First, an intro to Reddit
Reddit is, for lack of a better explanation, the Newspaper of the Internet. It is an absolute goldmine for advertising. If you have no idea what Reddit is, watch this video and come right back here.
TLDR: Reddit is incredibly powerful for spicy workers because there are entire communities, aka subreddits, dedicated to incredibly specific niches. I have yet to think of ANYTHING (a hobby, interest, niche kinks) that does not have a thriving community on Reddit.
The beauty of these subreddits is that if you post content that gets to the top 10 spots, all of the active members of that subreddit will see your content and potentially feel compelled to seek out more content that you make. Reddit is an advertiser’s dream.
Tip #1: First and foremost, here’s what you need to know
You MUST read every subreddit’s rules before submitting to that subreddit. If you don’t, you’re likely to get banned. Rules include things like: making sure your title contains a specific word, using specific tags, only posting on certain days if you’re a seller, you get the idea. DO NOT SKIP READING THE RULES! Not only is this just silly, it’s not kind to the communities that you’re trying to benefit from. If you want to leverage the audience that has been built, paying attention to their rules is a respectful thing to do.
Pay attention to verification rules: many subreddits want you to be verified. While this rule is frustrating at times, I actually appreciate that this means subreddits want to see creators posting their own work, rather than a rando posting their work. I suggest keeping a spreadsheet of your verification stages (stages being: not submitted, submitted, verified, rejected, banned) so that you don’t accidentally break rules. Make sure to get verified at r/LetsVerify, because verification there will automatically verify you in their network of subreddits.
Post in at least 5-10 subreddits per day. If you think about each submission as a lottery ticket, would you rather have 1 per day or 10?
Tip #2: Find the right subreddits for you to contribute to
This comes in two parts:
First: Figure out what unique qualities about yourself can you leverage. Do you have incredibly cool tattoos? Perfectly manicured feet? A bomb hourglass figure? Cute freckles? Any unique talents? Make a list of the things you’d enjoy highlighting about yourself in photos/videos.
Second: Figure out what subreddits react really well to your content. You can post the exact same content to 10 different subreddits, and see wildly different performances. This isn’t a bad thing: it’s incredibly common for some communities to upvote your content more than others, even if we don’t know why.
Tools to help you figure out which subreddits to post in:
The Subreddit Library. This Google sheet contains 200+ subreddits that a spicy worker could utilize. I can’t take credit for this sheet, I saw it posted on Reddit ~1.5 years ago when I was researching and made a copy. If anybody knows the original creator, please tell me!! Feel free to make a copy and save it to your drive to add your own comments.
The Subreddit Spreadsheet by u/nudegeminiOF. Shoutout to her for creating such a comprehensive list for us all to use! The sheet she put together has 200+ subreddits and detailed information on each subreddit. Make sure to make a copy and save it to your drive to make changes!
Redditlist.com allows you to sort subreddits (both explicit and non-explicit) based on recent activity, number of subscribers, and growth within a 24-hour period. This is a great way to find large subreddits to submit to & learn from.
This Github allows you to type in a subreddit, and it’ll show you subreddits that are similar. This is perfect if you’ve found a niche that works for you, and you’re trying to find other subreddits within that niche. In the example above, I wanted to find a subreddit similar to r/puppies and the website pulled data from Reddit’s API to find similar subreddits, like r/doggos, r/dogswithjobs, r/puppybellies.
One you find a few subreddits that fit your unique qualities, drop them into the Github above to find every subreddit even remotely related to the ones you found! I guarantee you’ll be surprised at what you find.
Learn from other users’ success
When you begin finding subreddits that fit your niche, look at who the top performers are by sorting content by “best of all time” or “best of this month”. Once you identify the top performers, look at their post history to see where they post too. Chances are, they’re submitting to other communities that overlap with your niche too.
