Transcripts
1. Intro: Hi. My name is Flora and I'm an embodied artists from the Netherlands who has a passion for digital marketing and knows how to get the best out of platforms to promote my brand. About eight months ago, I managed to get on the front page of Reddit and got tons of traffic. This was not just luck or because of my content. I'm a Reddit user myself and I know what Reddit hates and read Reddit likes in a post. In this class, I will show you how you can gain exposure on Reddit, with Reddit etiquette and brand safety in mind. We will have an in-depth look on my strategy for getting on the front page of Reddit and what I gained from it. Why should you focus on Reddit? Well, in 2018, Facebook announced that it will focus less on advertising on brands and wants to make it more about connecting with friends and family. In essence, is going to make marketing on Facebook a little harder than it already is, and that's when Reddit stepped in. Reddit has more traffic than Facebook and is up to ranks with Twitter. With Profile pages, business now have the opportunity to create a brand page where you can post your own content to grow following and achieve goals similar to what could be done on Facebook.
2. Who this course is for: Who is this course for? Well, this course is for anyone who uses social media for exposure. It can be for an online shop or you're a blogger. Basically, anyone who is interested in building a brand and already uses Instagram and Facebook, maybe even Pinterest, and you want to take it to the next level for 2018. Marketing on Reddit does require time and effort, so keep that in mind, that this process will not go as fast as you're used to with Instagram or Facebook. Reddit can also be for people who want to have an insight in what is trending in their field, but it is a great source to see what your demographic is talking about. You can even look if Reddit is talking about your brand. The Internet is always moving, and you should go out of your comfort zone, and try new things. Last, but not least, Reddit is a best platform when it comes to getting traffic.
3. What is Reddit: Reddit is a file sharing site, which means that Reddit is brooking up into a million communities known as subreddits. They each cover a different topic. The name of the subreddit begins with the R, which is part of the URL that Reddit uses. If you're just looking at Reddit for the first time, you may be a bit confused by what you're seeing. This site is a collection of entry submitted by its registered users. Essentially, it's a bulletin board system. The sites' content is divided into numerous categories and the most popular posts from the subreddit are visible on the front page to those who browse the site without any account. When items such as links or texts or posts are submitted to a subreddit, the users who they call reditors, can vote for or against them so they can up-vote it or down-vote it. Each subreddit has a front page that shows you newer submissions that have been rated highly. You can also see that you can look at the past months or the past week. Reditors can also post comments about a submission and respond back and forth in a conversation of comments. The comments themselves can also be up-voted or down-voted. The front page of the site itself shows a combination of the highest rated posts out of all the subreddit a user is subscribed to. What is also very interesting to know is that a lot of sites are linked to Reddit. They're linked in a way that they use the content from the front page of Reddit for their sites, for features like Diply, BuzzFeed, all those big sites use the front page of Reddit for their contents. Personally, I have an Instagram and my Instagram post got shared by big accounts, and it got more than 1,000 likes, which is amazing, but it never got me a feature anywhere else on a website or a lot of traffic. It got me a lot of traffic. But I can tell you when I hit the front page of Reddit, it was mind-blowing. The amount of traffic my website got, my Etsy site got, how many followers I got on Instagram, and it got me so many features on Diply, on Facebook. For me it was overwhelming. The advantage you have on Reddit is that you have so many subreddit but also very popular subreddits. It's the same as Instagram, has feature pages and hashtags, but your content will probably be shared by Instagram accounts that are related to that content so by a craft account or a painting account or graphic design account. With Reddit, you have the opportunity to post it as I did in the subreddit picks, and then you've got a much bigger audience.
