didn’t initially see any traction but after a few months, my work building thought leadership and brand equity on the platform started to pay off. 

Potential clients suddenly reached out, saying they saw my response on Reddit and were looking for exactly my expertise. We closed two clients from Reddit in six months, which is an incredible ROI (return on investment) given we only aim to have about a dozen clients at any given time and they generally commit to a long-term relationship.

I had another marketing agency owner who doesn’t have PPC experience reach out about collaborating to give clients broader support, and was even invited to speak at a major industry event because of my thought leadership on Reddit.

I also started to notice my responses gaining traction on search result pages (thanks to a 2024 update from Google that saw forums appearing in the search results), elevating our SEO in a surprising way.

While this strategy is fairly manual and certainly won’t have the reach of ads or larger social channels, it can be an impactful way for small business owners to get in front of folks seeking their exact expertise or offering — without breaking the bank. 

If you want to try it for yourself, here’s what you need to know about Reddit, plus the process I’ve used to maximize Reddit marketing.

How Reddit works

For those who don’t already use the platform, Reddit is a social media platform that is essentially a large-scale message board. Reddit is organized into hundreds of thousands of subreddits, which are communities based around a specific topic.

Subreddits can range from incredibly broad (like r/marketing) to extremely niche (like r/LinkedInAds). Within those subreddits, “Redditors” (as Reddit users are called) can start threads for the rest of the Reddit community to respond to, sometimes sparking conversations that span hundreds of messages. 

These threads could be absolutely anything relate to the subreddit topic — think a question, a problem they need help solving, or even an “AMA” (or ask me anything), where they offer to respond to any based around their area of expertise. (And, yes, there are also lots of memes and GIFs on Reddit.)

Within each subreddit, community members can upvote or downvote specific threads based on what they find more or less interesting or relevant. Within each Reddit post, Redditors can also upvote and downvote specific responses. 

Posts with a higher ratio of upvotes to downvotes get put at the top of landing pages and conversation threads so, when you’re posting in Reddit as a social media marketing strategy, you want to aim to be relevant and helpful to get plenty of upvotes.

Each subreddit has its own community guidelines and moderators, so you’ll want to check out the rules of engagement before you start trying out any Reddit marketing strategies.

Reddit also has the option to run Reddit ads. I have not needed to use Reddit advertising to achieve my marketing goals yet, but it’s on my to-do list to experiment with.

How to use Reddit for marketing

Don’t be anonymous

The first step in using Reddit for self-promotion is crafting a profile that tells people who you are and what you have to offer. I created a simple Reddit profile with my real name, my headshot, a short description of what our company offers, and links to my website and LinkedIn.

This is perhaps obvious, but so many people on Reddit are anonymous, and showing my face has helped me build brand awareness and drive new customer outreach. After all, people want to work with a human, not a Reddit avatar. 

Strategically choose subreddits to participate in

Next, you’ll want to identify relevant subreddits for your business. 

Generally, I’ve found more success participating in niche communities. Yes, the broad subreddits generally have a bigger user base, but there are so many comments on each thread that it’s hard to stand out. Meanwhile, in smaller, niche groups, I would notice questions related to my expertise might go days without a single response, which gives me more visibility when I chime in and has allowed me to become the go-to expert in some subreddits.

The sweet spot is finding subreddits where people are engaged enough that you’ll have an opportunity for conversation but not