The Internet is a vast, unpredictable place. If you want to be one of the big players in this space, your best option is to find success on Reddit. But how can you do that? We’ve got steps for getting your slice of the 150 million pageviews that Reddit generates every day.
Reddit is a social media website with over 150 million page views per day. It’s not hard to see why so many people are interested in it. If you want your slice of the pie, there are some ways you can get involved. Now and again, a new traffic source will become the talk of the town. T’s similar to discovering a new oil resource. T’s kept a secret for a while, but once it’s out, everyone wants a piece of it. Reddit has become the most recent oil discovery. Marketers worldwide attempt to take advantage of the enormous platform to increase brand recognition and generate traffic to their websites. Yan Luedecke, for example, was able to generate $2,200 in sales for his new beef jerky firm by using Reddit. Unfortunately, Ut for every Ryan, there is a slew of others who can’t seem to figure out how to do Reddit work for them. The good news is that it isn’t nearly as difficult as everyone makes it out to be.
What is Reddit, and why should marketers care?
The website Reddit.com was launched in June of 2005. despite being just ten years old, it is already one of the most popular websites on the Internet. T now has a worldwide Alexa rank of 30.
I’ll go into more depth about Reddit later, but the idea is that it’s an aggregation site. Users post links to other websites voted on and commented on by other users. O, what type of traffic are we discussing? fortunately, Reddit has made its traffic statistics available to the public:
Reddit dwarfs Quick Sprout, considered a massive site by most, with around 20 million unique visitors each month and approximately 150 million page views. However, the most intriguing aspect about Reddit is its different from most other huge websites. Moderators or editors supervise the majority of other websites. On the other hand, Reddit is entirely under the hands of its users. Reddit, in my opinion, is the best illustration of permission marketing in action on a broad scale. Permission marketing, if you’re new to the phrase, was coined by Seth Godin some years ago: “Permission does not have to be a one-way communication channel. because of the Internet, you may treat different individuals differently, and you must find out how to allow your permission base pick what they hear and how they hear it.”
Let’s have a look at how this works on the site.
The inner workings of the Reddit community
You’ll probably have no idea what’s going on the first time you browse Reddit. T seems complicated, and many people think it’s ugly, yet it’s pretty practical. I’ll go over some of the most crucial ideas you’ll need to know to sell your company effectively on Reddit.
1. Karma
Everything on Reddit is governed by “karma,” defined as each member’s unique positive and negative points (known as upvotes and downvotes) given and received.
Everyone may vote on any link or debate submitted on the site. T’s effectively a democratic procedure since everyone’s vote is worth the same amount. N upvote indicates that you think the post is excellent, and a downvote suggests the opposite. Submissions with the highest score (upvotes minus downvotes) will be shown first. However, one additional aspect influences the flow of recommendations: the submission deadline. O move up in the rankings. Newer postings don’t require as high a score as older entries. He prevents the material from becoming obsolete.
2. Subreddits
A list of highly upvoted entries may be seen on the site. His “top page,” which comprises contributions from most subreddits, is referred to as such.
The way Reddit works is that it is split into hundreds of subreddits.
The URL structure is as follows:
“http://www.reddit.com/r/[subreddit name]” “http://www.reddit.com/r/[subreddit name]”
If you were interested in nutrition, for example, you would go to:
“http://www.reddit.com/r/nutrition”
Only contributions concerning food will be found in the nutrition subreddit. You have two primary choices as a user. First, Ou can visit each subreddit individually or subscribe to and unsubscribe from subreddits that you are and aren’t interested in.
Then, when you go to the top page, you’ll only see links from subreddits to which you’ve subscribed. T’s your customized homepage, and each user is unique.
3. The “hive mind.”
While Reddit users are often more educated and sophisticated than the typical Internet user, odd things happen when many individuals with similar interests join together. Upvotes and downvotes are used to distinguish between excellent and poor postings. Hey, are, unfortunately, often employed to convey views. For example, someone who is politically liberal could instinctively downvote a proposal that praises the Conservative Party (one of the main parties in the US). Cause people decide the material, their thoughts and beliefs affect Reddit (particularly the default front page). T is automatically drawn more like-minded individuals and fewer those who are dissimilar.
