Treating Reddit Like an Ad Channel
Type: warning
Stage: Stage 6: Traffic Proof
Difficulty: intermediate
Reddit communities can smell promotion immediately. A founder who only shows up to post links will usually damage trust before earning traffic. Your post should be useful even without the product link. If it isn't — if the post only makes sense because your product exists — the community will know.
Overview
Reddit communities can smell promotion immediately. A founder who only shows up to post links will usually damage trust before earning traffic.
Avoid when
Your post is mostly about your product. If removing the product link would make the post meaningless, it reads as an ad.
Better signal
Your post is useful even without the product link. The community would upvote it regardless of whether you built something. That is the post that also earns traffic.