How not to Reddit. Or “How to ensure your peers don’t take you seriously as a marketer”.
Yesterday, I came across the most interesting thread I’ve seen in a while. What the fuck happened to the marketing industry?
It felt really cathartic to read about others with similar gripes without that pseudo-peppiness you get around here. As a marketer, you’ve got to be irked with these marketing rockstar/ninja/Jedi/cockwombles who just waltz in after reading a blog post or 8 who declare themselves gurus. Maybe they’ve worked with some real talent and picked up some methods that work but ultimately they were given these tools. They did not ‘discover’ them by working in the field.
They don’t foster or build communities but just take much as they can. They throw up onto Linkedin, or whatever platform will have them, basic tactics and try to lure the unsuspecting to their site by promising more. A secret sauce of how-to-market where they understand the process but not why. Maybe they’re trying to sell an e-book that has an outrageous name and promises that you’ll get 30x the conversions, 100x the uniques, or your wife back.
Medium has long since in my eyes fallen far beyond mediocrity due to sheer demand it seems for marketing related content. It’s sad really because there’s still a lot of good on there it’s just harder and harder to find it. Currently, for marketing content, it’s just a cycle of:
- X method/tactic begrudgingly emerges from competent marketers.
- X is then written about in various angles/lights by people who wish to signal they too know X.
- Articles deconstructing these, or highlighting it’s actually an old tactic applied in a new way, will soon follow.
- Marketing Gurus regurgitate this information until your eyes bleed.
- Positive articles clamouring on about how X is the method of champions.
- Articles about that failing when using method X is actually a net win. Because you learn.
- Satire/Angry-lots-of-swearing-but-a-positive-takeaway-at-the-end type of articles will appear now that method X has lost steam. Maybe it’ll be called “Why X is bullshit (And I love it)”.
- Fluffy articles with little substance written by those who have nothing else to provide but still want to be heard. Actually, I’m being mean — some people can be absolutely hilarious with their jokey pieces (I’m not one of them).
- Everyone is now a X-Hacker, X-Ninja, or Whatever-X on Linkedin.
/repeat.
So here’s some advice about posting to Reddit. I just want to thank Chris Von Wilpert, Chief Growth Strategist at RocketShipAgency, for providing me with the examples below. Chris who acts as Content Lead for Sumo made a few faux pas that I think we can improve on.
EDIT: We’re discussing this post on Reddit here if you wish to join us.
Posting to Reddit
Now a rule of thumb in any subreddit is to provide something of value in relation to what the subreddit is collectively interested in. Whether you’re linking to something you’ve found or sharing your own thoughts make sure it’s on topic.
Mr. Wilpert, chose to write about Tony Robbins. A man I would consider a multi-level-marketer who slightly pivoted his pitch to keep up with the times. Maybe he isn’t a scammer, maybe he does provide value or something that resembles it, but at least you know where I stand on him.
You can probably guess what /r/marketing talks about so let’s see if he’s doing well.
Yes: He’s encouraging discussion about a marketing professional in our field.
Yes: He is talking about subjects relating to marketing.
Good job! OK, so what’s he not doing so well?
No: No complete information is provided. You have to visit the ‘article’ to find out more.
No: The points are thinly veiled CTAs to encourage people to click the link.
No: The post links to an external article that promotes TR while providing incredibly basic tips.
No: The external article is designed solely to gain leads and not to provide real value as most CTAs on the article lead to email capture.
An example of someone providing value in a post can be found here by /u/ivankrm. He goes over the pros & cons of in-house vs freelance content writers. The article that he links to is quite comprehensive and well worth reading.
When someone says “Value” what they really mean is that do people WANT what you have? It sounds dangerously close to fluffy talk but it’s rather simple. Do the people you’re choosing to share something with want it? Will they like it? Will they want to talk or discuss it? Does it bring something to the table? I mean, it’s pretty simple, right?
Engaging with & responding to Redditors.
Now if Chrissy had followed step one he would not have had to fake engagement on Reddit or encourage people externally to interact with his post. I’m going to let you into a big secret here, one that most marketers don’t seem to get right, and that secret is that Redditors are just people. That if you treat them like idiots they’ll understandably disregard whatever you’re trying to put their way. You are more likely to find set demographics within certain subreddits than across the site as a whole.