Today, there is a distinct average Redditor type:
- 20 to 30 years of age
- Male
- Liberal
- Likes to play video games and use technology.
- Intelligence is essential to her (she despises seeing “old news” on Facebook/Tumblr, etc.).
Of course, there are exceptions, but this character has ruled Reddit for a long time. Is W this important to you? Gr think she is unavoidable when a big group of individuals gets together. Because no one wants to go against the grain, the same themes are repeatedly discussed with nothing else. If you do, you will be de-voted. If you say anything nice about Tesla, it will rise to the top:
If you say anything nice about Comcast, it will go unnoticed. Therefore, we must construct our contributions for this demographic when we finally get around to uploading them. Howe r, one of the most appealing aspects of Reddit is that each subreddit is unique. If you want to increase traffic to your website from Reddit, you’ll need to research and understand each subreddit’s personality and style. Every subreddit is a microcosm of groupthink.
4. Use Reddit for SEO.
I wanted to get this out of the way right away since I know you’re curious. Although link building on Reddit might be beneficial, it should not be your primary focus.
To begin with, Reddit is a very authoritative site. There are over 702 million backlinks to it:
Another advantage of the service is that it is designed to keep spammers out, which is beneficial to marketers like me and you who strive to provide excellent material.
Not all links on Reddit are marked dofollow to discourage individuals from mass-posting links throughout the site.
On Reddit, all links are set to nofollow until they get a particular amount of upvotes. Unfortunately, it’s typically not a lot, maybe two or three:
Because spam or low-quality articles will either be downvoted or will not get any upvotes, they will never be followed and hence have no or very little value.
Most subreddits accept either text (HTML) or a direct link to a website as submissions. The s me restrictions apply to both text and link submissions. All l links in the text will become dofollow if the total contribution obtains a few upvotes.
Finally, as we’ll see later, including a link to your website in the comment threads of submission is occasionally possible. Novel ow links are used in all comments. They still generate a lot of traffic to the proper locations, but they won’t assist you with your search rankings.
I can see you’re getting excited about the prospect of obtaining some very authoritative links, but in my experience, it’s not worth concentrating just on backlinks. The worth of a huge number of highly relevant traffic much surpasses the worth of a few good backlinks. Remember that each page has numerous other links, and a single link will have limited strength until you reach the “top” page of all time for a subreddit. You do have a good understanding of why Reddit has the ability to deliver a lot of traffic to your site and how it operates. Reddit’s secret is that there isn’t one. If you want to get anything out of your time, you must contribute and become a member.
Here’s how it works: I’ll teach you how to figure out which subreddits will be most beneficial to your company and how to leverage them to generate traffic, step by step. You’ll ultimately add links to your site, but you must do it correctly and at the appropriate moment.
Step 1: Look for subreddits that are related to your topic.
How often have you heard that you must first identify your target audience to discover new subscribers? Unfortunately, it’s probably a lot since it’s an essential component of any marketing plan.
The beauty of Reddit is that your audience immediately divides into groups. Vegans sh uld visit /r/vegan; healthy eaters should visit /r/nutrition, and thrifty eaters should stay/r/EatCheapandHealthy.
Isn’t that practical? It’s like going salmon fishing and having all of the fish break into groups so you can just target the ones you want. The first step is to look for subreddits related to your site (they contain your target audience). It’s worth noting that you may have access to more than one relevant subreddit at any one moment. You may ac eve this in a few different ways. I recommend that you try all of them to get the most thorough list possible.
- Method 1: Perform a Reddit search
In an ideal world, this would be the last stage. Unfortunate y, Reddit’s internal search engine is notoriously bad. While it may sometimes provide what you’re searching for, it often excludes high-quality results. We’ll start with this approach and fill in the gaps afterward. Type a few t ms that describe your website into the subreddit search feature (one at a time). For example, I may key in “healthy” to generate visitors to my nutrition case study website. After that, I’ l probably attempt “eating” and “fitness.”
You’ll probably notice a few related subreddits alongside a few irrelevant ones. Ignore any IRR levant results and copy the URLs and subscriber counts of any possibly exciting subreddits. Look for sure it’s with at least a few thousand subscribers that are not just relevant. The more members a subreddit has, the more individuals who regularly view the entries. A highly relevant subreddit should have at least 5,000 subscribers to be considered highly relevant.
