Thursday, April 16, 2009

How to get the best out of Reddit:

How to get the best out of Reddit:
Unlike other social media sites, Reddit is more powerful, usually educated users contribute to Reddit. Using this social media channel in right way can boost ur traffic as well as reputation. It can multiply ur RSS feed subscriber by manipulating it in proper way.

1. Create a sub-domain or individual web page for Reddit submissions:
Sometimes your website might fall into a genre (think 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. 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.

6. 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.

7. Comments help you to become Power user:
Comments are treated as the most powerful weapon for Reddit users. Placing a comment in a popular post can bring you immediate traffic to ur site. In my first move I got 100+ hits just for a comment. But Reddit treats comments in a different way than other media networks. To prevent spam comments Reddut placed a counter to track that a user can’t post a comment in less than 7 minutes. You have to wait 7 minutes to make next comment.

8. Timing Issue:
Perhaps this is the most important issue regarding Reddit, the timing problem. Usually a topic can immediately hit the top section due to proper timing. If a submitted post gets 8-10 upvotes, immediately it survives, remains visible for further vote by users, this votes are preferred in first 10-15 minutes after submission. If ur post doesn’t get such vote then simply this post falls downwards and loses creditability.

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