⚡ MC - Using Reddit To Validate Your Product

Welcome to today's issue of Marketer Crew!

What you need to know before trying to validate your MVP on Reddit

Used appropriately, Reddit is a great place to find validation (or any kind of validation really!).

I originally joined Reddit because I wanted a place to share music I'd made, but it quickly became clear that the platform is heavily policed for self-promotion. It felt like If I posted anything where success might personally benefit me, it was either automatically removed or, at best, met with overwhelming apathy. The platform also limits cross-posting ("you're doing that too much") so it's difficult to hedge your bets when choosing your audience.

One day I found out that the self-promotion wasn't the problem. What is spam in one subreddit is gold in another (usually more niche) subreddit. If you are solving somebody's problem, they don't care that you're promoting yourself. In fact they are thrilled to have a direct line to the creator.

Here are a few tips for navigating Reddit.

TLDR: As with any digital product in 2022, you need to niche-down to find an audience who love what you're sharing. Posting content that is too general, or posting in a subreddit that is too general, will result in apathy (or removal).

1. Post with no agenda
It's not too hard to get engagement if you don't have an agenda and it doesn't look like you are trying to sell something.

2. Tell people you made something
Many posts that get upvotes are somebody saying "I drew this". It's better to say "I made this thing, what do you all think?" than to broadcast "New video from [creator] is [dubious superlative]"

3. Post to a more specific subreddit
Posting in a more specific subreddit can bring in more upvotes. Here you can see that I got 1 upvote (my own) in r/synthesizers (220k members) but I got 23 in r/synthdiy (34.7k members). The more general a subreddit, the more likely it is that your post will be filtered out and never seen by the people who would find it interesting.

4. Choose more specific subject-matter
The more specific your content, the more people are likely to care. Going with the synthesizer example again, people might like synths in general, but they love a particular synth. 

5. It all comes down to love
One of my posts in r/musicproduction did well because, again, I spoke about something very specific that some people really love.

6. Be consistent
You never really know what will hit, or why. I made a lot of content to promote my (now shelved) Changes app but nothing ever particularly hit. 
Maybe 10% of all carefully created posts actually become "viral" and bring results. So be consistent!

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Snippets

• GlobalTwitterTrends — A free tool to spot the top Twitter trends.
• Email to Billboard, from Loops — Get your startup on a billboard in Times Square for free, on the 11th of March. Need to apply today!
• Alex Llul — How to sell services via content.
• Dickie Bush — In the last 12 months, Mr. Beast gained over 50 million subscribers. After watching 100+ hours of his content, here's his 3-part framework for rapid growth
• Bryan Maniotakis — How I'm growing my IG account past 100k (an all automated Instagram growth hack).

Worth Reading

1. From Minimal Viable Product to Minimal Viable Community.

2. Dru Riley on Token-Gated Communities.

3. YouTube offering podcasters $50-300K ‘grants’ to make video versions of shows.

 Good Findings

• Want high quality lifetime deals for marketers? Check out RocketHub and why they're everyone's new crush. So is their latest deal for link builders & SEOs. Show 'em some love.

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Gif / Illustration

from Andrea Bosoni

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