Reddit Marketing
This article will go over the most basic Reddit marketing techniques, the ones for which you don’t even need to think. After reading it you will understand how to promote your business on Reddit, and towards the end of the guide, there’s also some general advice that you should consider. In most cases, you’ll just have to post a link to your product/service/app/cause/crowdfunding campaign/… with a long and descriptive title, and then buy a few upvotes and comments for your threads. Especially if you’re inexperienced, these are the first Reddit marketing objectives that you should complete:
- Introduce your business on /r/shamelessplug (7,331 subscribers). This is a subreddit (group of interest) on reddit.com. Always read the rules from the sidebar before posting in such places! They might help for example with choosing a title if they have certain guidelines on that. If needed, remember to flair your posts! This means that after submitting, you tag it with a subcategory; see the image below!
- Introduce your business on /r/sideproject (14,278 subscribers).
- Introduce your business on /r/indiebiz (2,703 subscribers).
- Present your creation on /r/imadethis (1,974 subscribers).
- Present your creation on /r/promote (2,062 subscribers).
- Present your website as useful on /r/UsefulWebsites (25,002 subscribers).
- Ask for design critique (this means that you’re asking for feedback on your website’s design) on /r/design_critiques (23,558 subscribers).
- Ask for website/web app feedback in the “Feedback Friday” stickied post from /r/web_design (158,170 subscribers).
- Use the “Promote your business” weekly thread from /r/smallbusiness (53,193 subscribers) to make yourself known.
- Use the “Share your startup” monthly thread from /r/startups (116,637 subscribers) to make yourself known.
- If you’re a woman or you are anonymous, introduce your business in the monthly “Shameless Self Promotion” thread from /r/ladybusiness (3,321 subscribers).
- Ask on /r/CrappyDesign (301,667) “Is this really crappy design? […]” and link to your website. It doesn’t matter if no-one ever told you that it’s crappy. It’s just for the traffic. Learning how to promote on Reddit is becoming fun, right?
- Link to your website on /r/InternetIsBeautiful (8,329,548 subscribers).
- Link to your website on /r/InternetIsInteresting (1,084 subscribers).
- Link to your website on /r/InteractiveWebsites (2,827 subscribers), if it’s indeed interactive.
- Link to your most interesting product on /r/shutupandtakemymoney (278,534 subscribers), /r/BuyItForLife/ (299,678 subscribers), /r/Imsavingupforthis (8,926 subscribers) or /r/AppHookup (59,219 subscribers) if it’s an app.
- For some fast traffic, link to your website on /r/internetisugly (1,842 subscribers) or /r/INTERNETISTERRIFYING (698 subscribers). The traffic that you’re getting from small subreddits is small in the first 24 hours compared to bigger ones. What you might not realize though is that this type of exposure is more long term since there are much fewer new posts on these small subreddits, therefore you’ll be on their main page longer!
- Ask for feedback on your product on /r/AlphaAndBetaUsers (3,868 subscribers).
- Ask for feedback on how to grow your business and your website presentation on /r/growmybusiness (15,9k subscribers)
- Post a coupon on /r/coupons (43,657 subscribers) (be patient on this one because they approve posts manually and sometimes the process takes a few days).
- Post a link to your blog post on /r/anythinggoesblog; it might help you to post in other locations of the AnythingGoes network:
- /r/AnythingGoesNews
- /r/AnythingGoesPics
- /r/AnythingGoesVideos
- /r/AnythingGoesDiscuss
- /r/AnythingGoesUltimate
- /r/AnythingGoesCinema
- /r/AnythingGoesPolitics
- /r/AnythingGoesComedy
- /r/AnythingGoesScience
- /r/AnythingGoesTech
- /r/AnythingGoesAnime
- /r/AnythingGoesHealth
- /r/AnythingGoesMusic
- /r/AnythingGoesWeapons
- /r/AnythingGoesEarth
Some of the above subreddits are good for traffic, others will be good for SEO (because in them your posts have a low probability of being downvoted/reported or being removed by a moderator). You can easily get DoFollow links from Reddit by posting your website in the above places, then having the posts upvoted with more than the average number of upvotes that posts from the first 25 /hot results get. If you want to go through less trouble yourself, just buy a SEO package from us and we’ll handle the operation in the best way possible. After a certain threshold (f.e. 8 upvotes usually for subreddits with 10,000 subscribers, if others don’t downvote you), the links automatically become DoFollow. To repeat, because it’s important: the exact threshold of how many upvotes you need depends on the average vote count of the top 25 posts from Hot, on that respective subreddit (yes Reddit, we have studied you!). Links from comments can become DoFollow too.
More advanced and time-consuming Reddit marketing techniques:
- Link somehow to your business in ALL the relevant subreddits. For example if you’re a game developer, you might post comments and threads in /r/gamedev, /r/games, /r/gaming (12,480,009 subscribers), /r/gamedeals, /r/indiegames, /r/greenlightquality and sixty more places.
- Discuss a business process or offer content of value on /r/entrepreneur (208,115 subscribers) and /r/business (210,073 subscribers); only disclose your website address if you’re asked to in the comment section. If no one asks you, just ask yourself from another account or buy a comment from us and we’ll ask you.
- Discuss an aspect related to your startup on /r/startups (116,638 subscribers)
- Post links to content from your blog in ALL the relevant subreddits (submit it any form: posts, comments or replies to top comments).
- Buy a Reddit account and create a subreddit for your company or cause. Post regular updates, links to your blog posts, promotions, and so on.
All of the subscriber counts above are as of September 30, 2016. (random update from April 19, 2019: w.t.h., why is Trump president?)
Digital marketing on Reddit can be time-consuming indeed when you’re doing the above-mentioned advanced techniques, but why put the same time in more ineffective traction channels, like Facebook or Twitter, when they don’t provide the same traffic and, furthermore, they don’t provide any SEO boost? If you check our article on how to rank higher on Google, you’ll see that the first tip is actually quite eye-opening:
Google takes into consideration the popularity of links on social media aggregation services, like Reddit. If two link-posts from /r/technology have the keywords “compact portable leaf blower”, yet one of the posts has a lot more upvotes than the other… then then one with more upvotes will also be in front of the other in the Google search results. This means that the search results can actually be rearranged for low costs.
Here’s a word of advice, pasted from the Reddit guideline on self-promotion:
You should submit from a variety of sources (a general rule of thumb is that 10% or less of your posting and conversation should link to your own content), talk to people in the comments (and not just on your own links), and generally be a good member of the community.
To avoid breaking this rule, make the posts from different accounts, or buy posts from us and we’ll make sure to not go overboard with activity from a single account. Don’t post with your personal account, especially if you’re a novice in your understanding of Reddit etiquette.
And finally, regarding titles: redditors are usually title browsers, meaning that they only read the titles of posts. Therefore, try to find a great one! Don’t take it lightly, put time into the process of finding the optimal title! In order of preference, this is how a good title should be:
- a clickbait! – this title makes the users curious, intrigued, wanting to know more as fast as possible; or it’s controversial and they can’t wait to view the opinions from the comment section
- long and descriptive, but missing some critical information; this might make them curious enough to click on the title, or go to the comment section, especially if the information is somehow relevant for them
- long, descriptive and a complete unit of information; moderators love these, and your post will be less likely to be removed; users love them as well, and they’ll be less likely to downvote
Good luck! We hope that our Reddit marketing ideas and tips help you gain more exposure, with not that much effort! At least, that was our plan. :)
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