Besides being an awesome and helpful community, Reddit is also one of the platforms, which can generate tons of traffic to your website and give your brand massive exposure and followers… In this article I will tell you how to get traffic from Reddit and get some real love from the most amazing internet community.
What Is Reddit?
Reddit is a social sharing, news and entertainment platform that was founded in 2005. The name Reddit is a combination of “read/edit” and “read it”. The users typical call themselves “Redditors” which itself is a combination of “Reddit” and “Editors”. Rankings on Reddit are determined by a combination of up- and down-votes. Every registered user is able to give submitted content a “thumbs up” (up-vote) or “thumbs down” (down-vote) which result in the ranking of the content. Users are also able to comment on the content. Reddit gained huge publicity when it played an important role during the SOPA blackout or during special IAmAs (IAmA means “I am a” and AMA stands for “ask me anything) with President Obama or the engineers and scientists on the Mars Curiosity Rover Mission.
Reddit’s Traffic Stats 2012
According to Reddit’s blog, these are the traffic stats for the year 2012:
37 Billion Pageviews 400 Million Unique Visitors 4 Billion Votes 30 Million Posts 260 Million Comments
You definitely want to get a share of this huge amount of traffic. And you can. But only if you do it the right way. Trying to get my blog posts out there to get traffic, resulted, most of the time, in failure. And, as we all have to do, I have learned from my mistakes. This is how our stats look like after a successful link submission:
The spike you see on the top is our post about ways of using NFC tags, which got an incredible amount of traffic from Reddit.
Forgive Me Admin, For I Have Spammed
Being active on Reddit for almost a year I have seen many submissions rise successfully to Reddit’s front-page (the top of the top of Reddit), and some that have failed miserably. The ones that made it got tons of traffic, and the ones that failed were not only not getting any exposure, but also were considered being annoying spam. To be honest, there were some things I shouldn’t have done on Reddit. I have spammed. A lot. Then I was banned for doing it. I have even tried creating new “throwaway” accounts and up-vote my own submissions. Of course, in the end it didn’t matter how much I tried to get my content voted up – the community does its magic. Always. My biggest mistake was to think of Reddit as “just a source of traffic”. It’s not.
Instant Reddit Traffic – Just Add Value
So, after being banned from Reddit I felt kind of frustrated and disappointed. It seemed to me that the stuff I used to write was not interesting for the people I was actually writing it for. So I gave up. In the next few weeks I have caught myself on the thought that I was somehow “missing” Reddit and its community. If you are not active on Reddit, you probably don’t know how interesting and helpful Reddit might be. But then, after re-joining Reddit I have realized one thing your have to keep in mind when submitting your things to Reddit: be helpful and add value. Apply this thought not only when trying to get traffic, but also to the content you write. People like content, which helps or enlightens them. Period.
1. Get To Know Your Audience
Reddit is made out of different category-pages called “subreddits”. There are subreddits for more things than you can imagine: cute things (/r/aww), strange things (/r/wtf) and even strange cute things (/r/awwwtf). Also, there are also tons of subreddits about technology and online marketing, like /r/technology, /r/webmarketing or /r/ppc. I am sure that you will find your audience in one of the 221,986 subreddits. You just have to search for a bit.
2. Get The Audience To Know You
After you have successfully found the people you would love to read your content or buy your product – talk to them. Be active. Comment on submissions and give helpful advice to people. You can see excellent examples of good comments in /r/bestof. Once you have established a good reputation you can slowly start to get your stuff out there. People will recognise you from your previous (helpful) comments and you will more likely be up-voted. But remember: you will only make it if you add value to your community/audience. Small tip: the smaller the subreddit (fewer readers, niche) the easier it is to get to the subreddit’s own front-page and get exposure.
3. Timing Is Key
You definitely don’t want your link to get lost in the /new section of the subreddit. So choose your timing right. According to an infographic about “Social Timing” by KissMetrics the best time to submit your link on most social networks is before 5PM EST. This is also the time when most people are actively browsing Reddit.
4. How To Submit Your Link To Reddit
First of all, if you don’t have an account – create one. It is really easy to do if you follow these steps: It is really that easy. Once you have created an account and were active on your subreddit you can submit your link. You can actually do it right away, but I don’t recommend you to do it – first build some trust. Go to your subreddit’s page and click on “Submit a new Link”.
The next step is very important. You have to choose an awesome title. Make it as interesting and appealing as possible. And don’t use your punchline in the title. Small tip: Read the sidebar on your subreddit. It contains a lot of information about the submission rules. Following them will increase your chances of getting up-votes.
Now the only things left are to paste your link into the form and click “submit”. Depending on the subreddit your link will appear in the “/new” section immediately or after approval from the moderators.
5. What To Do After Submitting Your Link
Once you have submitted your link you need to make sure to monitor the comments to your submission. If people have questions about your link – give them answers. Comments not only make the link more likely to be voted up, but also give you (as the submitter) more credibility. I hope that if you follow this guide you will be able to get a decent amount of traffic from Reddit to your blog and give your brand good exposure. Please tell us about your experiences in the comments. What has worked for you on Reddit? I will gladly update this guide with your tips and suggestions.
