You may have heard of Reddit—President Obama was hanging out on the website last week. But even some of the greatest social media managers are intimidated or unfamiliar with it.

Fear not!

This is the first of three stories on Reddit; they are designed to help make the site a little less intimidating and put you a step ahead of your competition.

What is Reddit?

Reddit is a place to share interesting things from all over the Internet. Other users can vote to promote or comment on content that is interesting to them. Content with the most “up votes,” as they’re called, will eventually find its way to the front page for all to see.

What does Reddit mean?

The word “Reddit” is a play on words. “I read it on Reddit.” Simple and clever. It is also the Latin word for render, which can mean “to submit for consideration or approval.”

What is a Subreddit?

A Subreddit is a topic within Reddit. Think of it as a hashtag or a sub conversation that can be filtered depending on your preferences (called subscriptions on Reddit). It is designated like this: “/r/[name of page],” such as http://www.reddit.com/r/politics or http://www.reddit.com/r/funny. My first piece of advice would be to unsubscribe from “/r/wtf”—don’t ask, just do. Updating your subscriptions will affect what appears on your front page. To manage your subscriptions, hit the “edit” button in the far right corner of the page.

What is Karma—in the Reddit sense of the word?

Karma is similar to a “like” on Facebook, except they accumulate based on your activity on Reddit. There are two types of Karma: Link Karma and Comment Karma. A Reddit user gains one point of link Karma when his or her submission is voted up. Same deal with comments. Both submissions and comments can lose karma when Reddit users vote them down. Earning Karma is hit or miss—you may submit a link and get 1,000 quickly—but fail to earn another point for a long time.

How do I comment?

Have something witty to say in response to a post? After creating an account and signing in, you’ll be able to start posting comments. To submit a response, click into the “comments” link from the front page. (As a side note, when the original poster (OP) comments, his or her username appears in dark blue.)

How do I submit a link?

You might want to familiarize yourself with Reddit a bit before submitting a link. Which Subreddit would this link fit in with? Is it a picture of your dinner last night? Go straight to “/r/foodporn.” A heartwarming story about your child’s first steps? Try “/r/parenting.”

The following image shows how a typical Reddit post appears. The numbers identify each element of the post; they are explained in the key beneath the image.

1. Overall placement of content on the front page.
2. Voting—click the arrows to Up Vote or Down Vote, affects overall placement.
3. Preview of content, whether a photo, video, or just text.
4. Title—it can be informative, sarcastic, humorous, etc.
5. Comments—click to see all of the comments associated with post.

[RELATED: 10 intriguing facts about the wildly popular Reddit]

Ellie Humphrey is the founder of MadGirlPR (@MadGirlPR), which provides insights about the PR, social, and marketing industries. Ellie is also the public relations and social media coordinator at PerBlue (@PerBlue), a mobile and social gaming company in Madison, Wis.

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