Tips to drive traffic to your game with Reddit.

Reddit is a cool way to get information about just about anything on the web.  It can also drive a lot of traffic for your blog, website or product. It's especially good for driving traffic in game related markets.  How much upside is there?  Well let's use blog.zorts.net as an example.  My first post on Reddit increase my new visits by 96.31%.  My second post on Reddit returned 92.80% new visits on top of the first post.  Those posts scored 14 up votes, and 51 up votes respectively.  Very few people voted my posts up, but tons of people clicked on them.  Other peoples posts on Reddit can get 2000+ up votes.  That is a lot of possible traffic.  So how do you actually capture some of that traffic?

First you need a Reddit account.  Very easy to set up.  Much like guest posting on other sites take a moment to set up a good reference to your own blog.  You can't link your profile to your site directly, but make your profile work with what you have already built.  Make sure that when you leave a positive comment it ties to your content.  Unfortunately on Reddit backlinks are not quite as important or acknowledged as the all important 'timely post'.

Next we need to think strategically.  It might be really tempting to start putting all kinds of links up on Reddit right away.  Instead spend your first week or more figuring out where everything is.  Actually read Reddit!  Do some searches for content that is relevant to your blog.  Figure out where the subreddits are that contain what you are interested in.  Some good places for a game designer to start are:

/r/gaming 622,787 readers
/r/gamedev 11,461 readers
/r/Indiegaming 9,645 readers
/r/GamingNews 6,179 readers

Third, Reddit can be a double edged sword and you should treat the sites readers with respect.  By posting your own game there you are asking for their patronage.  Respect the readers time, and have something new to say.  Not every blog post should be linked to on Reddit.  Be an actual and authentic participant on Reddit.  If you have blogs that you follow, promote them as well.  Give them a +1 if they are already Redditors.  Much like on blog posts leave a positive comment which adds value to their posts.

When Markus "Notch" Persson first created Minecraft he used Reddit to get the word out.  And the game exploded.  There is even a /r/Minecraft with 65,408 readers (as of writing this post).  Over the course of development Mojang has spent next to nothing on marketing their products, but continue to leverage social media to get the message out.  They did this not by going out and targeting the site specifically or by doing research.  Makrus used Reddit because he was on Reddit already.  It was an organic thing.  That's the best strategy for viewing your presence there as well.  Not only does Mojang make really fun games, but they also are extremely savy at promoting those games online because they are really savvy about being online.

To get the most out of Reddit what you really need to do is provide value to others.  You have to be useful.  Do you have any other popular methods of using Reddit?  How do you deal with down voting?  How do you deal with others posting the same links?  Is your game the next Reddit Success?  Share any tips for discussing things on Reddit in the comments.