SaaS companies understand the importance of community. An active community is critical to identifying bugs and highly requested features. This is why most SaaS companies have their own official forum where users and employees work together to support and improve the product.
With the emergence of reddit as a popular community platform, we see opportunities for SaaS companies to extend their community development strategy to reddit. Most SaaS companies can find their target audience on reddit and some might learn that their fans have already created a subreddit dedicated to their product.
Why SaaS Companies Should Engage Their Audience on Reddit
People will talk about your product on reddit whether you like it or not (you should like it). These conversations provide valuable insight into the minds of your users. Monitoring your audience on reddit will reveal opportunities to help your users and provide accurate information about your product.
Similar to social media, you have to meet your users where they spend their time. Reddit is a convenient way to become involved in many different communities and by showing up on reddit, you will increase the number of conversations you are having with your users.
Lastly, reddit is a community where you can attract new customers. Prospective buyers may be lurking in your subreddit, or someone from your subreddit might share a discussion in another community. There is a huge pool of potential customers on reddit and your reddit community could be the bridge that takes them from just interested to a paying customer.
3 SaaS Companies That Have Audiences on Reddit
We have profiled three companies that could benefit by engaging their audience on reddit.
Salesforce
SalesForce is a leader in the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software industry. The official Salesforce community has over 1.6M members, so community is obviously important to SalesForce and its customers. See the related subreddits below and mentions of Salesforce on reddit.
- SalesForce Dedicated Subreddit: /r/SalesForce (1,400 subscribers)
- Related Subreddits: /r/Sales (6,000 subscribers), /r/CRM (1000 subscribers)
- View mentions of SalesForce on reddit
Evernote
Evernote is a popular workspace organizing software. They have free and premium versions of their application. The official Evernote community has over 130,000 members. The general tech-savvy reddit user base includes many Evernote users as evidenced by the growing dedicated subreddit and countless mentions of Evernote throughout reddit.
- Evernote Specific Subreddit: /r/Evernote (2,800 subscribers)
- Related Subreddits: /r/Productivity (78,000 subscribers), /r/Workflow (2,500 subscribers), /r/Android (530,000 subscribers), /r/Apple (254,000 subscribers)
- View mentions of Evernote on reddit
GitHub
GitHub is a powerful collaboration and code management software service for developers. There is no official forum for GitHub users, but the company provides an extensive training program and support team. Users of GitHub also utilize popular Q&A platform Stack Overflow. We see a high number of mentions of GitHub on reddit and the GitHub subreddit has enough subscribers to warrant engagement from a GitHub representative.
- Github Specific Subreddit: /r/GitHub (2,200 subscribers)
- Related Subreddits: /r/git (8,600 subscribers), /r/LearnProgramming (186,000 subscribers), /r/WebDev (83,000 subscribers), /r/LearnPython (34,000 subscribers), /r/Programming (600,000 subscribers), /r/GameDev (125,000 subscribers), and many more
- View mentions of GitHub on reddit
How SaaS Companies Can Grow Their Presence on Reddit
Every SaaS company can grow their presence on reddit by contributing their expertise and knowledge to the subreddits related to their product. The same community management principles that apply to their own discussion communities can also be applied to reddit.
Here are six recommendations for SaaS companies to help grow their presence on reddit:
1. Monitor reddit for keywords related to your brand.
Every company should know what people are saying about them on every relevant platform. A simple keyword search performed daily or weekly will keep you in the loop or you can use a tool like Karmalytics to receive daily email updates of keyword mentions.
2. Find out if there is a subreddit dedicated to your product(s).
If so, contact the moderators and ask how you can contribute. If the subreddit does not have a branded design, you should offer to provide design assets to improve the subreddit.
3. Provide official company answers/responses to redditors.
By tracking keywords and subreddits, a company can jump into a conversation to provide an official answer. Redditors will really appreciate getting a response from an official source. Note: Always provide the full answer on reddit and then add a reference link to an official document or article if necessary (i.e. don’t just comment with a link).
4. Ask subreddits for feedback on your product(s).
Use reddit to poll and gather feedback from your audience. Redditors have lots of ideas and appreciate being involved in your decision making process.
5. Contribute to dedicated subreddits by holding AMAs.
An AMA (Ask Me Anything) contributes value to the reddit community by making a company leader accessible. AMAs will create meaningful interactions with your users and are likely to be blogged about and shared on social media.
6. Share important announcements with relevant subreddits.
Redditors love to be the first to hear an important announcement or press release. Any time a new product or update to an existing product is released, you should be sharing this with the reddit community. Again, lots of media and bloggers use reddit and they are likely to share your story on their channels. These posts will also generate feedback from your users which will help you prepare for feedback from mainstream audiences.
TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read)
There is a huge opportunity for SaaS companies to embrace reddit as a marketing platform. Search reddit today and find out if you are missing out on opportunities to engage redditors. Even though most SaaS companies have their own communities, reddit is another way to expand your community strategy, generate brand awareness and reach more users.
