- Edward Bass
Which brands are the Reddit community most loyal to - and why?
Every once in a while social media platforms offer a vital insight into their audiences, and recently we learned of a popular thread on Reddit where the community discussed the brands they were most loyal to. Using social listening tool Brandwatch I was able to discover which brands saw the most interest on this thread and analyse what drove the conversation from audiences here.
For those not too familiar with Reddit, it is a hugely popular online community and is among the most visited websites in the world. Data from GlobalWebIndex indicates that the demographic makeup of Reddits user base are:
60% Male: 40% Female
Most likely to be 16 - 35 years old
Be in the Mid 50% income group
More likely to live in an Urban Environment
Before diving into data about specific brands I tool a look at the most used keywords in the Reddit thread to understand exactly what was driving their loyalty. As you can see from the resulting word cloud above customer service and quality products seemed to inspire this most.
Since we also have some great data on Redditors from GlobalWebIndex we decided to see how this matched results about the brand expectations the global Reddit audience has.
As shown in the graph above - almost half of the respondents stated that they expected their favoured brands to listen to customer feedback, which reflects the requirement for strong customer service already seen in the social media data.
Of all the categories of the brands discussed, based on Brandwatch conversation data, Consumer Technology saw the largest share. This certainly confirms Reddit as a vital community for tech brands.
Samsung, Nintendo, Apple and Sony Playstation saw the most interest here - and that two of these are leaders in gaming technology is no surprise given the large amount of gamers within the Reddit community.
We also checked these results alongside consumer survey data we have from GlobalWebIndex (bearing in mind our Reddit data comes from natural online conversations) and identified that this loyalty was reflected in how likely Redditors are to advocate these technology brands online and to friends/family.
Japanese car brands Honda, Toyota and Subaru saw the most loyalty from Redditors with conversations suggesting the perception of Japanese cars as being high quality and reliable was shared by many in the community. This was again backed-up by GlobalWebIndex data around brand advocacy.
Another factor we believe may be key is that these Automotive brands have focused increasingly on more eco-friendly vehicles in recent years and given that this was the number one brand expectation for Redditors these moves would have ensured a better perception.
Given the huge popularity of the platform and its active (and often reactive) community I believe it makes sense for brands to seek to understand the Reddit community just as much as they might other social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter - we’ve certainly found it can be a vital source of consumer insight.
If you're keen on learning more about Reddit audiences and how to develop strategies to engage them, then please feel free to get in touch here