If there is one social media platform that’s widely underutilized by creators and solopreneurs today, it’s Reddit.
Carol Amendola D’Anca suggested this topic. Fill in this form if you want your topic covered in an upcoming issue.
I loved Carol’s suggestion because Reddit is an odd duck, very different from regular social media platforms. It plays by different rules and it offers a completely different user experience.
🔦Community Spotlight
The first 1,000 newsletter subscribers are the hardest. That’s why my friend Dylan from Growth Currency created the 1KS Roadmap: a FREE 5-day email course to help you get your first 1k subscribers. Get your first 1000 subscribers faster and with more guidance with the 1KS Roadmap.
Why Reddit?
Did you happen to notice that Reddit is recently all over Google search results? Whatever you search for these days, one of the first results is likely from Reddit.
There are two reasons why this is happening:
- Reddit signed a deal with Google, allowing the search giant to use its data for AI training. Naturally, Google wants Reddit more visible so they can have access to more data.
- Reddit is actually useful. Unlike most social media platforms and forums, Reddit users are passionate about the topics they’re discussing and spend a lot of time going in-depth on them.
This is also what makes Reddit a goldmine: on your typical social media platform, you shoot in semi-darkness. Sure, your content pillars will eventually attract your ideal audience, but it’s hit and miss, especially in the beginning.
Because of the way Reddit is organized (more on that later), you know you speak to your ideal audience from the very beginning. These people are interested in your core topic and they are more likely to pay attention to what you have to say.
Other reasons to consider Reddit:
- Backlinks from Reddit to your website are valuable SEO-wise
- Your content lives longer on Reddit than on any other social media platform — see the point about its prevalence on search engine results pages.
- Aside from self-promotion, you stand to learn a lot in there. I always recommend Reddit as a great place for audience research. People are more honest and, again, they go more in-depth about their pain points.
- Most trends start on Reddit in almost any industry. The lifecycle of a trend or a tactic is gated online communities → Reddit → Twitter → LinkedIn → Facebook/Instagram. Some trends and ideas don’t make the rounds through all these platforms (for instance, make-up trends skip LinkedIn or Twitter) but most of them originate on Reddit.
Why NOT Reddit?
Reddit demands a lot of your time. As with most platforms, this is especially true in the beginning. It gets easier as you get the hang of it but you will always need to bring your A-game.
To make Reddit work for you, you need a mix of long-form and short-form content, engagement, and consistency. The good news is that, unlike other social media platforms, you don’t have to show up on Reddit every damn day. There’s no algorithm to punish you for skipping a day or a week.
Another reason why you might not like Reddit is that people there are blunt AF. If you’re used to LinkedIn or Instagram, where everyone is a cheery poodle, a mix of toxic positivity and genuine support, Reddit will be a hard pill to swallow.
People will tell you that you suck, that your ideas are obsolete and crap, and they will downvote your stuff into oblivion if they don’t agree with you. Yes, it’s one of those platforms with negative reactions too.
Of course, this is not true for all the subreddits. It depends on the topic, the rules, and other factors. But, as a rule of thumb, don’t expect people to cheer you on just because you decided to show up and share your thoughts.
For me, that’s a plus. Since there is no algorithm that arbitrarily decides which posts get traction and which get buried, Reddit is a much better litmus test for your ideas and content than most platforms out there. It’s all about what people, not bots, like.
But I get why it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.
Alright, let’s see how you can avoid getting banned or called names and how you can make Reddit work for you without spending ages on the platform — within limits! You will still need to invest time in it.
Reddit 101: what you should know before you get started
Reddit is organized in subreddits. One subreddit = one topic.
There are wide subreddits, like r/marketing but also very niche ones. For instance, there are hundreds of subreddits about various marketing topics: social media, Facebook/Instagram/TikTok/etc, content, ads, and so on.
There is literally a subreddit for anything and everything.
Don’t believe me? Here’s the Birds with Arms subreddit. Fringe as it may sound, it has over a million subscribers.
Similarly, there are over 500K people who believe (I kid you not) that birds aren’t real and they all gather on, shocking absolutely no one, r/BirdsArentReal.
Reddit is the perfect illustration of how beautifully diverse (and weird) the world is.
Your Reddit profile
“Karma” is Reddit’s currency. The higher your karma, the more visibility you get and the more respected you are in the communities you’re active in.
The only thing that influences karma is how other users engage with your content: if they upvote it, your karma goes up. If they downvote it, your karma goes down.
You get karma points for:
- The content you post
- The comments you leave on other people’s posts.
Both matter. Here’s a screenshot of a random user and their karma points:
Reddit rules
Yes, you can get banned on Reddit too. Luckily, the rules are much less murky than on other platforms. Unluckily, you’re at the mercy of human moderators (each subreddit has its own moderators). So if you piss them off, you may get banned from a certain subreddit.
Start with the Reddiquette, the name for the set of rules that governs all of Reddit. It’s pretty straightforward stuff but it helps to know some of the acronyms and the Reddit-specific slang.
Next, look at the rules of every subreddit you plan to be active in. They are all different and most of them have very clear rules on self-promotion.
For example, the Birds Aren’t Real subreddit frowns upon pro-bird posts — d’uh!
On a more serious note, r/marketing has the kind of rules you’d expect to see: no self-promos, no AI-generated content, no spam, and so on.
So, if you can’t promote yourself, why even bother?
I got you! I used this approach for several clients and it worked like a charm. Yes, you can still get traction if you don’t lead with “buy my stuff” or “subscribe to my newsletter”.
How to make Reddit work for you
Let’s start with the basics:
Set up your profile
- You can choose a weird username but don’t do that. Use something as close as possible to your real name — you want to make it easy for people to recognize you.
