Reddit and What I Found There.

The Dark Trenches of Reddit

For this blog, we are going to adventure through the unlimited amounts of Reddit posts with an emphasis on Marketing. I have to be careful, as I know my roommate can spend hours surfing Reddit. Wish me luck!

Phillips, Kevin. "Reddit Com Vote Comment Submit News Blogs Info" 10/31/15 via pixabay. Creative Commons 0 Public Domain License

Should I Even Be in Marketing?

The first post I came across had a plethora of information and mixed reviews about majoring in Marketing. There are two kinds of people: the haters and the go-getters. Half of the people that respond seem to do nothing but ridicule the idea of getting a degree in Marketing. The main claims are that you won't make anything out of it and that it is a worthless degree. The first thing that pops into mind is, who is this guy? It may be true of what they are saying, but then you have the go-getters.

The go-getters talk about how that if you put in the work, Marketing can be a great major with tons of opportunities. Nobody says it will be easy, but that it definitely can be done. The top comment describes it as a jack of all trades kind of degree. You learn a little bit of everything, and can become versatile once in the field. Either way, this thread provided some really good insight on the pros and cons of Marketing after college.

Link to thread here

Marketing Tips and Recommendations

Next, I explored the help forums for Marketing. One thread I found actually had multiple comments that suggest how to retain website traffic rather than losing all new viewers of the site. Throughout the post there are many ideas like this that give recommendations on how to make their site successful, even after all the advertisement is done. This thread has multiple viewpoints that give diverse answers rather than the occasional trolling done in less professional side of Reddit. Overall, Reddit gives real responses from real people, although their credibility remains uncertain.

Read the thread here

Let's Answer Some Questions

1. After researching and reading both articles, there seems to be two sides of Reddit. There is the informative and tutorial driven side such as my second article, and there is the argumentative "I'm right, you're wrong" side that exists within my first article. In my first article, people seem to be debating how well a degree in Marketing is. You're always going to have extremely negative and positive people in these types of posts, but you must find the genuine answers that aren't from the hot-headed users. The other article gave me a kind of Q & A vibe that seemed helpful for people struggling with promoting their business. I also noticed from this article and the others related to it, that a majority of marketing is done online now rather than in person. Website Marketing seems to be huge now.

2. The two debates that I found are listed above in the intro to the blog. To re-iterate why I found them interesting is because they posed two completely different sides of a website. The first article offered criticism towards a Marketing degree, the pros and cons of obtaining that degree. It was interesting because you got to read about the experience of others and you can base your own ideas off of what you read in the article. It's kind of there just to make sure you know what you're getting yourself into. 

The second article was like the suggestions part of Reddit where users can provide input on how to better another's business. There seems to be no right or wrong answers in this thread, but some ideas are well liked more than others. The debate in this thread seemed to be who has the best answer to the thread's question. By using up-votes the best answer gets picked and then the resolution is solved.

3. My impression of my discipline was that it seems very conflicting. Many seem to believe that it is a great field to go into, while others have a burning hatred of it. I think because of the limitless possibilities Marketing sounds like an amazing major to me.

I was very surprised by how much this form of business takes place online. It seems as if the conventional ways of marketing are ceasing to exist. Most posts dealt with marketing tips for websites rather than other forms, which caught me a little off guard. However, this excites me because that means that a whole new world of marketing is rising, and I'll be on the edge of a new way of doing business!

Overall, it wasn't what I expected coming from Reddit. I thought it'd be less serious, but I was mistaken. Reddit appeared to have decent take on Marketing as a major and in the world.