4. Subreddits: This is my account. This is my Reddit account. As you can see, this is my homepage. This is the homepage that's set for me. These are all the subreddits that I follow. Recently Reddit started having ads. Here you see a Grammarly ad. They also promote other subreddits but now I'm getting a Grammarly ad. Here you see h3h3productions. I'm subscribed to them. I don't use it only for my brand, it's also for me just a social media that I like to look at things. I like h3h3productions, so I subscribe to their Reddit. This is mainly my homepage. I can see now what is trending in all of the subreddits. Yes, I do look at the subreddit guineapigs. The subreddit pics is a very popular one. Here you can see what are trending communities. It's like hashtags a little bit with Instagram. You can see with a hashtag how many people followed that hashtag or talked about that hashtag. I'm going to show you my profile. This is my profile, here you have the posts. These are all the posts that I made and here you can see my picture, my username, how many Karma I have. Here you can see my Karma. The 30,000 is the post Karma I got from all the posts I posted and they are the comments. All the comments I had, people then upvoted or downvoted it. Also in Reddit, you can have followers. I have 80 followers so that means every time I post something that those people will be notified and will see what I posted. Here you see all the posts that I have. The post that I use a lot is embroidery. It's basically about a community where you just post pics and you share advice or tips and people can post on it and like it. It's basically a little bit like Instagram in a way. I can create a post, I can have an image or a video, or I can post a link. Every community will have their own rules. Don't be a dick, give credit, and self-promotion. Self-promotion is always a very vague thing because obviously, it is always self-promotion a little bit. The people who are moderating it are just people who do it voluntarily and over the course, you get to know those people. I was talking to someone, a friend of mine who was also on a Reddit embroidery and she posted for the first time, "Here, this is my Etsy, " and it get deleted. Don't start off with, "Hey, this is me, this is my Etsy shop you can buy this and this here," because that's not how it works. Let me see I can show you an example of mine. I go to my profile, my Posts. Here, it got a lot of upvotes. I said Embroidery mixed with printed fabric. I don't put anything that's self-promoting and it's idle. But this is also something that I honestly was feeling. I said I made this piece for a Skillshare class and took me forever but the class was not doing so well. I was feeling a bit sad about it and I didn't want to share it on Instagram, but I did want to share it on Reddit because it is a community and everybody is so sweet. People can also give points to the comment. Once a crowd says this is beautiful, that's really, really sweet. Here you see the related subreddits. Let's look at the subreddit watercolor. See I have more than 41,000 subscribers. I never looks at that, but it's also interesting to look when most people are online to post. What subreddits also do is, they have a different team every month, basically a challenge. Every month they do a different team that you submit a painting or a piece of art in that team. If you go up then you can see what is hot, what is new, what is at the top from the past week, past month, anything. What is interesting about Reddit is that everybody has the same opportunities. We all see it on Instagram, people who have amazing content, make the most amazing things and they don't get the exposure they deserve. Then please go to Reddit because everybody has a fair share there.
5. Class project: For the class project, you can put into practice what you learn in this class. Go ahead and introduce yourself in a subreddit that has a direct link which your brand. Don't mention your brand name but just let people know what you do and maybe share a picture. Focus on the fact that you are here for the community. People will comment and probably will ask you about your brands or your other social medias. Post a screenshot of your posts in the class project section and let us all know how the community responded.
