How to effectively promote and drive traffic on Reddit

Reddit is a social website similar to a forum, with a huge amount of traffic, with over 200 million monthly visitors, mainly from the United States. Therefore, many businesses and websites are using Reddit for promotion and traffic. However, due to the increasing number of promotional personnel, the posting rules on Reddit have become stricter and stricter. Many people post advertisements shortly after registering an account, and they are quickly banned. Regardless of promotion on any website, the first thing to consider is to provide value, gradually make website users familiar with and trust you, and then promote products and services at the appropriate time for better results.

Next, provide some ideas for independent merchants on the Beehive website for reference.

Find the section that suits you.

Reddit has thousands of subreddits in different industries. You can use the internal search keywords and topic keywords to find some suitable subreddits. Additionally, you can search on Google using 'site:reddit.com' followed by the industry or product keywords to find subreddits. When choosing a subreddit, you can refer to the similar subreddits recommended in the sidebar and the information of the subreddit, including the number of subscribers, current online users, subreddit rules, and moderators. Each subreddit has its own rules, and popular subreddits often have multiple moderators. If a post does not meet the requirements, it may be deleted or result in a ban.

In addition, you can observe the left sidebar to see how others post, especially pay attention to the characteristics of the account that directly places external links. The up and down arrows on the left represent upvotes and downvotes, and the middle data represents the number of upvotes. The higher the number of upvotes, the more chances your post will be seen. Click on the user's nickname to view their information on the right sidebar. Those accounts that directly place external links either have high Karma points (Karma is equivalent to forum points, consisting of post points and comment points) or have been registered for a long time. It is difficult for new accounts to get exposure.

Moderators are very sensitive to marketing accounts. They may delete posts or even block or ban the account. Accounts that have been blocked by moderators can still post and comment normally, but others cannot see their posts and comments. Therefore, when conducting Reddit promotion, it is necessary to have an account nurturing process, which mainly involves the account registration time and Karma points. The account registration time cannot be changed, and Karma points can only be accumulated.

Accumulate Karma points

Karma is divided into Link Karma and Comment Karma.

Increase post karma (Link Karma)

Step 1, use the image search or chart search to find images related to your industry or keywords, and make simple modifications, such as changing the title, date, or merging two or three related charts to create pseudo-original content. Another method is translating Chinese charts into English.

Step 2, upload the image to the image hosting site imgur.com. After registering an account, click "New Post" in the upper left corner to upload the image. After the upload is successful, fill in the title, then right-click to view the image address, and post the obtained image address on Reddit. Click the "Submit a new link" button on the right side, fill in the URL, title, and subreddit for the image, then click "Submit" to successfully post it.

If the infographic you posted is indeed valuable and has an attractive title, some users will upvote it, increasing your post karma and giving it more exposure. Conversely, if your post receives only downvotes, it will quickly be buried.

Therefore, the key is to find popular infographics and headlines, those infographics with more comments and shares, and then process and pseudo-create them. Because these contents have been proven to be popular, naturally there will be many people interested in and vote for them after you release them.

Increase Comment Karma.

In the industry section you choose, there may be people asking questions, at this time you can go to answer. Search for similar questions on Google, Q&A platforms (such as Quora.com) or Reddit. Then use those answers that have high likes and satisfaction scores with some modifications. Similarly, these answers have been proven to be popular, and naturally some people will vote for them. The more votes, the higher the comment karma.

Drain to a swarm independent site.

After operating like this for one or two months, with a good track record and increased karma points, you also gain the initial trust of the moderator. At this time, you can try to attract traffic.

Moderators are against marketing advertisements, so we need to publish soft articles, and they must be valuable soft articles. By using valuable articles to lead visitors to our independent website, we can design attractive benefits on the independent website to encourage visitors to leave their email addresses. Then, we can continue with email marketing. This practice is popular and long-lasting overseas.

There are two modes for posting on Reddit. The one mentioned above is a text post. Now I will talk about another mode, which is a link post.

First, prepare the article. Open the website buzzsumo.com and enter industry terms, product terms, or keywords related to the topic of the article you want to publish. Look for popular articles. Although the free version can only search for articles from the past year and can only view the top 10 results, you can use the filtering function on the left to see more results, which is enough for publishing articles.

After finding suitable articles, we need to make some modifications to make them look original. There are three main parts that need to be changed:

1. Article title

The original article title is a proven good title, so we just need to make slight modifications based on the content of the article.

2. Replace the images

Replace the images in the article with similar ones.

3. Modify the paragraphs of the article.

Retain the main content or core content paragraphs of the article and delete other less important paragraphs, replacing them with your own insights (you can find suitable answers on Q&A platforms).

After preparing the article, publish it on your own independent website, and then post the corresponding article link to Reddit as a link post. Because the article has been proven to be popular before, it is still valuable now, so there is a greater chance of getting upvotes. The more upvotes, the greater the exposure of the post, and the better the traffic diversion effect.

Another method that can achieve better traffic diversion effect is expert-style Q&A. The premise is that you have a good understanding of the industry you are in and your English is also decent. At this time, you can make a post to write about your successful cases or experiences, design an attractive title, and include AMA (ask me anything, the abbreviation used on Reddit) in the title. For example, write the title like this:

IamA entrepreneur who sold more than $22M worth of online businesses and built a 100% remote company while traveling the world - all from my laptop. AMA!

To increase credibility, you can find someone on platforms like Fiverr or Upwork to post articles about yourself on well-known news sites (search 'post article on news site'). The prices are also affordable, so you can search for yourself.

Then, contact subreddit moderators and tell them what you are good at and how you want to help others with your personal experiences, solving problems, etc. Show them the link to the published article to prove it. Most moderators will allow it and may give you some advice. If you actually do what you mentioned in the post, some moderators might even help you promote it.

Once the post is successfully published, there will be many people asking questions. Try to answer all the questions, especially those related to your expertise. Unknowingly, many users in the subreddit will start recognizing or trusting you. It will be easier to promote your products and services in the future.

Lastly, let's talk about account maintenance. If you don't want to spend time, you can directly buy high reputation Reddit accounts. Search 'buy quality Reddit account'. You can also find them on eBay. However, be careful when posting and avoid spamming advertisements every day. It's important to use the account normally.

If you really want to save time, the most direct method is to advertise on Reddit, charging per thousand impressions, with a minimum daily expenditure of $5. If you choose this method, make sure to have a well-designed conversion process in place and test various ad placements, timings, and audience targeting.