How to Use Reddit to Drive Traffic to Your Site

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For those in the know, Reddit can be an excellent tool to drive traffic to your site and help your content reach a huge audience and even go viral. Reddit is the go-to place for cool new content and breaking news- with large news stories often appearing on Reddit first before the big news broadcasters.

So what exactly is Reddit?

Reddit is a bookmarking site similar to Delicious and Digg, where users post links to cool content online, or ask questions / tell stories. Reddit users can then vote on the entry which determines how visible it may be.

 

reddit homepageReddit front page. Highlighted in pink is the amount of upvotes per submission

 

Perhaps the ultimate goal of the Reddit user is to post something that gets upvoted enough times to appear on the first page of Reddit.com.

This link-sharing community, with over 15 million daily visitors, is separated into different niche topics.

These separate topics, known as subReddits, all share a readership that’s interested in consuming new content every day.

Popular subReddits include…

With proper marketing and compelling content, it’s possible to tap into the site’s popularity and send your traffic and revenue on an upward trajectory.

 

What Content is Popular on Reddit?

If your content is funny, compelling, unique or interesting then there is a market for it on Reddit.

Since the website is split into subReddits, there is an active community for nearly every niche.

 

subredditsIt’s easy to find relevant subReddits to suit your business

 

As long as your website doesn’t come across as spammy or pandering, people on Reddit may well read and share your articles.

The most popular areas of Reddit focus on funny images, breaking news, music, sports and technology.

There are also communities devoted to finding the best online sales, reviewing a wide range of products, telling and sharing personal stories, and demonstrating health and beauty tips.

Although some areas of the website are more popular than others, it’s hard to imagine a topic or service that can’t benefit from Reddit’s huge outbound traffic.

 

How Can My Business Benefit From Reddit?

Any website that’s properly monetised can take advantage of Reddit. For every 1,000 page views the website drives to your business, at least a few of the visitors will be interested in signing up for newsletters or purchasing a product directly.

In fact, direct sales websites that catch the attention of the Reddit community frequently sell out of stock within a few hours.

The most reliable way to take advantage of spikes in traffic caused by Reddit is by serving ads. While the community is tech-savvy and will run software that prevents ads from displaying on their computer in some cases, there is still the potential for tens of thousands of ads to be served.

As long as your website doesn’t overdo its advertising with auto-playing videos or a poor layout, you’ll find that Reddit is an effective way to drive visitors to your site and increase your ad revenue. 

 

What Are Some Tips to Take Advantage of Reddit’s Traffic?

The single biggest tip is to create or buy quality content. If your articles are full of spelling errors or doesn’t read naturally, it’s less likely to succeed on Reddit.

Another tip is to make sure that your content is easy to share. Where possible, make and publish infographics and share photos.

A lot of the content from Reddit eventually ends up on Facebook, so think of the sort of images that you see shared on the web and do your best to adapt content to that format.

It’s usually better to share an image with a link to your website in the caption than it is to just directly share the link.

Finally, Reddit loves a good personal story. Don’t be afraid to inject yourself into the process, especially if you’ve created something new or learned about a subject.

The people on Reddit enjoy seeing someone like them accomplish their goals, whether that’s building a table, sharing a game that they’ve made, or giving hard-earned life advice.

If you have experience with a given niche topic and have interesting stories related to that topic, share them.

 

What not to do

The Reddit community is very internet savvy and has a history of being critical of content that they might deem as too “salesy” or generally boring, so it’s important to bring your best efforts to the table.

[Tweet “If you use Reddit only to sell and not contribute, you’ll fail”]

If you want to share your own business content, it helps to become an established member of one of the subReddits relevant to your business. 

For example, if you are an SEO expert, it’s well worth visiting r/SEO and answering questions that other users may have posted. Reddit is not a one way street; you’ll find that if you contribute to the community, Redditors will be a lot more interested in your own content.

 

Conclusion

Reddit, like any online forum or community has its own sense of humour and an almost unwritten code of conduct. Going in guns blazing and posting up links to your own products and nothing else will get you one of two things; nothing (if you’re lucky), or a torrent of abuse!

Try to contribute to Reddit as much as you attempt to gain from, and if you do get on the first place, make sure you have got a server that can handle the huge influx of traffic you’re likely to receive!

 

Your Say!

We’d love to hear how you use Reddit as a part of your marketing strategy. Have you had success? Or did you end up getting run out of town? Let us know in the comments section below.

Written by

Nathan Preedy

Nathan has been with team.blue since 2005 and has a background in Technical Support. He is passionate about helping customers find the best product for them and use it to its full potential.