How I successfully launched my app on Reddit, and how you can too
Reddit is a mystery to many growth hackers and marketers due to the communities knack for removing self-promoting posts. I explain the strategy I used to launch my app Giffiti, which hit the Reddit & Imgur homepage and landed press from TechCrunch and TheNextWeb.
It was 2015 and GIFs were all the rage. My cofounder Nalin Mittal and I were avid GIF users and wanted an easier way to create compelling GIF content without having to use complex software. Giffiti started as a way to do just that - create a GIF from your photos using an index of curated GIF stickers.
With no traction coming from the App Store and our Product Hunt launch slower than anticipated, we looked elsewhere to get users and quality feedback. After 8 years of being a Redditor and more than a few failed launches on the platform, I had deep knowledge over its userbase and quirks, which I used to craft our second Giffiti launch.
What you need before getting started:
👽 A Reddit account with history
You should have a Reddit account that is at least 2 years old and enough post & comment karma to show that you’ve been an active member of the community. Many Subreddits don’t allow posts from new accounts and lack of activity is a red flag for self-promotion.
👬 An understanding of your audience on Reddit
Know who your target users are and how to engage with them. Spend time talking with Redditors to learn the lingo and content that’s trending.
🛠 A product that solves a problem
If you’ve built a product that doesn’t solve a problem you won’t get far marketing it. Make sure you’ve solved a problem that people have and that those people exist on Reddit.
Step 1: Identify a Subreddit
Use Reddit’s search tool to find your target Subreddit. Many communities may look the same, but have very different personalities.
Subscribe and engage with different Subreddits to see their post and comment mannerisms. Being able to relate to these users is pivotal in having a successful launch.
While you may feel your product will resonate with many communities, I suggest only choosing one. Posting to multiple Subreddits at once is a good way to get your posts removed and your account banned from those communities.
Last but not least, read the Subreddit rules. I cannot stress this enough. Rules may change drastically based on the Subreddit you’re in and making sure you follow them is imperative if you don’t want your post removed.
🙌 What We Did
We chose /r/gifs to launch Giffiti, a Subreddit made for GIF users and creators. These users live by the GIF and would provide valuable feedback for our product, while also has enough scale to bring significant eyeballs to our App Store listing.
Step 2: Craft your post
Once you have identified your Subreddit, search for other self-promotion posts to get a clue to how people have hacked it in the past. Use the Subreddit search filter and begin crawling through the top posts for your search queries. You can mimic how these posts were constructed, from title to first comment.
If you can’t find a successful self-promotion post, don’t fret. Here are some tips on how to craft yours from scratch:
Make sure you link to easily digestible content
Linking to your signup splash page is a surefire way to get your post removed. Regardless of the Subreddit, Redditors love GIFs and images as they are easy content to view (and easy content to share). If you can summarize your product within one of these mediums, do it.
If you are posting a GIF or image, host your content on Imgur. Any traction your Reddit post receives has the ability to cross-pollinate into Imgur’s community.
It’s ok to give your title some personality but keep the message clear
Once you understand how the subreddit behaves you can reference memes, trends and posts that have recently gained traction. Don’t try too hard, though. Redditors can identify a company trying to pass as one of their own from a mile away.
Asking for feedback in your title is also a good approach to get users to comment on your post.
No one cares about your brand name so keep it out
Unless your product name is funny or highly relevant, no one will care. Keep it out of your title as it’s an immediate red flag for self-promotion.
Avoid heavy promotion/attribution in your first comment
This is where you can craft your story and explain the problem you’re solving. This is a great time to show Redditors that you are part of the community.
Make sure you provide an attribution link back to your product but keep it subtle to disguise the fact that it’s self-promotion.
Post at the right time
A majority of Reddit’s users are located in the United States, so make sure you post while they’re awake. User minimaxir used BigQuery to paint a picture around when you should make your post. Here’s a quote from his article:
The day-of-week mostly does not matter, but hour matters significantly: about 3x as many submissions go viral when they are posted in the morning EST than if they are posted late in the day. — @minimaxir
Read his writeup: http://minimaxir.com/2015/10/reddit-bigquery/
🙌 What We Did
I created a short GIF of our app in-use, showing stickers that were popular memes at the time. I uploaded the GIF to Imgur and made sure the post was public. Note that our post linked directly to the GIF itself; no attribution to our app was present at all other than the app logo at the top on the GIF.
Our main goals were to receive feedback on our MVP and acquire installs. I included the title of our app in the post since it pertained to the GIF community, while also asking for feedback.
We pushed our Reddit post live to /r/gifs at 1pm on a Tuesday. 🕐
Step 3: Engage, engage, engage
Once your post is live, glue yourself to your seat and wait. Make sure to engage with new comments quickly as this can spark an ongoing conversion. Comments can spiral out of control… prepare yourself.
Make sure you have the time to engage with your post. I spent the next 36 hours responding to over 3,300 comments and hundreds of direct messages. While many posts won’t get this kind of traction, it doesn’t hurt to cancel that reservation at the Genius Bar to make sure you have the time to support an ongoing conversion.
The Fallout
We were on the Reddit All Homepage for approximately 5 hours, gaining 21,166 upvotes and 2,200 comments:
Our GIF also hit the Imgur homepage, receiving 16,000 favorites and 1,100 comments:
Over the next 36 hours we received over 1,000 5 star reviews in the App Store and placement in Trending Searches:
Over the next few days we climbed the App Store Entertainment charts to hit #13 in the US and #2 in South Korea.
We were able to use this traction to land press from TechCrunch and TheNextWeb:
Last but definitely not least, installs from our Reddit and Imgur posts totaled 38,000 with an additional 7,000 coming from TC and TNW:
I won’t lie to you, much of my app’s launch success was based on sheer luck and timing, but if you follow these steps it can set you down a similar path. Every product is different, and some may resonate more on Reddit than others. If you speak the same language as your Reddit audience, follow your heart and you’ll hit gold.
If you got even a sliver of value from this write-up, please applause!
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Tim is currently Product Manager for Growth at PicCollage, a top 10 Photography app on iOS and Android.
Follow me on Product Hunt and Twitter.
