Hey guys, Lauren from Inkitt here. In this week’s video I’m going to give you my top 5 tips for social media promotion for authors on Reddit.
The Reddit platform is very different than the others that we have discussed so far. To put it mildly, the community there can be very cutthroat. On average, they do not like advertising and self-promotion. If you can work your way into the community, though, you can find unbelievable success with growing your audience, and potentially find some of your most loyal fans.
So, here we go:
1. Research Your Subreddits
Reddit is organized in groups called subreddits which centre around a certain topic. Each of these groups forms a tight-knit community with separate rules. Always make sure you read a subreddit’s rules and guidelines before you post. If you’re still not sure whether it’s ok to post, message the moderators of the subreddit and ask them whether they’re happy for you to go ahead.
You should do some research to locate your target audience and take advantage of the different subreddits you can post in. I recommend that you search for three different kinds of subreddits to post in:
– Theme
– Genre
– Reader
Take one of our recently published books for example: ‘Just Juliet’, by Charlotte Reagan, is an LGBT YA romance novel. You could post in LGBT, YAwriters, and freeEBOOKS subreddits.
2. Learn How to Format Your Posts
One of the trickier bits is learning the format to post in on Reddit. You need to be sure to follow the rules in each of the different groups and learn how to structure posts based on platform guidelines.
For text posts: Post something honest and original, explain the situation, not promotional. Something like: ‘Hey, I am a first time author, and I would really appreciate it if you could help me out and check out my new book.’
If you choose to do this kind of post, they also offer help with formatting.
If you want to, or have to, post a link, you can take advantage of the comments to tell everyone about what the link goes to.
Another important thing is that you tag your posts properly. Many subreddits ask you to identify the purpose of your post: ie. writing help, advertising, etc.
Once again: you need to be sure that you carefully read and follow the rules of each of these groups, otherwise you will have a very unwelcoming experience. If you aren’t sure if you can post something, reach out to a moderator and ask.
3. Learn the Best Time to Post
Do some surveillance to discover the best time of day to post. Each subreddit keeps a tally of not only how many community member are belong to the subreddit, but also how many of those members are active in the group at any give time. Take note of the statistics, and figure out when there is the highest amount of traffic. That will be the best time to make a post and assure that it gets seen by the highest amount of people possible.
4. Monitor Your Comments
Once you have made your post, don’t just run away. A key part to your success in the community is participating. You need to answer the comments. Members who respond and engage are valued. You should also remember that a lot more people will read your posts than comment on it. If they see that you are unresponsive you will lose more than just one potential reader that took the time to comment.
5. Give Back to the Community
We can’t stress this enough! The best way to make sure you are welcome in the community is to be an active participant. You need to be commenting on other posts, upvote, give tips to others, help where you can. This will result in you collecting Karma points, the kind of currency that is used on the platform. Your Karma points are a mark of how active you are in the Reddit community. The more active you are, the more Karma you have, the higher the chance that the community will embrace and support you when it comes time to advertise your work.
That’s it for this week. If there is something that you think I missed, or you have any questions, let me know in the comments down below.
Bye!
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