Posting Content to Reddit. How to Review for the Best Posts.

This is from the Honor Society published book called "The Beginner's Guide to Success on Reddit" by Mike Moradian. To learn more about the book or to purchase a copy, click here.

Posting Content

After you spend time on Reddit reading posts, observing comments, subscribing to subreddits, and so forth, you will reach a point in which you want to post your own content. That’s the name of the game, right? Be aware that your first time posting content can feel intimidating – what if it gets voted down immediately? It’s a fair thing to wonder and remember – no one is an expert at something they are new to.

Be confident in your thoughts and commit yourself to sharing them.

The Posting Process

Posting content to Reddit is actually very easy, since the platform is committed to that retro 90s appearance. When you go to submit to Reddit, you must first choose if you want to write a text post or include a link.

Next, you need to pick a title. Try and keep the title between 4-9 words. However, some titles may need to be longer or shorter on purpose. If you are posting a link, you will then paste the URL in the open box below. There will be a button called “suggest title,” which will actually aggregate title ideas for you based on your link.

Next, you will choose a subreddit to post the comment or link to. Reddit will list “popular choices” below if you are having problem coming up with one. If not, you can type the subreddit title right into the bar. Click submit, sit back, and see if your comment rockets to the front page.

Remember: more than 70,000 links are shared to Reddit per day, which means the likelihood of yours picking up steam is going to be slim. But, like any social media site, the challenge can also make it that much more fun and engaging.

Tips for Viral Comments/Posts

Here are some helpful tips that will help you create content people want to share and read:

1. Cater Your Content to Your Community: If you are posting in a gaming subreddit and go off on a tangent about your bunny rabbit with pictures of your pets, people are going to boot you out immediately. You need to think about the community you are targeting. If you have a pet bunny, posting to the r/rabbits (2,767 subscriber) or the r/aww (864,407 subscriber) subreddit will make it much easier for you to get traction with the content. A subreddit as small as r/rabbits will make it almost effortless to go to the top of the thread after you post. But, since the thread is small, the post will never make it to the home page.

2. Bring Out the Wit: People are on Reddit to be informed, but also to be entertained. If it wasn’t entertaining, they’d find something else to do with their time. Therefore, the majority of posts on Reddit are funny, witty, and relevant. Funny pictures, stories, memes, web culture references, and self-referential humor are the norm. If you are new to the community, a lot of this banter might not make sense yet, which is why you’ll want to learn the big lingo terms we’re providing in the next chapter.

3. Say Hi to Politics: If you want to get down and dirty with political discussions, Reddit is the place for you. You can participate in conversations, post political news headlines, and get into some gnarly fights with other Reddit members. The site is skewed to the liberal side, bordering on libertarian for many. However, there’s no shortage of conservative and moderate voices on there trying to balance out the conversation. Controversial political topics often make their way right onto the front page.

4. People Want More Knowledge: One of the main reasons why people end up on Reddit is that they want to know more about a particular topic. It’s regarded as an amazing place to share news and engaging in intellectual rhetoric. Therefore, interesting facts, first-hand personal stories, and so forth are very welcomed on Reddit. There is a “Today I Learned (TIL)” subreddit that is used for sharing eye-opening facts, as well as fascinating factoids and so forth. If you’re an information junkie, Reddit is the place for you.

Reviewing Content Similar to Your Own

If you want to share an article or a concept from a website and you want to know how many times it has already been shared on Reddit, you can search the domain link in the Reddit search bar. Paste it in and click enter. You will be shown a number of results for content from that specific domain, allowing you to review the various subreddits to determine where the content has been regularly sent to.

Once you find a few subreddits that are keen on that domain and that kind of research, you can update your search to add in the subreddit specific parameter. This looks like: subreddit:nameofsubreddit. This enables you to see the selected content that was just sent to that specific subreddit so you can be in the know before you submit it as well.

How this looks in practice. You look up searchenginejournal.com. You see a lot of that URL is mentioned in the Technology Subreddit. You can then search the URL plus subreddit:technology to see that domain specifically in that subreddit.

How to Submit the Very Best Content

Now that you know what you need to know as well as which subreddits to follow, you need to consider what performs best in that subreddit when it’s your turn to contribute. Click on the TOP tab in the subreddit to view all of the comments that have ranked at the top. You have the choice of filtering for the time period as well. Use the domain search trick above to see how your potential links are going to perform based on how they did in the past.

Now it’s time to learn the ins and outs of Reddit lingo.

For more tips on how to succeed on Reddit, read posts from our published book below: 
Intro: HonorSociety.org Reddit Review: Introduction to Success on Reddit
#1: The History of Reddit
#2: Understanding Subreddits
#3: Voting
#4: Posting Content
#5: Lingo & Formatting Norms
#6: Who is Not Welcome on Reddit?
#7: Reddiquette
#8: 5 Reasons to Join Reddit Today
#9: The Future of Reddit