6. How to get on the front page of Reddit : How do you actually get on the front page of Reddit? First of all, it's a very good thing to post on subreddit that is popular. You can see that the subreddit pics has almost 20 million subscribers. What I did is, this was happening at the moment when Elon Musk was having his Tesla up in space. You can imagine, Reddit was filled with that. Everything was photoshopped, everything was a meme, the Internet was full. Everything was about that Tesla, and I saw my chance. Saw the comments that everybody was; I'm so sick of this, can we please have something else. Everybody was done with it. I saw my chance of posting a quality picture that I like, I wanted to sell. It got me on Instagram, I think 800 likes, 900 likes, but nobody bought it. In the evening, I posted this picture, and I was thinking about the title. The title is also very important. What is important is you don't add that it's for sale, or hey guys, do you like it? What people used to do a lot with those kind of post is, "hey, my girlfriend made this, but she feels so self-conscious about it, so I thought I'd post it on Reddit to give her a boost." People see through that, so don't do that. Just be frank. Hey, I mixed embroidery with watercolor on fabric. Very simple. I'm not saying that it's for sale, and it got me more than 66,000 upvotes. Here, you can see at the comments. You can see Q&A, that's me responding to people. After two hours, it was sold. The important thing to know about Reddit is that, it's not like the communities like Instagram, or Facebook, where people ask you very basic questions that you would think they would manage to know on their own, not on Reddit. If you say, hey, I made this and people are upvoting it, they'll find out what your shop is. They will Google everything to know where you can have it, where it's for sale. You don't have to tell them. I just did an update, hey this one is sold, first sale on Etsy. That was not true. They see this girl does embroidery, and she has her first sale on Etsy, I'm going to upvote it to give her more of a boost. Because people like it when you are humble, and this is actually true. It's a unique thing that I did. I use embroidery with watercolor, it's not that original. Trust me, it's not that original, but that's always the case. When someone is not in a community of embroidery, watercolor, whatever you are doing, and you do something slightly different, then for them it's really unique. Because they don't see that often. I think I have more than 70 requests to make this piece, and I only made 20. The amount of traffic was overwhelming. My website blew up. People start helping you out. I didn't say my Instagram, or my Etsy shop. I was already getting enough traffic, and this person, he posted this. I didn't have to say, hey, this my Instagram, hey this is my Etsy, he did it for me, which was perfect. Okay. We can also go to this post if you look at the comments. You can go to the Old, New, Best, Top. Q&A, that's me responding to someone, then you have Controversial, those were the one that people downvoted. Did I love this one. "I feel like this was a PR stunt so people could buy stuff from Op's Etsy page." Yes. A quick overview of the points that I covered. Choose a subreddit that's popular, and is related to your content. Anything art related, you can put on a subreddit pics. Reddit is best known for blowing on YouTube accounts. If you have a YouTube account, then for instance, subreddit videos is where you need to be. Try to post when something big is happening in the world, and people are getting bored with the same content. That is your time that you can use your content. Keep the title simple and short, and don't post your own social media, or your website. Only when people really ask for it. Most of the time, people will find out by themselves, and they will have more respect for you when you don't post these things. Be humble and grateful. Reddit loves it when they know you are freaking out because of the upvotes.
7. Traffic: Reddit is known for a huge amount of traffic it can generate. Reddit creates a ripple effect when it comes to traffic. Diply uses almost all their content from the Reddit front page. If you look at the site, then you've seen the small print that the source is almost always Reddit. In my post, they use Reddit as the main title. You can see that they went to my website to get more pictures and found out my real name. After that, the site set feature may use Diply as a source. A lot of people think that this website reach out to you and ask questions and let you know that you have been featured on our site. This is not the case. You really need Google Analytics to find out what website is featuring you. It's now almost a year ago and I still get a huge amount of traffic from the sites that featured me.
8. Extra Tips: Helpful tips. Links. If you can, don't submit a link from your own website or own social media, use another website that talks about your brands. People are more likely to click on a link that they can trust or post a picture and people will usually ask you for a link. Baited. Don't get baited. Some people will throw any post they see, and the worst thing you can do is respond to that. My experience is that lots of people on Reddit like to take on trolls and let them handle it instead of you. Puns. If you can make a good pun as a title for your posts and you should do that because Reddit loves puns. The subreddit antiMLM. Well, this is a very popular subreddit and it's interesting to go have a look to see what they hate so much about multilevel marketing business and you can get some tips from it, so you will not do the same thing.
9. Final thoughts: As a final thought, Reddit it is not an easy platform to build your brands, but why not try it out? You can always delete your posts or even your account. My embroidery is something I do on the side and I work full-time as a teacher. In that month that I got on front page, I made more than I did with my real job and it was amazing. Unfortunately, I did not have the time to really benefit in a way I wanted to, but hopefully you have more time and can do the things I should have done. In hindsight, it would have been a good moves to do a different fish every time and post it again on Reddit page. After that, I could've made my own subreddit, maybe. All of these should have been done in a week's time. When you gain success on Reddit, don't wait, but build on that success as soon as you can.
Floor Giebels, Embroidery Artist
