Purpose

Reddit is a social media platform that is designed to cultivate discussion within niche communities. These niche communities can be leveraged to generate feedback for OSE and to increase involvement in specific aspects of OSE. A side effect of this is an increase OSE's visibility within groups that have specific interests related to the work of OSE.

This plan is based on the conclusions from an Ask me Anything held by Marcin on April 4, 2014.

How to promote OSE

Reddit allows anyone to create a community for their own specific interest, known as subreddits. These communities allow users to post related links and discuss them with other users. OSE has their own subbreddit that was created by a fan here. Links OSE wants to promote can be posted to the OSE subreddit, and then linked to from other related subreddits. This is known as cross-posting.

General Considerations

Each subreddit has its own rules about what can be posted, these must be adhered to when posting links.

Subreddits that are more active with a large subscriber base are better than subreddits with small numbers of subscribers.

Subreddits that have posts on a regular basis are better than those with sporadic activity.

The number of subscribers, current activity, and subreddit rules are usually located on the right-hand sidebar.

There are three primary ways Reddit can be used to benefit OSE.

Promoting workshops.

The microhouse workshop would appeal to Reddit communities like natural building, simple living, self sufficiency, etc. Links to information about upcoming workshops can be posted to related communities.

Generating feedback on the design process.

OSE can get feedback from specific communities during the design process. People in the engineering, mechanical engineering, and metal working subreddit would likely be interested in the design work of the GVCS. The niche communities of Reddit can be used to find specific skills and direct them towards the ongoing projects of OSE.

Raising Visibility

When OSE achieves major goals, these can be shared on Reddit and be cross-posted to a diverse range of communities. Additionally, Marcin, or other members of OSE can do an Ask me Anything (AmA) following major developments with OSE to leverage times of high visibility to draw in more people. Marcin did and AmA on April 4, 2014, and this offered some good insight into how an AmA would best be accomplished.