Back when it was a techie dominated site (My first post actually was about starting a Gaming Cafe back in 2007, if you can find it I’ll buy you a pizza) there was an incredibly clear cut demographic using the site. As of 2017 however, everyone, even my Grandfather, has some use for it.
If you’re not familiar with Reddit (Really?) the upvote/downvote system allows people to show whether they like something. Now as of this time 15 hours after the post was made it stands at 33% upvoted. Which means it was panned pretty badly. Now, this could be that the post itself, and the article it links to, provide no value. Or it could be that Christoph was obviously just trying to collect emails and people realised that.
Why do I think that? Well, let’s have a look at who’s talking about the post.
/u/mchartill had not posted in 7 months. Not until he saw this post on /r/marketing. I wonder if he has anything to do with Sumo or Christopher?
Scrolling down this user’s history they have posted about selling people tactics if they click through here. The Paypal listed belongs to Matt Hartill.
Matt Hartill also works at Sumo. OK, so that’s two people so far in the thread that knows each other. If you frequent the same subreddits then, of course, you may have this happen now and again. I’ve had the unfortunate scenario where someone has recognised me from Reddit due to my username but hey let’s move on to the next one.
/u/CHADBOYDA seems to have come back from a bit of a hiatus on Reddit too. By two years. Odd. What’s interesting here, or at least shows a bit of effort, is that as opposed to agreeing with Kris this commenter has decided to call out Tony Robbins as a ‘Modern day P.T Barnum”.
Not a bad way to try and encourage people to talk as it’s against the grain of conversation so far but I notice that he too is part of Sumo/SumoMe.
/u/hockeydude83, however, does not seem to have anything to do with Sumo! He could be a genuine person that just so has happened to have come back from a 10-month leave. One that also lives in Austin as earlier in his history he posts frequently there.
Now, this COULD be just a coincidence or it could be that because Crisp didn’t follow point one he is now having to encourage further engagement on his post.
Surely a tip-top content marketing expert would realise this but sometimes it takes someone on the outside, who knows what they’re doing, to highlight your mistakes for you.
/u/-TheArchivist looks like they’ve been lurking for 5 months and has posted only two comments in the 9 months they have been on Reddit.
But you really have to be careful as it’s easy to go full /r/hailcorporate and assume that everything’s fake or there to sell you something. If I was really going to grasp at straws I’d point out that the top comment links to an article by Noah Kagan who apparently has Cris as his right-hand man.
Even if we were to discount that these accounts/people are related or know one another. Are they providing much value here in their discussion?
Arguably yes, I have to admit, as they’re taking various stances on a figure who is deemed controversial by people who actually know what they’re doing. But in essence only one person, Chadboyda, really does that. The rest are just giving wishy-washy answers that are the equivalent of “me too thanks”.
The takeaway here? There has to be an equivalent exchange.
If you want to take something from Reddit, in this case, email signups etc, you have to provide something in return. Because Kristina did not provide anything of value the post did not do as well as it could have. In fact, they should really have just kept this in their Slack channels.
Sure, sometimes we fall flat on Reddit and we’re not as interesting or funny as we hoped. Not every post, comment, or link you throw up there is going to do well. That’s fine the most important thing you do is learn from your mistakes and evaluate where you went wrong. In this case, it was the following:
- Not providing any value in the post itself.
- Encouraging friends/alts to interact with the post to feign interest, badly.
- Calling people “Cynical” when these concerns are aired.
- Trying to sell/promote something in an abrasive manner.
Why is any of this important? It’s not. But in /r/marketing we’re trying to make the subreddit into a resource for people to learn, discuss, and experiment with marketing techniques and community building so posts like yours are unwanted. So if you’re going to post there, or on Reddit in general, hopefully, this will be useful for people in the future!
Remember, give us something with value, or piss off back to whatever Facebook Group packed with upselling MLMs you came from.
Bye.
EDIT:
Oh look at this. My thread was very well received because I followed these basic steps. See, it’s not hard mate!
