Reddit

What is Reddit

• Social Sharing Site
• Consists of multiple small communities
• ~7.7 Million visitors a day

Why use Reddit

• ~7.7 Million visitors a day
• Very niche communities
• Very low barrier to entry
• Chance to get massive traffic
• (More likely)  small but steady traffic over a week or more

How to use Reddit

• Sign up (free)
• Research which subreddits will be useful
• Post (title plus link)
• Post (text based question)

When to use Reddit

• When you have good quality content to share
• Would start by posting at most once a day and gauge
• Most redditors are US based, for smaller subreddits this doesn't matter as much

Reddit Issues

Some "issues"

• Traffic won't be 100% engaged
• If the content isn't quality you will get negative comments
• If seen to be spamming a particular domain you can easily get blocked from posting on certain subreddits

Hacker News

What is Hacker News

• Like one big subreddit for entrepreneurs and engineers
• Pretty much the same format as reddit, but with one page

Why use Hacker News

• Getting a top slot will get you ~30k views

How to use Hacker News

• Sign Up (free)
• Post (text plus link)
• Post (text plus text question)

When to use Hacker News

• When you have quality content
• Once a day

Hacker News Issues

Hacker News "Issues"

• Traffic is fleeting
• If content doesn't do well within the first 30 minutes it is unlikely to recover
• Due to the fact the community is a mixture of folk the engagement might be low

Upvoting

Upvoting?

• If someone likes your content they will upvote it
• The more upvotes the higher your item appears (kind of)
• The higher your item appears the more visibility it gets (so chance for more upvotes)
• Reddit does downvoting as well, so bad content disappears pretty quickly

You cannot game the system

• The people behind these websites are _very_ smart
• Votes from people going directly to the link on the site do not count
• Votes coming from the same IP address as the person who posted (someone in the office) do not count
• Voting patterns between users will be spotted, these votes will not count

Commenting

Comment is Free

• You can comment without judgement on each others posts
• Don't just write vapid "great post" comments
• Add to discussion