How to Use Reddit to Uncover New Content Ideas
When you think of social media networks, Reddit probably isn’t the first to come to mind. Nonetheless, it’s become one of the world’s most popular websites, boasting more than half a billion monthly users as of 2015.
While most people use Reddit to share and access interesting stories, webmasters and bloggers use it to uncover new content ideas. So if you’re struggling to come up with new ideas for your website, keep reading to learn how Reddit can help.
Create an Account
If you haven’t done so already, go ahead and create an account. While you can search and access content without an account, creating one allows you to engage with other users while giving you more features in the process. Don’t worry, Reddit accounts are completely free with no strings attached.
Use Sub-Reddits
Reddit consists of thousands of different categories where users can curate and categorize content. Known as “sub-reddits,” Reddit created these categories to help you find specific content.
One of the easiest ways to access a sub-reddit is to visit www.reddit.com/r/yournichehere – replacing “yournichehere” with your actual niche. If you run a website about fashion, for instance, you would access www.reddit.com/r/fashion, which will take you to the sub-reddit for fashion. Not every niche is going to have a sub-reddit, but you’ll find most do.
Install the Reddit Enhancement Suite
Did you know there’s a special tool designers created to enhance your Reddit user experience? Known as the Reddit Enhancement Suite, it allows you to customize your experience. It’s been around for years and is well worth the minimal time required to download and install it.
Learn to Love the Reddit Search Tool
Like most social media networks, Reddit has a convenient search tool that allows you to find specific topics and content. After visiting the site, enter a keyword that’s associated with your niche into the top right field.
Reddit then scours its database, looking for instances of that keyword before returning the results. What’s great about the Reddit search tool is it will find both topics and sub-reddits containing the keyword. So while using the above method reveals sub-reddits, using the search tool reveals both sub-reddits and topics.
Look for Points…
When scouring Reddit, pay close attention to the number of points a post has. Each time a user upvotes a post, it receives one point.
Therefore, the more points a post has, the more popular it is. You can use this to your advantage by searching for posts with a high number of points, as this is usually indicative of it being popular and engaging.
Have any other tips for using Reddit that you would like to share with our readers? Let us know in the comments section below!
If you are going to post content on Reddit, as well as, use Reddit to generate new content, be careful not to “self promote” your work too much. All Redditors to push it for you. Otherwise it may backfire.
Definitely do research into the subreddit you are following to clearly understand the interests of your target audience.
Redditors hate it when you post too many links in Reddit. Post a couple of links per week or so. If you post every day they will most likely start to down-vote your content, regardless of its quality.
Don’t JUST post. You also need to become an active participant on Reddit. Comment on other people’s work and build up a solid posting history so others become familiar with you and your work.
Don’t let your first or second post be purely promotion of your blog or site.