- Method 2: Use Metareddit to do your search.
Because everyone knows how bad the core Reddit search engine is, other parties have created solutions to assist.
metareddit is one of the most well-known of these programs. Again, use the s arch box on the right side of the homepage to look for your keywords one at a time. Then choose “lis” from the drop-down menu to get a list of results sorted by size.
Warning: Use caution while choosing subreddits. It’s tempting to select a popular subreddit like /r/food, with over 3 million members. Even though they are both in the same broad area, the /r/food audience is not the same as my target demographic. It’s preferable to target smaller but highly relevant subreddits, where your material will get more upvotes and generate more traffic, rather than massive subreddits, where your articles will never reach the top.
- Method 3: Use the Reddit sidebar to expand your list.
Your target audience may be found on specific subreddits, although it may not be apparent at first. You may choose to ignore them while searching, or they may never appear. Redditors, fortunately, establish their subreddit directories. You may find a list of suggested subreddits by scrolling down the sidebar (on the right) on most subreddits. These will be closed ly tied to the subreddit you are participating in.
You can discover even more alternatives since most subreddits will also have suggested subreddits in their sidebars. After about ten mi utes of digging, you’ll have a complete list.
Step 2: Research the subreddits you’ve selected.
The next step is to learn how Redditors in your specific subreddits think. The best place to begin is with the most popular posts. You may sort the s credit by selecting “top” from the drop-down menu above the contributions, then setting “all-time” or “past year.”
These entries are here because they are representative of what this subreddit values the most. This will become m re significant in the future. Read through all o these posts (the more, the better) to understand what others are saying about prevalent topics in your area. This will make it e easier for you to connect to them and fit in (yep, it’s like high school all over again). It’s an excellent idea to sit down any unique viewpoints. This is particularly crucial if you’re targeting various subreddits since they’ll frequently have opposing views on contentious issues. After you’ve studied a little about the subreddit’s history, it’s time to get to know the present situation of the subreddit. Subreddits’ attitudes and behavior may vary over time, even if they generally remain the same. Spend a week or so v wing the current “hot” posts on each subreddit for 10-20 minutes each day. Take note of which on s receive the most upvotes and which sorts of comments get the most upvotes and downvotes.
Step 3: Participate in the community.
Isn’t it about time I put up a link to my site? We’re still a long way off. To begin, you must first create an account. To establish a new ac unit, just click the following link (found at the top of any page):
It’s a straightforward procedure to sign up. Finding a unique user name will be the most challenging step. You are permitted to incorporate your name or a portion of your company name, but it is also OK to select an entirely random name.
When you first log in, you’ll see that your inbox symbol is illuminated, indicating that you’ve received your first message.
A message with some basic information and links is automatically sent to you (I recommend you read the site rules). Click the link in the letter to verify your email address if you haven’t already:
You can only accomplish a limited amount of things with fresh accounts. For example, you can only leave a remark once every ten minutes, and you can only submit anything once or twice an hour.
When you authenticate your email address, the constraints are loosened, but they’re still there.
How to use a new account to make a post?
If you start by attempting to post to several subreddits, you’ll almost certainly get marked as spam by a moderator or the spam filter (which is strict on new accounts).
Instead, begin by making a few observations. You should be able to locate a few recent entries to remark on if you know your subreddits well enough. Please feel free to r respond to any further comments:
Again, you’ll find yourself restricted relatively fast. The restrictions will be reduced as you post more comments and get more upvotes. You will eventually h ve a trusted account with no limits on the frequency of your postings (it won’t take long).
What should you not do?
There are several ways to squander your time and money. I’ll start with them frequently.
First and foremost, most newcomers to Reddit have a revelation. Why don’t I simply ma e ten accounts and upvote my things if I can upvote posts? This way, it will always be at the top, and more people will see it. The folks at Reddit, n the other hand, aren’t stupid. When a new upvote is logged on a submission, it is compared. Nobody knows for sure how it works (at least not publicly), but if two upvotes have the same IP address or another identifier, Reddit will automatically apply a downvote to balance things out.
