If you've spent much time posting on Reddit, you'll know how frustrating it can be to see post after post flop. You might have posted fifteen times, only to receive three comments and five upvotes. You'll catch yourself wondering why the hell people rave about Reddit so much.

While the performance of your posts on Reddit are also determined by luck, there are multiple ways you can ensure that your posts perform well on the site.

Understand Reddit Before Posting

Reddit has always been a platform geared towards more nuanced, helpful, and analytical communities.

As the site became more popular, however, the average quality of discussion decreased. Subreddits were spammed by marketers and people searching for nothing other than clicks to their website.

You can see this in the popularity of helpful, relevant posts, compared to the disinterestedness and hostility toward more self-promoting posts. You can also check the top highest-rated posts on Reddit to get some insight into what works on the platform.

Combine this with the democratic, anti-authoritarian vibe of Reddit, and you start to get a feeling for its underlying culture, and what's more likely to resonate with the site's more active users. Basically, know the playing field before you post. Is your community likely to appreciate the post you're about to share?

The Benefits of Posting on Reddit

With such a huge user base and over two million individual subreddits, the ability to reach a good number of targeted people in virtually any niche is a benefit that few other sites can offer.

Since Reddit is based on more long-form and analytical content than the other popular social media platforms, it is more likely that the well-written content you provide will be taken seriously by other users.

There's a good chance your post could generate a really helpful discussion based on the topics you're interested in. You may not receive any benefits in terms of monetary gain, but it can be a great feeling to share content that is so well-received. Hitting the top page of Reddit is certainly something to be proud of.

Choosing the Right Topic to Post on Reddit

Many posts about succeeding on Reddit will recommend finding a subreddit, researching past posts, then coming up with ideas based on what performs well in those subreddits. This highly analytical approach can understandably lead to more predictable, stagnant ideas.

A good rule of thumb before posting to Reddit is to ask yourself if the post makes you excited. How would you feel if you were scrolling and came across this post? Would you upvote it? Would you comment?

This approach is based on the idea that if you find the topic exciting, the chances are you'll be able to find other people on Reddit who will be excited about it, too. And these are precisely the kind of people you want to reach, provide value to, and win the respect of. You never know what opportunities could come your way from that.

Finding the Best Subreddit to Post To

Once the idea is found, before writing a word, you should aim to know exactly which subreddit you'll be publishing the content to.

You should try to find between two and five subreddits that largely fit your content niche, and don't worry, there's a subreddit for anything. If you want to get a quick comparison of these subreddits you've found, you can use tools like RedditList to compare the number of subscribers between them.

Browse your short-list of subreddits, asking questions such as:

• How many users are in the subreddit? (It's easier to get to #1 in smaller subreddits, but you will receive fewer views.)
• Is it open to linking to URLs, or are only text posts accepted?
• What's the overall quality of the posts like?
• Is there a lot of spam?
• Is it easy to find high-quality discussions?

Once you've gone through this process, you should find it pretty easy to narrow down your shortlist to just one or two subreddits. These should be those with the highest quality posts, discussions, and active users.

The post should be crafted to perform well in this specific subreddit. Consider that if your post reaches #1 in a subreddit, it can potentially drive 5 to 10 percent of that subreddit to your site. As you're starting out, aiming at subreddits with 10,000-150,000 subscribers will be more achievable while still offering growth.

Some people may feel the urge to post their content to many subreddits. But it's possible that many users in a single niche will check most of the relevant subreddits anyway.

Posting to all of these will therefore have diminishing returns, so posting to the top one or two subreddits in your niche is probably enough.

Analyzing the Subreddit

The last step to take before writing your post is to research the kind of posts that perform well in your chosen subreddit. This will guide the angle and structure of your own content to give it the best chance of success.

To do this, you should use the subreddit feed filters to show the top posts from the last year.

These top-performing posts will then be displayed in descending order. Go through a good number of these, asking questions such as:

• What kind of content does well? Are these informative, graphics, stories, or other posts?
• Are there any common themes?
• What topics seem to generate a lot of discussions?
• Are personal or more "corporate" headlines preferred?

When doing this yourself, as you start noticing trends among these popular posts, it'll help you structure your own post in a way that's more likely to succeed in this particular subreddit. Knowing how to search Reddit effectively will come in handy here and ensure that your research is helpful before creating your posts.

For instance, you may learn that your idea will be more popular if it's displayed as a graphic, or written up as a personal story. You may even get an idea of how long your post should be.

To go back to what was mentioned earlier, the aim is for this research to guide the structure and angle of your post, not necessarily to dictate the idea you're trying to convey.

It can often work well to disrupt a subreddit by posting content that is vastly different from the other posts available. But, by using tried-and-tested methods to convey your message in a way that the subreddit will respond to, you will likely get the best out of your content.

Crafting the Reddit Post

When it comes to crafting the post, it's better to post directly onto Reddit instead of simply posting a link.

Users tend not to be motivated enough to leave the platform and read the link you've posted, instead preferring a native post. Posting natively to Reddit rather than trying to entice users elsewhere demonstrates that you have a personal story rather than a financial incentive for crafting your content.

This approach is likely to improve the quantity and quality of comments on your posts, offering you the chance to include other links to relevant content in response to the conversation that happens on the post itself. It'll come across as more organic and genuine, which is much more likely to illicit a positive response from other users.

With that in mind, the body of the post should be crafted to provide as much value as possible. For this, aim to offer content that's better than any other post on the subreddit. The ways to achieve this depend on various factors; there's no one-size-fits-all for this type of task.

This means you're going to have to put in some work. Top performing posts on Reddit often have hours of time spent on them, with a healthy amount of time spent editing the post to make it more concise.

When you do ask for something in return (say, a click to your website), keep the link relevant, so that clicking on it will provide even more contextual value to the reader, rather than just pointing to your home page.

Finally, don't forget formatting. Although Reddit doesn't allow much in this regard, something as simple as bolding and using bullet points can help break the text up and improve readability.

Crafting a Headline Worthy for Reddit

It's your headline that's going to entice people to actually click on your post, so think carefully about this. Your initial research should have already shown which kind of headlines do well in your subreddit of choice, so use this as your guide.

But, you should also aim to have a healthier understanding of how headlines work. For this, you may want to build up a foundational knowledge of copywriting and use the best tools for freelance copywriters, as some can help with improving your headlines.

Generally speaking, more personal headlines do well (so try using personal pronouns like I, you, me, he, she, us, them, and more), while also promising additional value inside the post. Headlines like "X Ways to Do Y" perform pretty poorly, though, there will be some subreddits where they do well.

Engaging With Your Reddit Readers

It's not just good etiquette to respond to any comments on your Reddit post. When people are scanning a subreddit and see a post with lots of comments, they will be more likely to click through to see what all the fuss is about. Your own comments and replies contribute to that number, too.

There are other benefits on top of this. As mentioned, the ensuing conversation will give you opportunities to link to other pieces of content you've published. This all helps to establish yourself as an expert in the field (if that's what you want). You'll probably come away with lots of ideas for other posts you could write, too.

Another benefit is that all of your comments are visible when people check out your Reddit profile. All of this interaction will prevent other users from thinking you only push your own content. This makes them far more friendly when you do publish your own content because they can see that you've provided plenty of value to the community in the past.

It’s All an Experiment

While the advice and the tried-and-tested methods can be helpful guides, you should keep in mind that going "viral" on social media is nearly always an experiment.

Fortunately, a lot of the methods and advice out there can be accessed for free and implemented without any real difficulty. The quicker you start and experiment with different types of post, the quicker you'll see your posts start to perform better on Reddit.