For those who are not sure about the power of this community. Just check out these stats (as of July 2014):

Unique Visitors: 114.5 M

Global Expanse: visitors from over 190 countries

Total Pages Viewed: Over 5B

Active communities: 7,800+

Active users: 3M+

Active voting: 22M+

Additional info useful to brands:

Roughly: 60% Male vs. 40% female

Mainly: desktop users

Time spent: 15 min per session time (approx 3 times a day)

So now what? Should your brand be a part of this community? Not necessarily.

The brands who step into Reddit, are daring, confident, and willing to be kicked in their content chops a few times. Reddit users are rabid, they care about their communities like they do their best friends. They don’t want sponsored content spamming their communities every day. However, if that content is worthy, fun, entertaining, and fits the voice and tone of that particular subreddit, the redditors may accept it.

Although there are particular rules for Reddit, here are some additional best practices to consider when your brand decides to break into the Reddit World:

• Restating this from the rules, because it’s necessary: Don’t ask for votes. It’s tacky, seems desperate, and normally works in the opposite way.
• It’s a community. It’s meant for true discussion and sharing.

If your brand wants to run a reddit-specific campaign or contest:

• Partner with Reddit and target users within certain subreddits.
• Use human speak. Don’t use marketing jargon.
• Monitor and respond to questions and comments daily.
• Entice the community to be active and engage with the content through the comments. Get them to be competitive with one another.

And for those still hungry for more info  - here’s a cool Makers Mark Example on Redditand here are some best practices from Redditors.

This post was also written for Socialnomics, and can be found here.