Everything I needed to know about reddit – I learned in high school.
I once fell asleep in a tenth grade math class and my teacher took the opportunity to write on my face. Being a deep sleeper, he had a decent amount of time to get creative and it wasn’t until he backed away from his creation that I woke up to the class’ laughter. Completely unaware of what had happened, but fully aware the class knew I had fallen asleep, I excused myself to the bathroom. It wasn’t until I looked in the mirror that connected the dots. He taught me a lesson, but I’d doubt it was the one he intended.
It was a rude awakening (pun intended) to the idea that math and I were never destined to be friends… but I was wrong.
Every math teacher I encountered as a student would give the class the problems to solve for homework and all I could think was, “I’ve got my own problems to solve. Why the hell do I need to solve yours?!”
credit: lolzombie
I get that you need to practice a skill in order to become proficient, but I couldn’t focus because I didn’t see the motivation to care. As I discovered later in life, my mind is sharper when I’m attached to the outcome. I had no interest to “Solve for X” because it was only manufactured to make my life difficult, but replace ‘X’ with an Xbox and suddenly I become a prodigy.
In my Junior year, while attending a boarding school in New Hampshire, that’s exactly what happened.
While home on break a hometown friend introduced me to the latest in gaming – the Xbox. We played for days and once I returned to school I couldn’t get it off my mind. I didn’t have the money to buy my own, but nothing was going to stop me from getting one of my own. I started… doing the math.
I looked at the price and asked how I could get it cheaper. The answer, buy one used.
I didn’t have the money so I looked what I could leverage. The answer, sell my DVD collection.
I needed to find a willing buyer that would give a fair price. The answer, go to the trade-in store.
I had to get there to make the transaction, but didn’t have a car. The answer, bribe a friend for a ride.
I needed to skip lacrosse practice to get the last one they had in stock. The answer, fake an illness.
With each new problem there was a solution to uncover.
credit: memegenerator
Put simply, mathematics uses equations to draw conclusions, but at it’s core… it’s logic. Here’s an example:
IF [A] you touch the stove THEN [B] you will burn your hand.
IF [B] you burn your hand THEN [C] it will hurt like shit.
THEREFORE IF [A] you touch the stove THEN [C] it will hurt like shit.
Not everything in the real world is so cut and dried. Years ago I was looking for an answer to a programming question and, knowing nothing about programming, I told everyone who would listen what I was looking to define in hopes of getting closer to the answer. One day, at a networking event, someone asked me if I was talking about ‘fuzzy logic’. I scrambled home to research the term.
As it turned out, fuzzy logic is just like the basic logic I knew… except fuzzy.
Here’s an example:
IF [A] you SLIGHTLY touch the stove THEN [B] you will KIND OF burn your hand.
IF [B] you KIND OF burn your hand THEN [C] it will PROBABLY hurt like shit.
THEREFORE IF [A] you SLIGHTLY touch the stove THEN [C] it will PROBABLY hurt like shit.
Logic, much like math, uses equations to draw conclusions.
The relevancy of this thinking shifted dramatically when my entrepreneurial spirit bled into the online world. I had no education or experience in what I was doing so I looked for examples.
I realized that, when you take the most glorious successes and compare them against each other you are able to see a series of constants – things that are true for all or most of those examples. With these constants you have a framework for success. You can do the same with the most horrific failures and have a framework for failure.
My formula: follow the framework for success and avoid the framework for failure.
At some point we’ve all wished there was an actual path to success. There is, and this logic became my GPS.
When I got started with reddit, this is exactly what I did. I lurked to and see what posts, comments, and subreddits were (by some definition) successful. I looked for the common elements and identified those as valuable elements needed to achieve the outcome. For me, this perpetual analysis and testing of every possible variable led to tens of millions of pageviews and highly profitable marketing campaigns on multiple occasions. I’ve created an educational chat community and collection of resources called the ‘Ghost Influence’ to teach the framework I created for using reddit, but you can use this modality to build your own framework for success whether it be to promote a business online or build a successful relationship.
The process starts with finding things to model and with reddit that’s just a few clicks away. Each week I find time to sit down with a cup of coffee and click to /r/all where every post from reddit’s 9,000+ communities are aggregated. By selecting the ‘top’ tab and links from the ‘past week’ in the dropdown you are shown the most popular links.
Each time I do this I am able to identify new theories that need to be tested and evidence to support prior assumptions.
Here’s what I gathered from this week’s session:
1. Showcase creativity
One of the first things I learned about redditors was that they love creativity, determination, and stories. This post combines all three of those elements.
The post links to an image of a flyer (shown below) that was being passed out around the original poster’s (OP’s) apartment complex.
Not only does this post perfectly hit each element, but it multiplies that by the fact that there is a kid involved and a third party is the one posting it. Any reddit post that uses language like ‘I’ or ‘my’ are destined to get less traction than posts using word like ’this guy’ or ‘he’ as it indicates the OP is posting objectively. As a result of this magical combination, this post has 7,111 points and the was seen an estimated 10M times. Not bad for a poorly lit photo with a cell phone.
2. Draw distant (yet relevant) connections
It’s no secret that reddit is (currently) dominated primarily by caucasian men living in the United States – many of whom are gamers. There’s a very fine line between ‘catering to your audience’ and ‘pandering to your audience’. This post sits quite happily on that line.
Ranking in at number five for the week, this post shows how you can dramatically magnify how ‘interesting’ is with creative framing.
The OP took something funny and made it more interesting by drawing a connection to Master Splinter from Ninja Turtles. The title adds intrigue, but the framing adds a level of personalization. If you grew up watching the Ninja Turtles (which most white males frequenting reddit did) then the moment you see this photo you associate a character, a personality, and a story to a (presumably) normal rat that’s attempting to scavenge for food. More than anything, this posts shows the power of knowing your audience.
3. Over-engineering isn’t a bad thing
One of the first things I noticed when I started exploring reddit was the community’s belief in the philosophy, “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing.”
It was this ideal that helped me identify the perfect content to launch My Social Sherpa. This post pulls at that same chord. At number seven, this post links to an eleven minute video which was watched 752,530 times in the first 48 hours it was on YouTube.
The video itself, embedded below, is immensely interesting as it makes you see a household object in a completely new light. You don’t need to watch it to know that in order to have enough content to shoot an 11:39 minute video about aluminum cans – you’ve got to know a LOT about them.
I went research this video and started laughing hysterically. Bill Hammack, or engineerguy on YouTube, has been making videos just like his one on the aluminum can for years. When you look at his uploaded videos sorted by most popular you can see that in two days the aluminum can video generated nearly as many views as videos he uploaded years ago. They’re all just as interesting, but… this was posted on reddit. His channel now has 216,923 subscribers and his personal brand will never be the same again.
These are just three posts from reddit. Every week there is an entirely new set of posts that his the top ranks of the social network and contribute to the more than six billion pageviews its users generate each month. By breaking down what has been successful you are able to create a framework by which you can follow.
“Don’t copy people who are successful. Ask why it worked and build your own unique framework.”
— My Social Sherpa (@My_SocialSherpa) April 19, 2015
You can hope that content gets traction on reddit or you can create it with the community in mind and ensure it. If you’re interested in generating massive reddit traffic online, make sure to check out the Ghost Influence community. With this course you’ll learn how the social network operates, how to create effective content, and drive millions of people to (almost) anything you want.
Drop a comment below to share your experience with reddit as we’re going to be diving into it more in the future.