Reddit Overview:
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 list 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.
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