How to Properly Market Your Content on Reddit

Want a giant boost to your blogging? Want to get people involved and viewing your content? You're going to want to start posting on Reddit.

Reddit.com generates a lot of traffic everyday. Five to six million users a day access and view content shared across it's multitude of subreddits.

You can harness that power!

Follow me and you'll see exactly how to unlock Reddit's marketing potential.

Rule #1: Tread Carefully

Redditors can smell inauthentic posts from a mile away. Down votes and flaming comments will destroy your reputation in just a few heartbeats. We want to avoid this at all costs. 

So how do we promote ourselves without destroying our reputation?

Simply become a contributing member. From the sites own self promotion wiki: "It's perfectly fine to be a redditor with a website, it's not okay to be a website with a reddit account." In order to earn the right to promote yourself, you're going to have submit content that isn't yours. You're going to have to legitimately comment posts from other's. (Posting: Good job! Great content! isn't good enough)

Reddit suggests following the 10% rule. For every post used to self promote, you should contribute to the community in other ways at least NINE times. I'm going to challenge you even further. Stick to the 5% rule. The community is amazing, we want to craft a reputation and build relationships with them. Frequent readers of iHuman will know that I'm a huge fan building relationships. We don't want to stop building them just because the community is online.

Remember, tread carefully. Don't be a website with a reddit account.

Rule #2: Bask in the glory of subreddits. 

Reddit's communities are large and diverse. You can find subreddits for almost any hobby, interest, or oddity. It's this power and diversity that drives reddit to the top.

Find a few that interest you and are relevant to your content. You should start doing this if you're following Rule #1. This is where you start directing users to your content.

Targeted marketing brings home better readers and builds your community. When you become a member of a subreddit, you're accessing targeted marketing on a whole new scale.

A special note about subreddits. Do your research! There are a ton of subreddits that are inactive, have a small user base, or little traffic. Unless you're specifically in the subs niche, avoid it! You're wanting to generate traffic! Less people mean less traffic to your own site.

When researching your subreddits, Watch it's front page. If there isn't a least a few posts with 100+ upvotes, it's not going to be worth your time. (If you enjoy it, however, subscribe! Just don't let it be your self promotion avenue.)

Cultivate your reputation, follow rule #1, and promote your content. If you follow these steps you're on your way to great traffic.

Rule #3: Know when to post!

Timing is everything. Doubly so for Reddit. According to Reddit user Minimaxer's analysis, Monday at 7 PM is the most successful time to post content. If you want to go viral this is your best bet.

Other great times are 7am-8am EST. Many workers around the U.S. check Reddit first thing in the morning. If you want your content to get out of /new, you're going to want to post a few minutes earlier than this.

Of course, this is only for the actual front page of the gigantic website. However, we're focused on targeted marketing! This means analyzing your personal choices of subreddits. You're going to want to use an analyzer like this in order to find the optimum time for posting.

Remember! Your keys to success for timing are analyzing the subreddit and posting on a weekday. We want to capture those early morning working starts.


Bringing it all home. Why is this all important?

The reddit effect is huge! Have a look at my traffic when I was able to harness Reddit's power.

With one simple successful post to r/Zenhabits, my traffic jumped from 100-150 view per day to 1K+! That's a giant jump and I want you to be able to harness the same power!

"Reddit is different from any other place on the web - first and foremost, it's about community, discussion, and sharing. Honor that and you'll love it here." - Reddit Self promotion wiki

Remember, follow the rules. Be a contributor, Find relevant subreddits, and know your timing! If you can do this, you can conquer your traffic!

-James Greenway

Follow James on Twitter! @NerdCred

Need a challenge? Check out ours! Published weekly.