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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

#71
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Many years ago I got banned by a moderator on a sub for answering someone's question. I did have a product but didn't pitch it directly except in paid ads on the sub. My username was the website. I emailed the mod for clarification as to what line I crossed because it seemed arbitrary. She never replied. So be careful with your metrics. What happened to me was definitely not cool. And, I quit my paid advertising ther…

I'm a big fan of the idea that it's ok to be a person with an account and a company, but not a company with an account. The dynamics of the latter situation feel very wrong - the goal should be to make online interactions as human as possible.

Obviously I don't know the details of the situation and certainly don't know the mods reasoning, but from your description if they banned you because of your username that sounds ok to me.

Your paid ads are irrelevant, an interesting consequence of reddit not paying moderators is that moderators are also not going to be biased because you are paying reddit.

Re: How to use Reddit to get your first users

#73

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 have known a few people who got a lot of users from reddit. Their attitude was that accounts are cheap so while they were banned numerous times, they just kept on going back.

That's the bad way to doing it IMHO. You don't bring anything to the community and you probably don't get results either.

Re: How to use Reddit to get your first users

#74
post #43

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"

also known as Content Marketing

Re: How to use Reddit to get your first users

#75

Roughly 10 years ago I had a startup idea and had the thought to reach out to "enthusiasts" within the market niche on Reddit and elsewhere. My requests for feedback were met with extreme cynicism, criticism and just outright rudeness. Maybe 5% of the responses were constructive.\ My takeaways: Asking users what they want isn't always useful. Enthusiasts communities can be very negative to new ideas or members.

"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." -- maybe Henry Ford I have always had better luck by building what I thought was a good solution, presenting that to the customer, then making incremental changes afterwards. If you think about basically any revolutionary product ever made, it was probably not a thing that anyone was explicitly asking for.

Don't ask them what they want, ask them what problem they have!

That's your job, as a founder, to design a solution that fix the problem. (It can be as small as a landing page with your value prop on it and some fake demo)

Re: How to use Reddit to get your first users

#76

Roughly 10 years ago I had a startup idea and had the thought to reach out to "enthusiasts" within the market niche on Reddit and elsewhere. My requests for feedback were met with extreme cynicism, criticism and just outright rudeness. Maybe 5% of the responses were constructive.\ My takeaways: Asking users what they want isn't always useful. Enthusiasts communities can be very negative to new ideas or members.

Some subreddits are super hard yes (like /r/roastmystartup), but that doesn't mean that all of them are!

In fact, I've been roasted in a few subs and get some really good feedback from others. If you want to validate an idea, just get as much feedback as possible. The negative ones are the better most of the time. You learn a lot from them!

Re: How to use Reddit to get your first users

#78
post #16

Reddit is a forum and to a forum of enthusiasts it is a personal space. It's more akin to a bar in which they all meet and hang out. It's possible to research via a bar, just get to know people first and they'll embrace and support whatever you're working on. But to those who wish to just walk into a bar and start trying to perform market research or sales... yeah, know that it comes across as an invasion of personal…

I love this analogy! I'm a moderator of r/mtb, and creators have gone as far as to ask me why people aren't interacting with their content. I usually send a short reply about how the community responds to certain types of content, but your post does a good job of explaining why.

I think I'm going to borrow your bar analogy next time I have to warn a fledgling YouTuber about spamming.

Re: How to use Reddit to get your first users

#79

Does anyone else have experience posting on Reddit for marketing purposes that they can share? I haven’t done it myself, but my understanding is that most subreddits frown upon self promotion posts. The article makes it sound like it’s as simple as posting to the right subreddits to get views, but I’m skeptical. The author also mentions getting 400 visitors as an example of success. 400 visitors is nice, but given th…

I got 400 visitors from a small subreddit (/r/nocode). I got a few thousands visitors from a post on /r/startups or /r/Entrepreneur several times!

But you're right, a big subreddit gives you about the same amount of traffic than HN.

Re: How to use Reddit to get your first users

#80

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

You shouldn't see Reddit as a whole. Every subs has his own particular culture.

Just select a few of them and start to participate!

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