Reddit is one of the largest social news websites around on the internet. Featuring user-submitted content on a wide variety of topics such as entertainment, pop culture, web 2.0 and politics, Reddit ranks all submitted links through a democratic voting system that is open to all its users. Using complex filters, Reddit also provides a liinst of recommended links for each individual user, that are based on their voting habits.
Why should you bother with Reddit?
Like Digg or StumbleUpon, getting on Reddit’s frontpage can result in a large amount of traffic to your website. This allows you to rapidly create brand exposure for your business or establish a long-term reader base for your blog.
Using Reddit will also allow your website to spread virally across other social networks, forums or online communities. This generates overall buzz for your brand/concept while acting as a means to build incoming links that will benefit your search engine rankings.
How do I get started on Reddit?
Start by visiting their website and signing up. After which you’ll be able to submit any stories you come across while surfing the Internet.
To vote for a specific article that’s on Reddit, you’ll just have to click on the arrows located on the left of the link. Clicking on the up arrow will register a positive vote and add 1 point to the overall point score for the article while pushing it closer to the front page. Clicking on the down arrow will register a negative vote and deduct 1 point from the overall link score and moving it further away from the front page.
Reddit also consists of several sections which are known as subreddits. These sections cover topics such as science, web 2.0 and programming.
Submitting Links on Reddit
The easiest way to submit links on Reddit is through the Reddit bookmarklet set, which allows you to send web pages to Reddit while you are on any website. If the link has already been submitted, you’ll be sent to the specific link page and be given the option to comment or vote for it.
Link submission for Reddit is a fantastically simple process. Unlike Digg, you don’t have to pick a specific category or write a description for your submission. You’ll just need to type in the URL and enter the title for your link to be accepted.
Some important guidelines from Reddit on successful submissions:
A useful and/or entertaining title can also go a long way toward piquing someone’s interest. Alternatively, deceiving readers with false or misleading titles is a surefire way to suffer karmic retribution from your fellow redditors.
Likewise, linkjacking an article from its original source in order to drive traffic to your personal blog will likely just drive down your karma. Submitting personal work isn’t taboo, but trying to flood reddit with every blog entry you’ve ever written is certain to be punished.
Reddit’s Front Page: Observations on Topics, Votes and Link Duration
Reddit’s front page features a list of 25 items, each with points that can range from 30 to 700 votes.
After analyzing Reddit for several days, I’ve concluded that getting on the front page requires a minimum of 30 positive votes that are spread out over a period of one or two hours. This influx of votes will push the item up the ranks where it will naturally gather more or less votes as it is exposed to more Reddit users.
On the other hand, Reddit’s programming and science subreddits require a much smaller amount of user votes. Approximately 8 votes for the programming section and 2 votes for the Science section will be enough to drive specific items on each subreddit front page.
Note that Reddit’s main front page features uncategorized submissions, which means two things: Links on a wide variety of topics are accepted and secondly, they are exposed to all Reddit users which means significantly more traffic than the Reddit’s sub sections.
The links on Reddit’s front page focus on a wide variety of topics such as politics, technology, design and pop culture. Almost all of them however, are links to newly published articles or reports.
While not exactly breaking news, most frontpage links lead to relatively new content that was produced within the range of one to four days from the current date. This however, doesn’t hold true for all links as I’ve also seen the odd timeless video or picture being voted up to the front page.
How long will a story remain on the Reddit front page?
I’ve looked at Reddit’s front page carefully over the span of a week and noticed that a popular submission can stay on the front page for approximately the maximum time frame of 23 hours, after which it’ll nest in the second page for a while, before slowly receding down the ranks.
I’ve never seen a story remain on the front page pass the 23 hour limit and this phenomenon also applies for the subreddits. Note that if a specific story hits the top spot in Reddit, it will be relegated into Reddit’s top links section and preserved for all-time.
Reddit’s Top Links Section: Fodder for Analysis
The best way to get on the Reddit Homepage is to study and understand what type of material hits the number one spot in Reddit. All the links that have ever gotten onto the number one spot have numbers that are colored a very light orange.
For example, the screenshot below of the Reddit home page now will show that links number 1, 4 and 6 have hit the top spot before.
Clicking on any colored number will bring you to Reddit’s top links section which features all the links that ever reached the number one spot. You can sort this list of top links according to links from today, this week or even all-time links.
If you sort all the top links by all-time filter, you’ll get the latest top links in the first few pages and the older links in the later pages. This collection of top links can give you an accurate feel of the type of material that is likely to reach Reddit’s front page.
How to Become a Reddit Power User
Let’s start by examining how users in Reddit or “redditors” are effectively ranked within the system. A note from Reddit’s FAQ:
When a particular item is promoted or demoted, the user who posted it is either rewarded or punished — a system of editorial karma. In the same way that popular submissions are voted to the top, the individuals who post them get increases in karma.