To be honest, on a tiny scale (1 or 2 upvotes), you may be able to get away with it, but it’s not a dependable method. It’s preferable to st CK to the tactics I will outline in this essay. The second most typic l mistake is just jumping right in and posting links. If you do, you’ll ver indeed be labeled a spammer, and your links will almost certainly be ignored in the future. Finally, many people exclusively provide links to their websites in their posts. It’s critical to know what Reddit considers spam and what it doesn’t.
It’s acceptable to post links to your site as long as they’re genuinely beneficial and you’re also submitting connections to other sites. Basically, please make it clear r that you aren’t simply attempting to take advantage of the site’s visitors. If you are detected, y you may face a variety of consequences. We’ve previously discussed sed being caught in the spam filter. Users may also pick up on it. The first thing you sh uld know about Redditors is that they despise marketing. If they detect a tactic to get them to visit your site, they will downvote en masse and make their feelings known.
Furthermore, some users are more critical than others. Each subreddit has mod raptors who started the subreddit or were invited by the author to join the team. They may configure all submissions that connect to your site to go into the spam filter if they catch you repeatedly submitting just links to your site. This means you’ll never receive any more visitors from that subreddit, which is unfortunate. The site administrator will notice if you do it often enough GH and on a big enough scale. They have the ability o put you on a “shadow ban” list. Everything will seem t be generally operating on your end if you are shadowbanned, but no other user on the site will be able to view your contributions or comments. Furthermore, your upvotes es and downvotes will have no influence. You may use this free checker tool to see whether you’ve been shadow-banned.
Step 4: Only post your material if it satisfies this condition.
It’s difficult enough to navigate the Reddit waters safely, but after you’ve mastered that, you can start thinking about publishing your content—about its time.
Take a peek at the most popular posts in one of your target subreddits right now, and tell me what you notice:
The bulk of the people on that subreddit thinks they’re all fantastic. This isn’t by chance; the users have shaped it in this manner. Your post will be downvoted instantly if you submit the average trash article “10 ways to eat well.”
Pay close attention:
Creating excellent content is the only way to get traffic from Reddit. Remember that if you want visitors to go on to your site, you need their permission, and the only way to gain that Permission is to create something they appreciate. The beautiful thing about this method is that if you publish excellent material, you won’t have to worry about manipulating the system. You’ll also receive us r input that you may utilize to enhance it.
Step 5: Communicate with Reddit in a manner that it understands.
When it comes to creating contributions, the number of upvotes and interactions for the duplicate submission might vary dramatically. For example, even though it was in the same subreddit, the same link garnered different points (upvotes minus downvotes) each time it was submitted.
Four primary aspects influence how well a piece of premium content performs once posted.
- Factor 1: Time of submission
Specific periods of the day will have more activity than others, just like any other website. You should try to sche ule your contribution to be at the top of a subreddit when it becomes prevalent (to maximize upvotes). There’s always a slight chance involved, but you can get a decent notion of the optimum moment to publish a post by utilizing Reddit Later. This tool looks at the most popular posts in the subreddit you’re interested in that were made in the past. This data will assist you in determining the ideal submission timings. Most American users are active throughout the day (US time) since they make up most of the Reddit user population.
Here’s what I’d put in for the nutrition subreddit, for example:
The tool uses the minimal vote threshold to choose which posts to include in the computation. If you set it too high, a few posts from the subreddit will be eligible, which is a waste of time. Set it to between 20% and 40% of the number of upvotes you intend to get (based on other top posts).
The tool will generate a graph similar to this:
You’d want the graph to be a little smoother. Therefore, I’d lower the minimum vote level a little more to acquire a larger sample size. However, for the sake f this example, it is evident that Monday and Wednesday contributions perform best when they are made around 10 or 11 a.m., my local time. Any links to my site would be posted in this window.
- Factor 2: The headline
Like any other aspect of content marketing, the headline may make or destroy you. However, on Reddit, you must avoid employing overtly apparent clickbait titles. Remember how I stated that certain things irritate Redditors? One of them is this. N matter how outstanding your work is, it’s an excellent way to acquire a few spite downvotes.
Aside from that, you should adhere to all of the other elements of a strong headline:
- elicit a smidgeon of interest
- Make use of precise figures and facts.
- Make the subject of discussion clear.
Those top articles you discovered previously, on the other hand, will serve as the ultimate direction for producing a solid title.
If you’re having trouble coming up with a decent headline, consider what you already know works.