- Add a link to your primary channel in your profile: website, newsletter landing page, YouTube channel, and so on. As your karma increases, people will want more content from you — this is how you make sure they find the right door into your world.
Choose your subreddits
Go as niche as possible. For instance, if you want to discuss marketing automation, don’t go to r/marketing, choose r/marketingautomation instead.
Similarly, if you want to speak to entrepreneurs, r/entrepreneur might be too broad. On the other hand, r/smallbusiness might be exactly what you’re looking for — if you’re targeting small businesses.
OK, now let’s see the exact process to leverage Reddit, along with the estimated time it might take you for each step.
Start by engaging with existing content: 30 mins per day, 2 days per week
Before you post your own stuff, get a feeling of what the community likes. Do this for a week or two.
If you chose a rather popular subreddit, with a lot of active users, your safest bet is to go for the most recent discussions.
The more recent, the more people will see your comments. Sometimes, you may strike gold and the topic you contributed to will become “hot” i.e. displayed at the top of the subreddit. This means more eyes on your contribution.
Comments will also get you your first karma points, which are essential for the next step. As always, people pay more attention to you if you’re not a complete newbie.
Post your own stuff: 10-90 mins, plus another 30 mins to reply to comments, 1-3 times a month
Got the gist of what that subreddit is all about and what people respond to?
Now it’s time to post your own content.
This step gets much, much easier if you already have a library of content: blogs, newsletters, and so on.
That’s why I said 10-90 mins to post — if you already have the content, it’s super quick. Otherwise, it will take you longer.
Since you already know what that community struggles with, you can pick an older blog post or newsletter issue and simply copy-paste it as a Reddit post (with minimal edits, to adhere to the regulations).
Within your post:
- IF and only if the subreddit rules allow it, add a link to your website in the post. Usually, it’s going to be a link to a complementary topic, not a landing page. In some fortunate cases, you will be able to add a CTA that says “Subscribe here if you want more stuff like this”.
- Be helpful, first and foremost. Don’t make it about you and how amazing you are, make it about them. Start with “I noticed a lot of questions about [your topic] in this subreddit, here’s how to do it”.
- But also tell people why they should listen to you. “I helped 100+ people overcome this challenge, here’s how I did it.”
I use Reddit a lot for research purposes, typically by mining relevant subreddits. But you can also ask direct questions. Examples:
- “I’m putting together a research report on [topic]. Can you please help me by answering [questions 1, 2, 3]?” Ideally, don’t link to an off-platform form, keep everything on Reddit.
- “I want to help [insert your ICP, which overlaps with the subreddit topic] by building a program that will help them tackle [challenge]. Which format would be more appealing to you — 1:1, course, cohort?”
The final level: host AMAs — 60-120 mins, once a quarter
By now, you should have some karma and a bit of reputation within the community. It’s time to position yourself as a true expert.
Contact the moderators of the subreddit and ask them if you can host an AMA — Ask Me Anything.
There is an AMA subreddit, but that gets all sorts of topics and it’s a better fit for more generic content. It’s far better to host it in a subreddit that caters to your ideal audience only.
The AMA format is pretty straightforward:
- You post who you are and what qualifies you to answer questions. It can be anything from “I’m a marketer with 17+ years in the field. AMA!” to “I just took a business from $100 to $10K MRR in 6 months. AMA!”
- The AMA duration is typically 60 mins but nothing’s stopping you from answering questions for longer or even the next day(s).
- In AMAs, you usually have more freedom. For instance, if someone asks you a question that you’ve already answered in an older blog post or YouTube video, you can just give them a quick summary on Reddit and add the link in case they want to go deeper.
AMAs are a great way to establish yourself as an authority in your field but also to get new content or product ideas from the questions users ask you.
Choose your battles very carefully here because you can’t do them every week, not even every month — at least not in the same subreddit.
A word of caution
Reddit is part social media, part old-school forum. Blatant advertising and shameless plugs don’t fly here. You will either get banned or called names.
One of the rules of Reddit is “act as in real life”. Would you walk up to a stranger and tell them to buy your product or subscribe to your YouTube channel? No? Then don’t do it on Reddit either.
If you want to blatantly promote yourself, use Reddit advertising instead.
As a whole, Reddit is, perhaps the most diverse platform right now. Subreddits, on the other hand, are very homogenous and hive-mind-like. This is why you should always (ALWAYS!) read the subreddit rules before you engage or post.
Reddit is the last refuge from mainstream social media. People care deeply about the topics of the subreddits they engage with. These are real communities who will enforce their rules more strictly than the HOA.
If this all sounds scary, please know it’s not. It may take a bit of time to get the hang of the platform but it’s worth it, especially if you already have a backlog of content you can repurpose in one or more subreddits.
All you have to do is act as you would in real life and you will be fine. I promise!
That’s it from me today!
See you next week in your inbox.
Here to make you think,
Adriana
P.S.: Think Reddit is not for you but still need to grow your audience? I got you covered! The Audience Accelerator course is platform-agnostic — it teaches you how to build a relevant, engaged, and monetizable audience on YOUR favorite platforms. It fits YOUR strategy, as Kayla says.
Get instant access to it here!
Need me in your corner? There are four ways I can help you:
- Need a bigger, more relevant audience? Who doesn’t, right? The Audience Accelerator course will teach you how to get it with zero hacks and sleazy bro tactics.
- Boost your chances of success by 400%: document your strategy with The Guided Strategy Template.
- Get my product launch email templates that sell: 5+1 emails you can send to your list in 45 seconds.
- Book a 1:1 strategy session with me. Let’s unlock your growth in 60 mins!