Use data to guide your content ideas How to create content on Reddit that’s more likely to succeed
For context: My day job involves working with creators on YouTube and helping their channels and businesses reach new levels of success. After being in this space for so many years, it’s clear there are two extremes when it comes to creating content on social media. On one end of the extreme, you have creators who don’t really have strategy behind what they’re creating, they’re just yoloing their ideas and hoping for the best. Typically, these creators don’t quite understand why things don’t perform the way they hope, and blame the algorithm.
On the other hand of the extreme, you have creators who are incredibly data driven when deciding what content ideas to pursue. Because these creators are mores systematic with their approach, their results are more predictable. When something goes right, they usually can articulate why. When something goes wrong, it’s a well-defined lesson that’s been learned.
The most reliable strategy for figuring out how to succeed on any social media platform is by finding examples of content or creators who are successful, then tweaking their idea 15% to make it your own.
When you do that, you’re essentially iterating on an idea that’s rooted in positive data, rather than trying to come up with something 100% on your own. When you use data to guide your decisions, you’re setting yourself up to build upon what’s already been proven as a success. This doesn’t always work, but it’s more likely to work than simply guessing without researching.
So, how do you actually do the right research to guide your ideas?
- First, pull up the subreddit that you’re considering posting in.
- Then, filter the content by “top of all time” or “top from the past month” to see what kind of content has succeeded.
- Then, learn from the top 10 posts. Absorb what you see. Study it. Write down any interesting patterns you see. What is the quality of this content like? What does the photo/video feature? How is it framed? What is the title? What’s the vibe? Make a Google Sheet and keep track of your research.
- Finally, create content that echoes some of those interesting patterns and conclusions. Try to make something that fits into those top 10 posts.
Track your results
It is not enough to simply use Reddit, it’s important to continuously gather data and learn through trial and error so you can further optimize your processes. 30 days in, you might find that photos consistently perform better than videos. Perhaps there’s no need to spend the extra effort making videos, then! Or, maybe there’s a particular collection of communities that really appreciates what you submit – when this happens, it’s worth spending more time focusing on them.
Within 1-2 months of posting to 5-10 subreddits daily, you should have a great sense of:
- What subreddits does your content tend to succeed most in?
- Do photos or videos perform better?
- Are there specific types of post titles that consistently perform better than others?
- Does highlighting specific features or skills make your content perform better than others?
Make sure your Reddit profile is optimized for conversions
- Ideally your Reddit username is the same as your spicy username (the fewer things a potential subscriber has to remember/figure out, the better).
- Pin a few posts to your profile. I recommend pinning one of your top performing posts, as well as an announcement that makes it clear why your spicy page is valuable in the title.
- Write a short + sweet bio, which includes your spicy link written out. Be critical of your own writing here and make sure your bio isn’t unnecessarily long.
- Link your spicy site and your top performing social media. The additional social media can capture people who are interested in following you, but aren’t ready to buy something at that exact moment. Then, you can remarket to them on whatever platform that is.
If you want feedback on your Reddit profile, feel free to sign up for my free newsletter & ask for honest thoughts 🙂
“I heard that Reddit underwent some massive changes recently, is it still worth using for promotion?”
I’ve seen this topic come up frequently on advice communities & there’s certainly some validity to this question. Not too long ago, Reddit implemented new policies that would charge third party apps for using their API. In other words, third party apps could only integrate with Reddit if they paid for it. Regardless of what you think about the tech politics, this definitely did have an impact on Reddit traffic.
In my case, Reddit currently accounts for about 18% of paying customers. That 18% makes all the work put into Reddit worth it, especially since I know that a good amount of these subscribers will go on to renew for multiple months. For you, it might be more, or it might be less. You’ll never know until you measure it yourself 🙂 My guess, however, is that despite Reddit’s latest policy changes, there are still a massive amount of users on Reddit every single day and you can still leverage these amazing communities to find people who will love your work.
In conclusion
Reddit is truly a goldmine, subreddits are seriously an advertiser’s dream. While it’s unbelievably valuable, it does take work to figure out a good content creation flow. Your best bet is to use data to guide every decision you make, so you know your content ideas are rooted in success.
Thank you for reading 🙂
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk! I’m so happy to share my marketing thoughts with you❤️
