My mad-dash Reddit experiment to test my positioning

REDDIT.

The 3 most common reactions i hear when i talk about Reddit are;

• Ewwww! Why would i be on Reddit!

• hm. never thought of it

• (very quietly) yeah, i’m on Reddit

Like Reddit itself, strong emotions. 😆

The thing about Reddit?

It has every. customer type. on the planet.

i kid you not.

Reddit is the backbone of execellent customer research and we’ve used it to nail messaging for everything from

• an events photo collection SaaS

• to a teleprompter prosumer iOS app

• to a healthcare scheduling platform for lab techs.

so yes, your customers are on Reddit!

and if i’ve said it once i’ve said it a thousand times before….

customer research is the biggest and first marketing foundation!

and Reddit has the super big bonus of being a platform that can act as

• your foundation for research to nail your messaging and marketing

• give you a magic portal into your customer’s questions you can answer with content

• AND be the place where you distribute your content once it’s written in the for comments or posts (which can both live forever)

Do it really write (hehe) and it can become the source of

• LLM mentions

• SEO references

• Word of Mouth that’s relevant for yearsssss to come - what other social platform can say that?!

yeah, i will never stop talking up Reddit.

So, behold! here’s how to not be hated on Reddit
(keep scrolling for a recap of my personal marketing adventures on Reddit in the last month)

1. start your account ASAP New accounts have lots of restrictions on them and are easily banned. Even if you’re still not sure if you’re gonna use Reddit, start your account now so it started getting some life to it.

2. don’t mix business with pleasure

Reddit’s gonna serve you content you have no business commenting on with your business account.

If you’re new to Reddit and start getting sucked in for personal use MAKE A NEW ACCOUNT.

The last thing you want is people getting turned off your business because you commented on a political post and they see that on your activity.

You can easily switch accounts in settings.

3. first, be a lurker

you want to understand what the look and feel of the community you’re in

set a timer (Reddit is like a nerd’s tiktok, beware!) and scroll through your subs for 5-10min several times a week for 2-3 weeks.

You’ll start getting a feel for what’s okay vs what’s considered spammy and what people actually care about and need help with.

4. start with commenting as a human

Karma (the measure by which Reddit’s algo and the mods) will judge you takes commenting to earn

once again: just careful not to upvote or comment anything that’s “too” political or NSFW → that will show up on your profile and people do check it out

5. choose your subs wisely

Gummysearch will recommend subs to you when you sign up, i recommend starting with no more than 20 or it’s gonna get overwhelming (esp if they’re large)

6. be genuinely helpful

Reddit comments can be blog posts (i should know, my average comment length when giving advice is ~800 words). but don’t do “low effort”

7. post on occasion, comment ad naseum

posts are prone to getting banned, comments are not (unless you’re an asshole).

then when you actually have something to post about, no one bats an eye.

There’s lots of formats that consistently work - like all marketeing, it completely depends on your audience.

My strongest lead from Redit came from a comment i posted over a year ago. They read it, were impressed with the depth of advice, DM’d me because he liked my approach.

Speaking of me, here’s a recap of what i’ve been up to on Reddit.

In the last month, i’ve posted on Reddit 3x, and left dozens of comments.

Here’s each post, what my goal was, and how it’s worked for me!

Post #1 - Free help (but you had to accept my DM)

My goals

• test my new positioning live on a call with people who had never seen my content

The results:

• 5 calls in 1 week

• 1 proposal (didn’t close, might in 60 days)

• 5 newsletter subs (that are all still subbed - hi y’all! 👋🏽)

• spike in website traffic (by 405 new visitors)

The big takeaway:

• my updated positioning and new copy lines slap 💪🏽

• that push + proposal was part of me realizing that my sales process was broken (wholeeee issue coming up on sales!) 🫠

Post #2 - Free help number two

My goal: drum up so more leads

The results:

• 3 calls booked (1 completed, the rest are next week)

• 1 newsletter sub

The big takeaway:

• it’s too early to say

Post #3 - free advice (the ✨viral✨ one on Tuesday)

Edit 4 on the post (not shown) was me plugging my marketing framework i talked about last issue, with the individual newsletter issues linked. 

My goal: this was purely an experiment! (and okay, a lead or two would have been nice!)

I’d seen someone else’s post take off that was a similar “comment and i’ll help” and so i DM’d him and asked if i could do something similar.

He gave the thumbs up and i decided to test it while i was drafting this issue.

The results:

• 8 new newsletter subs

• 1 call (pending)

The big takeaway:

• Don’t offer this much free help 😅 

  i give super detailed advice, and doing it at scale simply isn’t possible with the time i have available for marketing. That’s what my evergreen content is for (like this newsletter or my blog post or my free resources on Gumroad)

So my long-term play with this post? Getting mentioned by ChatGPT (hopefully!)

I’ve been doing a lot of research on what it takes to get LLM’s to recommend and mention you and your content by name. And Reddit is well-known to be a source for LLM training data.

3 of those big things (according to ChatGPT and Rand Fishkin)

• having words and phrases show up next to each other consistently

• being in sites with a high authority ranking (Reddit has VERY high rankings)

• giving clear steps and branded terms in an easy-to-scrape way (LLM’s LOVE to give frameworks!)

Now that i’ve updated my positioning and have been doing a full-court content marketing press, i want my branded frameworks to show up. Constantly saying them in a well-ranked Reddit post is a good way for ChatGPT (and Google, for that matter) to pick up and refer to them.

For me, my biggest test/success for this post is if i have a call booked out of the blue in 1-2 months and the lead source is ChatGPT.

If i had a product company and could send them straight to a sales page, i bet this would be a lot more of a home-run in terms of money making.

For Example, Braden’s whole company is because he posted his nifty product on Reddit.

you think i went viral, heck, checkout the stats on this bad baby:

to quote Braden:

he posted again once he had the tool built too. 🙂

Here’s the bottom line: Reddit works for practically any industry or niche. You just have to commit to being genuinely helpful and showing up consistently in a way that people want to chat with.

i know, shocker, it’s what i’ve said about every marketing channel and campaign ever (hehehe).

The kicker with Reddit is just how much they will fight tooth and nail to keep the community feeling like a community.

Which shouldn’t be surprising - it’s one of the oldest social media companies that’s still kicking.

And the people there have donned their own sorting hat to meet strangers they have a commonality with.

Approaching Reddit with a “selling” mentality is like sitting at a strangers lunch table and trying to sell them your lunch.

Dude.
Weird.
Leave.

But if you are genuine and committed, you’ll have the joy of customers cheering for you for years, even more than a decade later.

And that’s worth taking it slow.

Want even more help with Reddit? my friend Konstantin and I are working on a microsite of examples of Reddit posts that performed well and were human. (check out the site “how to say no” and you’ll have a rough idea of what it will look like)

If you’re curious about Reddit or have a success story you want to share, please drop your name and email here in this Tally form below!

If you have thoughts on Reddit, join the chatter on LI! The comments are keen.

We’ll see you and your inbox next week!

Cheers!

Sophia ⚡👩🏽‍💻 & Aelia ✨🧕🏽

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