How To Promote Yourself On Reddit

Promoting your content and offers on Reddit is an ungrateful task.

Do it wrong and you’ll get hate from anonymous users who are masters at critiquing and hurting you to your very core.

Do it right, however, and your site might be “broken by Reddit”. Meaning, you’ll get such a large influx of visitors that your poor servers can’t handle the load.

Want to know how to promote on Reddit the right way?

Here’s how I did it.

1. Create Your Reddit Account And Farm Upvotes
2. How To Get Upvotes On Reddit
3. What Type Of Post Should You Write To Promote On Reddit?
4. How To Optimize Your Promo Post On Reddit
5. Long-Term Success On Reddit
6. BONUS: Websites are antiquated, do this instead

Create your account, farm upvotes (Reddit karma)

No Reddit account yet?

Stop reading.

Create an account. Here’s a link -> Reddit.com

Done? Good.

The reason I wanted you to do it immediately is that account age matters.

If Redditors see an unknown account promoting anything and they notice the account was created yesterday…?

Your post was doomed to fail before you even hit submit.

Reddit is one the biggest forum on the planet right now. With that comes an absurd amount of misinformation. Governments spew their own agenda. Movements clash with one another. Relentless bots keep spamming subreddits with trash. In other words, Redditors have a reason to be cynical.

How to get upvotes on Reddit

Note, there is a difference between getting upvotes and being seen as trustworthy. Anyone can farm Reddit karma by reposting cute images, popular memes or popular YouTubers in the appropriate subreddits. If your account only consists of those posts, you’ve wasted your time.

Want to do this right?

1. Make a list of subreddits relevant to your niche.

Usually, you can find a minimum of 5 subreddits that your content/offer fits in with. These are the ones that you should engage with. Ignore the rest of Reddit. They’re not your audience.

2. Regularly comment on posts in the subreddit

It’s important that these replies are at least somewhat valuable. They need to be seen as genuine. You need to be seen as a person. For this to work, you obviously need to know something about the topic. If not, Google some valuable information and show people that you put effort into your replies and posts.

That’s it. Upping your Reddit karma is the easy part.

Now for the actual post.

How to write a promotion post on Reddit

First off, read the rules of the sub. Some explicitly prohibit self-promotional posts. Oh well. Better to move on than to spend time figuring out how to not get banned.

Better to focus on communities that allow promo posts.

So, what kind of post should you write?

Write a text-based post, following copywriting best practices.

Never just a link.

Because think about it.

Redditors hate being sold to. More so than any other forum or community.

But they love to click, promote, and buy.

So what you need to do is disguise your promotion. And please do be ethical about this. If you’re promoting your service, write a valuable guide where your service with links is mentioned. Link to other sites as well, otherwise it’s too obvious.

The more value you can add to your post, the better. Note that I didn’t specify a word amount. It’s all about the value your readers get from your post. Naturally, the more value you add, the more words your post will have. Much like the SEO game.

You also want to keep engaging with your audience after your promotions, even if you haven’t planned to promote anything in the near future. Why? Because insiders are always more accepted than outsiders. Become a Reddit insider by participating in discussions regularly. There’s no other way around it.

How To Optimize Your Promo Post On Reddit

Let’s say you have a SaaS app that you want to promote. You’ve never promoted anything before on Reddit. What should you do?

The first thing is to figure out where your target audience might hang out.

For a web app, r/sidehustles is a safe bet to start with.

The best time to post depends on the subreddit. Want to figure out an exact time? Head over to Delayforreddit and type in your subreddit.

The title of your post is a perfect exercise in copywriting. In a nutshell, make sure that your title:

Triggers the inner curiosity in people.
Hints at what readers might learn in the post.
Is believable.
Is humble.

This is harder than you might think. I’ve noticed that you don’t need to limit yourself to any specific number of characters. In fact, a longer title is better. It gives you more virtual real estate to work with.

When writing your text post, write it first without thinking too much about grammar or structure. Be sure to get all your ideas written down.

The next phase is to return a while later and edit the text post.

Remember this acronym, CUB.

Read your post out loud and edit any part of the post that is either confusing, unbelievable, or boring (this is known as a CUB review, used by copywriters young and old).

Confusing posts are ignored. It’s an established fact that people who are confused will simply move on (and won’t engage or buy).

Unbelievable posts are also ignored because anyone can say anything on the internet. And checking your credentials is challenging. Meaning, it’s easier to just ignore. Path of least resistance.

Boring is obvious. People surf to scratch an itch, to be entertained, to consume great content. If we wanted to be bored we’d just turn off our phones.

15 Point Checklist For Optimizing Your Reddit Post

Do you know what your target audience likes?
Have you checked Delayforreddit to find best times to post?
Is your post a text post (not a link post)?
Does your title tease what’s inside?
Does your title hint at what readers could learn?
Is your title believable?
Is your title clear?
Is your title exciting?
Do you come across as a humble person in your title?
Is your text post believable?
Is your text post clear?
Is your text post exciting to read?
Do you come across as a humble person in your text post?
Have you read your post out loud?
Have you performed a CUB review of the post?

Long-term Promotion Success on Reddit

The best way to promote yourself on Reddit is to treat it as a long-term game. Instead of posting one promotional post, become a part of the community where your name is recognized as the person from that site. Your name becomes synonymous with whatever you’re promoting, and when you do submit a promotional post, most people will be fine with it, because they know that’s who you are.

If you’re used to promoting yourself on any other social media, you notice that the principles aren’t that different. “DM me” comments just brand you as a leech without any value. But consistently add value in public and you’ll get known as the helpful person from yourwebsite dot com.

In any social media, out of a 100 people, 90 will spectate, 9 will engage, and 1 will create.

Remember that getting low engagement, a couple of downvotes, and the occasional angry comment doesn’t mean your post did badly. The beauty of Reddit is that, in the right place, at the right time, it doesn’t matter if your post seemingly does poorly. Because the silent majority of people browsing the site will see, click, and buy your offer.

No matter the upvote count.

BONUS Tip: Don’t Link To Your Website, Link to your Subreddit Instead

In my research I stumbled upon two companies that create MASSIVE value for readers on Reddit. They do this through value posts they spray on relevant subreddits.

But.

The CTAs in their posts don’t link to any website. Instead they simply link to their own sub.

Their own subreddit they’ve created.

Why would they do this?

Because Redditors have been inundated with links to low-value websites for over a decade now. People are instantly wary of someone pushing you towards their site.

But if you gently prod them to take a look at your own brand’s subreddit (instead of your site)… few people will have a problem with that.

Here are two examples:

User “copylegends” aka Matt Bockenstette and r/salescopy