Creating a social media account is great because it’s quick and easy to set up, but in most cases it won’t bring you tons of traffic to any single post when you’re first starting out.
Fortunately, there is another platform out there that can drive serious traffic to your site, even if you don’t have a huge following: Reddit.
The Power of Reddit
Reddit is one of the most popular sites on the entire internet. It’s a site composed of thousands of subreddits, which are communities of people that share and consume content on a daily basis based around a specific niche.
Reddit uses a simple voting system in which anyone can create a post on a specific subreddit and then the community votes it either up or down. The posts with the most upvotes naturally rise to the top of the subreddit page.
This means that if you can get a piece of your own content upvoted enough, you could land near the top of a particular subreddit and drive serious traffic to your site.
Cautions on Using Reddit
There are a a few things to keep in mind, though, when it comes to Reddit etiquette:
1. Not all subreddits allow you to post a link to your own content. To find out if a particular subreddit allows submissions to your own content, check the “Community Rules” listed along the sidebar of the subreddit, which outlines the rules you must follow in order to not get banned from the community.
2. If you share your own content too often, you’ll get banned. Reddit is quick to ban people from subreddits who post too much of their own content. In general, you only want to post one or two of your own articles per month, otherwise the moderators of your particular subreddit will likely ban you.
How to Succeed On Reddit
Reddit can be a tricky platform to master, but if you can get it right then you can drive serious traffic to your site, even if it’s brand new.
Here are a few tips that may increase your chances of success with Reddit:
1. Find relevant subreddits.
As mentioned before, there are thousands of subreddits out there. Your job is to find the ones that are relevant to your niche, so that your content will get upvoted. For example, it wouldn’t make sense to post statistics tutorials on a subreddit about cute kittens. You want to find subreddits that are full of people who are actually interested in your niche.
For Statology, I typically use two subreddits:
- https://www.reddit.com/r/statistics/ – This is a subreddit with over 80,000 members and the content revolves around statistics. I typically post one link to one of my best Statology articles per month on this subreddit.
- https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeworkHelp/ – This is a subreddit where people ask homework questions and anyone can respond with answers. I typically search for statistics-related homework questions in this sub and respond with an answer that links to a relevant article on Statology.
2. Find subreddits that allow you to link to your own content.
Not all subreddits allow you to post links to your own content. Read the community rules on the sidebar of the subreddit to make sure that you’re allowed to post links to your own stuff, otherwise you’ll get banned.
3. Become an engaging member.
When you post a link to your own content, it helps if other members recognize your username because it makes it more likely that they’ll upvote your content.
You don’t want to appear to be someone who just pops in every now and then to submit links to your own content.
It’s important to note that your entire posting history is available for anyone to see on Reddit when they click on your profile, so it’s pretty easy to spot someone who just posts links to their own content and never actually engages in any other posts within the community.
4. Don’t post too often.
Make sure you only post a link to your own article once or twice per month. If you post more often than this, you’ll come across as someone who is only self-promoting and your links will likely get removed.
Reddit can be a difficult platform to master. Not all of your content will get upvoted and more often than not, there will be some rude responses to your posts. This is the nature of the Reddit community.
However, when you do get a post to reach the top of a subreddit, you’ll find that you can draw in hundreds or thousands of visitors to your site in a matter of hours.
So, find a subreddit that is in your niche, become an engaged member, then link to your own content. In the worst case scenario, only a handful of people will read your article. In the best case scenario, your content could go viral.
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