Here are a couple of headlines I think might do well based on those top posts:
- Infographic with X Low-Cost Cooking Ideas
- How to Grow Vegetables at Home: How to Choose the Best Food to Grow
- “A one-hit wonder” For $6, you get ten portions of cheesy tomato lasagna!
You won’t be able to use all of them as inspiration for your headline, but you should have plenty to work with to come up with your own.
- Factor 3: HTML/Text
You may already know that you may upload direct links to your website, but this is not possible in all subreddits. Sometimes moderators w ll believe that a subreddit has too many links to blog content. They only accept “self or text postings to counteract this. You create a headline the same manner as these, but when someone clicks on it, they are transported to the submission discussion. One of this subreddit is the nutrition subreddit:
This may frighten some marketers, but it shouldn’t. You may still use the description to bring people to your website. Your content’s most important for ions should be included in your description. It should also contain a link to the article on your website, which readers may click on it if they want to read it with better formatting and graphics or additional information. Here’s an example of h w to do it correctly:
It’s worth noting that there’s no nonsense here. If you attempt to be too subtle and use clickbait methods to get Redditors to your page, people will detect and downvote you. Remember, if you offer them something valuable, they will pay attention to you. Many more examples of excellent text posts may be found on the marketing subreddit (since marketers are great at detecting marketing).
- Factor 4: Early voting and feedback
Remember that the age of your article and its score are the two most essential criteria in determining how high it ranks. A few minutes after you publish, your post will frequently display high on the subreddit homepage. If it receives a couple more upvotes, it will either remain there or rise higher. If it doesn’t, it risks collapsing and never regaining its footing. Furthermore, the more comments an article receives, the more curious other browsers get. This is why in order o increase your early comment count, and it’s critical to answer all postings. You should know what a decent remark looks like by now. Be kind, truthful, and use appropriate language. If your comments are o ten downvoted, go through the Reddiquette standards again. Finally, there’s one m re dubious strategy you may use. It has the potential t be very successful, but it also has the potential to be manipulative. You may remove your pot if it receives no response when you initially publish it. You may resubmit it later or another day if you believe you merely had terrible luck. You might also experiment with a new title or description. Don’t overdo it, but e ploying this method once in a while should be OK.
Step 6: Make Reddit-specific material.
It’s a good idea to start by submitting your finest existing material. However, if you want t make the most of Reddit as a traffic source, you’ll need to start developing content tailored to each subreddit. Consider it similar to guest blogging on another website: you’ll need to craft an article specifically for that readership. There’s one area we need d to explore for content ideas. Can you figure out where it is? That’s true, and you’re lo king for the most popular posts in the subreddit you’ve chosen. I’ll let you in on an l little secret: resubmitting the top positions in a subreddit (if they were at least six months old) would get you a lot of upvotes. This is because users n a subreddit change all the time, and even if they saw it earlier, they may not remember it and still upvote it. Your entry is unlikely to be as good as the original, but it could get close. I’m not suggesting that you republish stuff, but you can use the technique to generate content that you know would get many upvotes and drive traffic. We will improve the top posts’ principles, much as we did with the Skyscraper Technique. Let’s look at t e most popular articles in /r/EatCheapAndHealthy once again…
How might we generate fresh material that builds on the success of previous efforts? Listed below are a few examples:
- When fruits and vegetables are in season, this chart is quite helpful.
- The Complete List of 51 Food Tips Infographic
- One week before payday: 4 alternative meal ideas for under $20
- What impoverished students should eat: A list of the cheapest foods and the best ways to prepare them
All four of these have a better chance of receiving more likes than the originals. You’ll also note that you’ll need to produce pictures or capture photographs for your material in this scenario. Hire a designer if you don’t already have one. I’d suggest publishing a text post so you may link to comparable topics on your site to increase traffic.
Conclusion
Don’t sign up as a member who just posts once and then vanishes. Reddit should be a component of your entire marketing plan. Continue to provide VA due to the many subreddit groups you belong to by commenting and posting links to resources that aren’t your own. As your postings gain n popularity, you’ll begin to add a large number of Redditors to your website’s email list. When this occurs, your readers will start submitting fresh articles before you even have a chance to write them. To get you started, I’ e put out a detailed approach here. If you want a piece of those 150 million monthly pageviews, all you have to do now is an act.