How to Go Viral Overnight Using Reddit

Last updated on January 23rd, 2024

Natasha Hoke
Natasha Hoke

Viral content — the marketer’s dream, and with more and more platforms to post on such as Reddit, marketers are taking advantage of them to boost distribution. Brian Hanley walks through the basics of posting on Reddit and how it is used to increase exposure.

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*This article is part of the [Content Distribution](/blog/the-best-content-distribution-strategies-plans-and-tactics-that-are-proven-to-work) series by [Upscope](https://upscope.com?ref=contdistarticle): “Click to see their browser, click to take control.” Finally, the [screen sharing that sales and support wished for](https://upscope.com?ref=contdistarticle).*

Summary transcription

In a lot of ways, growing a website is like growing a tree — it’s really hard and takes a ton of time. But if you’re successful, you reap all the benefits of bringing something new and beautiful into the world.

Not to mention, you’re creating a platform that can elevate your position in society. Like a tree, a healthy website needs roots in order to gain nourishment and grow larger.

When we’re talking about websites, it’s obviously not water that we need in those roots — its web traffic. In order to maximize the amount of traffic that our websites receive, we need to construct a pipeline that transports users to our sites from another much larger one.

The first place to start when you’re fishing for traffic and specifically trying to grow a brand new website is Reddit.

What is Reddit?

For those who aren’t familiar, Reddit is commonly referred to as the front page of the Internet.

It’s a place deep, deep in the inner web where users most of whom are young, tech-savvy men share comment on upvote and downvote articles memes and just about every other piece of content imaginable.

Not only does Reddit receive a crazy amount of traffic from these highly engaged internet lurkers, but it conveniently categorizes content by subreddits, which makes posting and searching for targeted content extremely accessible.

Ok, now that we understand what Reddit is, it’s time to talk about how we can leverage it in order to drive traffic to a website with zero traffic.

How to post on reddit

  1. Head to the front page of Reddit. Here you’re going to find the hottest trending stories of the day in no particular category.
  2. Find a story that’s on brand to your website, then rewrite that story on your own site using a catchy headline and a compelling thumbnail image.
  3. Finally, when you’re done post a link to your story on an appropriate subreddit.

Subreddits

The beauty of subreddits is that there are so many thousands of them. You can essentially find any niche you’re looking for, and the traffic that these subreddits drive back to your website will be highly targeted because only users who are interested in your particular niche will be navigating the subreddits on which you posted in the first place.

If you practice the simple 3-step process over and over again, you’re bound to get some of your post on the top of one of the subreddit if you’re really lucky — maybe even the Reddit homepage.

The higher your link ranks on any subreddit, the higher the chances are that you’re going to get a ton of eyeballs on your new website.

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Related: How to make a viral video | Karen Cheng

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Natasha Hoke
Natasha Hoke

Natasha Hoke was Upscope's head of marketing.