{"id":494,"date":"2016-01-26T17:36:22","date_gmt":"2016-01-26T10:36:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christweten.com\/?p=494"},"modified":"2021-02-07T05:00:35","modified_gmt":"2021-02-06T22:00:35","slug":"reddit-marketing-guide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christweten.com\/reddit-marketing-guide\/","title":{"rendered":"How I Used Reddit Marketing to Boost Traffic 3611%"},"content":{"rendered":"
If you’re going purely by the numbers, Reddit is a digital marketer’s wet dream. It’s got 36 million users conveniently distributed into over 6000 communities targeted around just about any topic you could think of. The website has had over 5 billion pageviews, dubs itself “The Front Page of the Internet” and brings forth discussions much more naturally than its predecessors and counterparts. Beast.<\/p>\n
I think Reddit’s division into individual user-led communities is to blame for the lack of evangelists in the marketing world. Each community, a subreddit, has its own set of rules for quality control, its own moderators and community expectations. Trying to spread your brand across multiple subreddits requires finesse – digital marketers generally advise clients to stay away from the platform altogether since there have been plenty of companies to fail and actually damage their branding. There are a few reddit marketing guides out there – most notably, one by KISSmetrics<\/a> and another on AdAge<\/a>, but nothing comes close to what I’ve laid out below.<\/p>\n Reddit’s advertising platform is also fairly young and doesn’t have the same widespread appeal as other social networks, partly because of the userbase’s disdain towards using the site for promotion and marketers getting salty over poor content marketing performance.<\/p>\n I’ll be up front about the advertising side of Reddit: I haven’t touched it whatsoever. Not a dollar. What I have been able to do is get past the unfamiliar territory of subreddit marketing for consistent traffic, email signups and sales. My hope is that others can use my experience as example so we can continue to develop tactics and etiquette for reddit marketing. Feedback on my methods would be great too! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n You can see the difference between the first month in my contract and the last month below. It’s worth noting that this is total traffic, not just from reddit, but the extra traffic we gained were from backlinks gained through reddit and sharing the same articles on other social platforms. 71% of December’s social traffic came from reddit and social accounted for 45% of the total traffic. Google Analytics don’t work so hot with reddit though; much of the traffic is counted as Direct, so I included my total stats for the sake of this article.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Without putting in some work, you’re likely to get shadowbanned (banned without any warning or message \/ your posts become visible to only you) or you could hurt the brand you’re promoting. As I mentioned before, Redditors are (almost) hateful of any form of marketing or sales pitch when presented on the platform. Not only that, but they won’t hesitate to call others out on potential marketing attempts. Even if you aren’t directly pitching, they may just hate on your brand regardless. This confrontational attitude means that you have to add some extra steps in your funnel or thwart these types of conversations within your content itself. I’ll get into that a bit later.<\/p>\n But what good marketing isn’t, really? Reddit research boils down to 3 phases:<\/p>\n The main industries your brand fits into likely has an established subreddit, but oftentimes, there are a series of smaller related subreddits that you wouldn’t exactly think up on your own. That was the case when I was building up traffic for the Squirrelz<\/a>, anyway. They’re an upcycled product marketplace (at the time anyway, they’ve recently pivoted), so I hit up r\/Upcycling<\/a> and then r\/Envronment<\/a>, along with the subreddits featured on their respective sidebars.<\/p>\n Your next move should be just searching related keywords on the entirety of reddit and checking out.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n At this point, you’ll have a good sized list of potential communities to hit up. Time to move on.<\/p>\n This can be the most time consuming part of the entire process, but it’s worth it (and you’ll learn a thing or two).<\/p>\n What we’re looking for here is over-arching trends on the kind of content that performs well. Compare the Top posts of the month with All Time. If there are text submissions on these lists, read through the conversations people have – this might be a good starting point for your own blog content. Another thing to note down is if there are multiple articles from the same domain. A website with a proven track record will come in handy when developing your own content.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Take a few of those links you found that were talked about a few times and throw them into BuzzSumo<\/a> or whatever content research tool you use. What we’re looking for are similar websites that aren’t posting to Reddit regularly. To be transparent, Geek.com has been one of the most consistent karma-builders for me. Install the Reddit Check extension<\/a> and you’ll be able to quickly check if an article has been shared at all, where it’s been shared and the total upvotes it got.<\/p>\n Head to the most recent blog posts on a site and if they haven’t been shared to the subreddits you’re targeting, they’re fair game for building up your Reddit profile. Once you have 2 or 3 websites like this with high quality content that matches the subreddits you’re targeting, your research is done. It’s time to start building up a reputation!<\/p>\n Make it a daily habit to submit 10+ links to Reddit, mostly in places you want to later build traffic off of with your own content, but going outside this realm is advantageous as well. I can’t stress it enough: Redditors are very against self-promotion.<\/p>\n But that doesn’t mean you can’t promote yourself anyway. There’s a few ways you can get them to take a more lenient attitude to you. If you’re a valued member of the community that posts quality content from a variety of sources, not just your own, they’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. Replying to comments in a timely manner helps a lot too – especially on your original content.<\/p>\n It sounds cheesy as fuck, but my general approach to Reddit comments is that you should be able to add a happy face to the end of most of your posts. That’s the tone, don’t actually do it. Being lighthearted and open to criticism go a long way in Reddit marketing.<\/p>\n Okay, time for the home run. After you’ve done your research, become an active contributor to these subreddits and have a good feel for each userbase, it’s time to share your own work. I use a toned down version of the Skyscraper Technique, improving on content that has performed well 3-6 months ago and turning comment threads into full-fledged blog articles.<\/p>\n For those who are unfamiliar, the Skyscraper Technique is an approach to blogging where you grab content that’s performed well in the past and improve on it by making it more aesthetically appealing, improving the copy, making it more up to date and\/or making it more comprehensive. It’s a technique typically used for backlink building, but I take the same mentality and apply it to creating targeted blog content with a very high success rate. They don’t need to be full out 2,000 word articles like Neil Patel<\/a> suggests, but I typically aim for 800-1200. Anything less and you probably aren’t being thorough enough.<\/p>\n If you’re updating a top article from Reddit, implementing the conversations people had in the past into your article is crucial to its success. Not only does it make your content more unique, but it thwarts the confrontational and often over-analytical nature of the average Redditor. If their criticisms of the article are addressed within the article itself, they won’t have much to say. You don’t have to credit reddit users specifically, just take the concepts discussed and give them your own twist.<\/p>\n Honestly, I got somewhat lucky in 2015 when it comes to finding the best time to post. I’m based in Shanghai and it just so happens that the start and end of my work days were pretty great times for my content to shine. I suggest taking the time to read through Danny Leybzon’s analysis of Reddit posting times<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Short Answer: 33%, max.<\/p>\nHacking Subreddits for Traction is NOT for Everyone<\/h2>\n
Reddit Marketing is 95% Research<\/h2>\n
1. Finding the right subreddits for your brand.<\/h4>\n
2. Treading through top performing content of each subreddit.<\/h4>\n
3. Hunting down similar content from overlooked websites.<\/h4>\n
Actively Contribute Valuable Content to Each Subreddit<\/h2>\n
Craft Your Blog Content for Individual Subreddits<\/h2>\n
When your content is ready, there are 3 things to consider:<\/h3>\n
1. When is the best time to post on Reddit?<\/h4>\n
2. What % of my posts can be original content to be safe from bans?<\/h4>\n