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How to use Reddit to get your first users

blog.spreadtheworld.net

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Re: How to use Reddit to get your first users

#41

Post by steelframe »

random_visitor wrote: post #17

The article can be summarised to: "Use the subreddit where your target audience hangs out" Nothing wrong with the advice, but most subreddits have a no self-promotion policy (and reddit has a "no promotion over 10% of account activity" policy). There are things like self promotion threads but its only visited by people looking to promote their products and not by other people. Users who don't cease the promotion on b…

I'm the sole active moderator of r/electricvehicles, and you wouldn't believe the amount of self-promotion spam that I have to deal with on that sub. It's gotten to the point that I've written a custom Python app to use the Reddit API to pull all of the analytics on any new post and present it to me in a digested form: How old is the account? How much organic-looking activity has the user done across other subreddits? What is the actual content? Has the user posted the same URL to multiple subreddits? Has the user's activity received user reports? Fortunately I have some faithfully diligent reporters on my sub who will flag newly posted suspected spam in a matter of minutes.

If the post doesn't pass my sniff test, my script will remove the post, mute the user, and permanently ban the user with a single keystroke -- do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

I can't just rely on user reports alone because a few of the members of the community are overzealous about what they'll report. I need a variety of metrics to make the call, and it's much easier to use the Reddit API to collect, process, and report those metrics than to try to click around in Reddit's horrible moderation UI to get the information I need to make a reasonable decision.

Confession time: I started writing the script about 5 days ago, and since I'm waiting to start a new job, I've actually made this script into a bit of a hobby to kill the time. By now it's morphed into a multi-threaded Mutt-like Reddit moderation tool, where it displays all mod queue content via a curses interface that I navigate with VIM key bindings, and keystrokes issue commands onto an asynchronous queue that another thread consumes and acts upon via the PRAW package. For example, the keystroke to approve a submission will immediately delete the post from the curses view because I love wicked-fast and responsive UIs, but the deletion on the backend could take another couple of seconds, especially if I'm rapid-firing 5 or 6 approvals in a row, and I just let that happen on the queue. Maybe if I refactor so that Python experts' eyeballs won't bleed when they see my code (e.g., I'm manually grabbing and releasing locks on stuff that's shared between the curses interface code and the async queue code rather than using more elegant synchronization capabilities in Python) I might consider releasing some source.

Re: How to use Reddit to get your first users

#42

Post by shakezula »

random_visitor wrote: post #17

The article can be summarised to: "Use the subreddit where your target audience hangs out" Nothing wrong with the advice, but most subreddits have a no self-promotion policy (and reddit has a "no promotion over 10% of account activity" policy). There are things like self promotion threads but its only visited by people looking to promote their products and not by other people. Users who don't cease the promotion on b…

There's a big difference between promoting your Etsy fountain pens store and promoting the fountain pen you're making and selling, though.

I think the author is the latter, while the type of promo you're talking about is usually the former.

Re: How to use Reddit to get your first users

#43

Post by im3w1l »

random_visitor wrote: post #17

The article can be summarised to: "Use the subreddit where your target audience hangs out" Nothing wrong with the advice, but most subreddits have a no self-promotion policy (and reddit has a "no promotion over 10% of account activity" policy). There are things like self promotion threads but its only visited by people looking to promote their products and not by other people. Users who don't cease the promotion on b…

I think people are cool with self promotion if you do it in a tasteful manner. They may not even think of it as self promotion.

People resent stuff like: "Special offer just today buy 2 pens and get 11% off!!"

But they do like stuff like: "How we designed the Fountilator"

Re: How to use Reddit to get your first users

#44

Post by andrewmcwatters »

MisterTea wrote: post #21
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #10

Reddit is a very particular audience. Big but particular. I’m not always thrilled about the idea of advertising there.

Reddit is just an enormous public forum of forums; there's nothing special about it. The problem with reddit isnt reddit but users who think a forum is a social life.

No, it definitely has a particular demographic skew. This is important to companies targeting a specific customer profile. Reddit is not a place I want my products associated with right now.