Every redditor affects one another’s karma equally, regardless of his/her karma. Although democracy isn’t perfect, this experiment should supply the public with the information they demand while also rewarding those who provide it.
What this means is that Reddit’s editorial system features some degree of user self-regulation. Users who want to develop a strong reputation must contribute quality links because their popularity with Reddit users will directly reflect on the user’s status.
Prettifying your Digg profile doesn’t apply here because of Reddit’s minimalist emphasis on user profiles and on-site design. Becoming a power user simply involves spending a lot of time contributing to Reddit and actively interacting with other users.
I’d love to say that there is a shortcut to the whole process but unfortunately, the cliche of giving back to the community holds true in this case. But at the same time, effective networking in Reddit can definitely bring your submissions more exposure and editorial action.
Networking in Reddit is a simple process. The first step you have to take is to send users a private message to say “hello”. After which, proceed to add them as your “friend”.
To make someone your friend, you’ll just need to click on their username to view their profile. On the right sidebar, you’ll find a list of links, one of which is the option “add to your friends“.
Once they’ve been “friended”, their usernames will appear highlighted and a collection of all your friends’ submissions can be viewed at friends.reddit.com.
Here are some additional factors to consider when trying to network within Reddit:
- Increasing your user reach. As you can probably tell, having a large number of like-minded friends increases the likelihood that your submissions will get more positive votes, because all your submissions are tracked by your friends.
- Vote for your Reddit Friends. Voting on their stories reminds them that you are following their submissions. This also increases the likelihood that they will reciprocate when you submit links.
- Submit regularly and frequently. This adds to the community and also has the benefit of increasing your Reddit Karma, which is something like a reputation badge you can flaunt to confirm your importance and level of involvement in the Reddit community. An equivalent example would be the number of rep points and posts one has accumulated in a traditional forum.
- Comment Actively. Like commenting on blogs, this helps to build exposure for your user profile and is also a nice way to make friends with specific users. Comment often enough and you’ll find that your submissions will receive comments as well.
Getting on the Reddit Homepage
Getting on Reddit homepage requires positive votes within a short time-frame. Most articles submitted do not reach Reddit’s homepage because they were either duplicate material, submitted by users with a bad reputation or had poorly written copy.
Here are some factors of importance to consider:
- Headlines matter more than ever. Unlike Digg, Reddit has a Craigslist-style interface which doesn’t display any description text or link blurb. Your headlines are the only thing each user will see and they are absolutely crucial.
- Who submits? Successful submissions on Reddit also depend on the amount of karma that each user has or the reach of each user (number of friends, number of top links etc.).
- Submission Category. As mentioned earlier, it’ll will be easier to get on the frontpage for specific subreddits because there are considerably lesser stories competing in each category.
- When to submit? . Activity on Reddit is heavily skewed towards North American time. Submitting the article anytime from 9am to 6pm EST will allow you to get maximal exposure. Submitting in the middle of the night will not.
Seven Tactics to Get Your Link on Reddit’s Front Page
So you want to get your website on Reddit’s frontpage and receive lots of exposure for your business or blog. How do you get started? Read on for a list of my seven favorite all-time strategies to get on Reddit’s front page.
1. Create a sub-domain or individual web page for Reddit submissions
Sometimes your website might fall into a genre (think RV insurance or real estate) that simply doesn’t appeal to the Reddit crowd. The easiest way to fix this is to create an individual webpage for all your Reddit-style content.
Here’s the perfect example of how this should work: Car Talk, a boring website about automobile selling, buying and maintenance is an ideal model of a website that will be generally unappealing to all casual or hardcore Reddit users.
What this company (or their marketing/SEO agent) did was to delegate a specific page on their website to this funny article about MIT admissions and recruitment. It worked. The link for this particular web page was submitted and reached the top spot of the Reddit front page, two days ago.
The article posted on Car Talk was not new but the whole strategy and execution was brilliant. By hosting it on a separate web page while keeping it structurally connected to the main domain, this meant that Car Talk’s main business and brand logo was prominently displayed to thousands of Reddit users.
This tactic is probably only good for short-term traffic because users who are interested in the specific article will not return to browse the other contents on your website, especially if they are very different from what was submitted to Reddit.
2. Build up your user profile in the community
This is one of the best ways to make sure that your submissions carry weight. Submit to Reddit regularly, network with other users and build up your friends list. The point of this exercise is to build up a history of submissions and a wellspring of positive editorial karma.
3. Send Targeted Messages to Reddit Friends
The ability to send private messages to fellow Reddit users is a very useful feature when you want to actively promote a submission that concerns your website. Don’t assume that all your Reddit friends will follow you through their friends list.
