Hundreds of people hold reddit AMAs every day in an attempt to engage new audiences and potential customers, but what is the ROI (return on investment) of a reddit AMA? How much does a reddit AMA cost and what can you expect in return?
The Cost of a reddit AMA
There are no direct costs to submit a reddit AMA, but it will require time and resources. The average reddit AMA takes a minimum 1-2 hours of planning, 2-3 hours to execute, and at least 1 hour of post-AMA work. This is a total of 4 hours or more of your time. To get the most out of your AMA, you could spend 10 hours or more to plan, execute, and market the event. So the cost of your AMA will depend on the value of your time and resources.
How to determine the cost of your AMA: Add up the hours spent planning and executing your AMA and place a dollar value on each contributors time.
What results can you expect from a reddit AMA?
The top AMAs submitted to reddit.com/r/IAmA receive at least 200 comments and are viewed by thousands of redditors. The best AMAs can receive 5000 comments or more. This type of traffic and engagement can lead to direct sales, content views, increase in brand awareness, and other actions from your AMA audience.
The results of your AMA will be largely dependent on the following 5 factors:
1. Where you hold the AMA. Some subreddits have less than 5,000 subscribers while others have millions. This does not mean bigger is better as a more targeted, smaller subreddit could result in more valuable engagements.
2. The demand of your AMA. How many fans do you have on reddit? Or how intriguing is the story you are sharing? More demand equals more upvotes, questions, and ultimately ROI.
3. The title of your AMA. The title is what every redditor sees when they are scanning a subreddit and deciding what to upvote and downvote. The right title can make the difference between 100 upvotes and 1,000 upvotes. Read our post about writing great titles.
4. How much you put into your answers. Artist David Choe famously answered reddit AMA questions with video responses for 24 hours. Most will only answer questions for 1-2 hours. The difference in your commitment the AMA and the quality of your answers will directly effect the results.
5. How well is the AMA planned and executed. Taking care of details and executing the AMA without any major issues will make a big difference in the results of your AMA. If you are not sure what goes into planning and executing an AMA, be sure to get a free copy of “The Marketer’s Guide to reddit AMAs” (see the big box below this post).
How to determine the results of your AMA: This can be a little more difficult than determining cost. If you have a way to track conversions and you know the value of each conversion, you can determine an actual ROI. When possible, use tracking links in your AMA and event tracking on your website so you have hard metrics on the results of your AMA.
So, what is the ROI of a reddit AMA?
Like anything, the ROI of a reddit AMA is dependent on many factors. An AMA can generate website traffic, sales, new customers, and ad revenue, but it can also lead to things that you were not expecting. Maybe you connect with a new community online and they become an important part of your business. Or maybe an influential leader in your industry learns about you through your AMA and decides to reach out. Determining the ROI of your AMA is a good exercise, but remember that the value of an intimate conversation with your target market is hard to calculate.