Re: How to use Reddit to get your first users

#45

Post by bitxbitxbitcoin »

im3w1l wrote: post #43
random_visitor wrote: post #17

The article can be summarised to: "Use the subreddit where your target audience hangs out" Nothing wrong with the advice, but most subreddits have a no self-promotion policy (and reddit has a "no promotion over 10% of account activity" policy). There are things like self promotion threads but its only visited by people looking to promote their products and not by other people. Users who don't cease the promotion on b…

I think people are cool with self promotion if you do it in a tasteful manner. They may not even think of it as self promotion. People resent stuff like: "Special offer just today buy 2 pens and get 11% off!!" But they do like stuff like: "How we designed the Fountilator"

That's true here on HN, too.

One thing about Reddit is that the addition of images allows a lot leeway for self promotion by brands.

Re: How to use Reddit to get your first users

#46

Post by lotsofpulp »

davio wrote: post #23

My colleague posted a socially awkward penguin meme ridiculing his failure as a mobile game developer. The post itself was funny and relatable, but didn't have any self-promotion. People asked about the game in the comments and he got his biggest download day as a result.

That’s the kind of strategy that I would expect to find in an article titled “How to use Reddit to get your first users”.

Re: How to use Reddit to get your first users

#47

Post by andrewmcwatters »

Kiro wrote: post #4

Isn't this problematic due to the 1:10 self-promotion rule on reddit? "For every 1 time you post self-promotional content, 9 other posts (submissions or comments) should not contain self-promotional content."

Selectively enforced. I have a small enough profile and don’t advertise much and my account is nothing but promotions.

Re: How to use Reddit to get your first users

#48

Post by random_visitor »

steelframe wrote: post #41
random_visitor wrote: post #17

The article can be summarised to: "Use the subreddit where your target audience hangs out" Nothing wrong with the advice, but most subreddits have a no self-promotion policy (and reddit has a "no promotion over 10% of account activity" policy). There are things like self promotion threads but its only visited by people looking to promote their products and not by other people. Users who don't cease the promotion on b…

I'm the sole active moderator of r/electricvehicles, and you wouldn't believe the amount of self-promotion spam that I have to deal with on that sub. It's gotten to the point that I've written a custom Python app to use the Reddit API to pull all of the analytics on any new post and present it to me in a digested form: How old is the account? How much organic-looking activity has the user done across other subreddits…

Haha, can relate to that. After a certain point the Reddit tools become really inadequate. I used to mod a super popular subreddit (the kind that are always on the r/all) and we had 3 bots and two dozen moderators and still the mod queues was always filled.

I'm about to graduate so I've stopped all that except for helping a moderately popular sub. Overall it's given me plenty time I needed in other parts of my life, but I miss the small joys that came from my little python scripts improving the day for 20 or so people. That was the first time when something I created made impact on another person's life.

Re: How to use Reddit to get your first users

#50

Post by steelframe »

bpodgursky wrote: post #37
random_visitor wrote: post #17

The article can be summarised to: "Use the subreddit where your target audience hangs out" Nothing wrong with the advice, but most subreddits have a no self-promotion policy (and reddit has a "no promotion over 10% of account activity" policy). There are things like self promotion threads but its only visited by people looking to promote their products and not by other people. Users who don't cease the promotion on b…

It is likely to get you banned, yes. But if the goal here is "advice on how to reach a target audience"... it's probably worth getting an account burned (not like they cost money), if it gets your post to the top of a relevant subreddit.

Except if you're self-promoting, you're not going to get your post to the top of any healthy subreddit with an active user base. In my experience on r/electricvehicles, self-promotion/spam posts stay at 0 upvotes with a handful of reports and complaints in the comment section. It's literally just spam that wastes everyone's time.

One pattern is for a YouTube channel to try to spam their content on the sub. I know it's the channel owner (or someone affiliated with the channel owner) because each video they post everywhere has the same logo in the upper-left corner. And those videos are pretty much all they post. They get banned from my sub very quickly, and in my experience they don't come back.

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