Send them a short private message saying that they might find a specific link interesting. A long term strategy would be to monitor your Reddit friends’ voting and submission behavior in order to categorize them according to specific interests or topics.
It’s a little like keeping a Public Relations notebook. Just as PR executives send out targeted press releases to specific journalists, you should send relevant private messages to your Reddit friends. The trick is to not do it so often that they’ll get irritated or detect a pattern in your submissions.
Rotate the friends on your message list and keep it to a maximum of one message per week for each Reddit user.
4. Form a Private Reddit Voting party
Form a Reddit voting group which consists of like-minded bloggers, webmasters, friends or even business associates. Get each of them to seed a specific article by voting positively.
However, it is important to note that Reddit focuses a lot on making sure that editorial karma or power is given to users who contribute to the community. Simply getting your friends to sign up for fresh Reddit accounts and solely voting for your links is a bad idea that will eventually backfire.
The end result is that your profile and the links you submitted will come into disrepute within the Reddit community. A simple solution is to make sure that everyone within your voting party submits links and votes for other stories as well.
Make sure they contribute to the community or they’ll be labeled as passive one-shot voters, which leads to a corresponding drop in karma and reputation.
5. Interpret and Critique News Material or other Popular Links
Breaking important and controversial news is one of the easiest way to hit the Reddit front page. You’ll have a lot of competition because other users will be looking to put up the latest news as well. There are two ways to take advantage of the breaking news strategy.
Take a look at the current items on Reddit and the note any news worthy material you want to critique or write about. Come up with an article that gives a unique take on the news item and submit it. This leverages the attention given to the news article.
A example of this tactic is an occurrence on the 8th of March 2007, where 14 of the 15 items on Reddit were about impeaching President George Bush and Vice President Cheney.
This suggest that specific Reddit users were leveraging the momentum generated by the initial impeachment article. See Paul McNamara’s article on Mob Rule in Reddit for more information.
The second method involves breaking news through your website. In order to avoid being labeled as a link jacker, you’ll need to come up with some original opinion and interpretation of the breaking news while making sure that you link to the source.
This is a great way to get to the home page, provided you receive some decent support from your Reddit friends.
6. Take Advantage of On-Site Traffic
By putting Reddit voting buttons, you’ll stand to gain from the natural traffic that your website receives. Your site audience can help to vote up your article on Reddit very quickly if your website enjoys a consistent traffic flow. I’ve tried this several times and it never fails to garner some additional votes. My favorite strategy is to put on a on-site voting badge and drive traffic towards the specific webpage.
Forums are a great way to send traffic but unless they are heavily trafficked, they won’t send a lot of visitors during the crucial 1 to 2 hour period after a submission at Reddit. The fastest way to get heavy traffic to your website is to submit the same webpage to social websites like Digg, Netscape and StumbleUpon.
Other strategies include the traditional method of pitching a specific article on your website to bloggers, in the hope that they’ll link to it and send you some visitors. Getting linked by a huge blog like Lifehacker or Boing Boing will send traffic that can be roughly equivalent to getting on the Digg and Reddit homepage.
Just a note. Don’t send traffic to your article page on Reddit because it’ll be too obvious that you’re trying to gather votes. Send them to your webpage and make sure the Reddit voting badges are prominently displayed. Voltier.com has written more about this topic of using on-site traffic.
7. Optimize your Submissions
As I’ve mentioned earlier, the subreddits enjoy limited competition so submitting your link to both the subreddits as well as Reddit’s main section will ensure that you get a higher chance of getting on the Reddit front page.
Being listed in the frontpage of a subreddit will allow your link to get exposure, which may lead to enough votes that will push the link to the main Reddit front page.
Your submissions will also be optimized when you write intriguing headlines that grab attention and scream for click throughs. Seeding your submissions with comments from friends is also a great way to direct focus towards the submitted link.
Final Thoughts on Reddit
Being an avid user of Reddit with my personal blog, I can attest to Reddit’s effectiveness as a means to create widespread viral awareness. The results have always been fascinating, especially when it comes to the word-of-mouth publicity and buzz generated through social linking by Reddit users with blogs.
The sheer variety of material covered in Reddit appeals to both users and marketers alike. Niche websites or products/services can all be effectively promoted on Reddit through all the strategies I’ve listed above.
While Reddit definitely has a lot of potential when it comes to generating traffic, the most important point is knowing how to leverage the exposure given to your website once it gets on the Reddit front page.
Do you want to build brand awareness or would you rather have repeat visitors, potential customers and blog subscribers? These are some factors to consider before you direct your efforts towards using Reddit as a marketing tool for your business or blog.
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