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Video Script:
Welcome to SpyFu!
Today, we’re going to talk about Reddit, specifically how to use Reddit to come up with new and interesting content ideas for your site.
*intro*
Reddit
Reddit is a massively popular social news website and forum. Users can post, comment, upvote, or downvote content and comments.
Reddit prioritizes what content you see based on:
One: The number of upvotes something has and
Two: The date of publication - the more recent, the more visible
For better or worse, this means Reddit is particularly good at capturing the internet’s quick-moving trends.
subreddits
Subreddits create branching communities around topics and interests.
You're bound to get granular levels of detail, especially with tens of thousands of people chiming in with their own takes on a very specific point of view.
All of this makes the platform fertile ground to find brand new content ideas just waiting for you to harvest them
How to Find Content Ideas on Reddit
Start by signing up for an account.
You don’t have to participate in discussions, but you now can subscribe and keep track of the most useful subreddits in your industry - places where your target audience might spend time.
Reddit will then aggregate popular posts from your subscribed subreddit list into your own personal feed (called your Home feed).
Here’s an example:
Say you run a travel blog. You could type travel into the search bar at the top, and Reddit will auto-populate subreddits whose name has that keyword:
Pay attention to the number of members.
Smaller numbers aren’t bad - especially when you try to find more niche groups. You just want to make sure that there are enough posts each day to look at.
Let’s go to r/travel, one of the more popular subreddits on Reddit:
Not every subreddit looks the same, but each one should have the same basic features.
Here are the steps to get your Reddit content machine up and running:
- A: Join the subreddit - this will now give you updates from it on your Home Feed
- B: Click “Related Subs” to see a list of subreddits that are affiliated and related to r/travel
- C: If you’d like, you can create your own post to add to the subreddit
- D: To find trending or popular content click on the ellipses to filter r/travel’s posts.
Either by:
Hot - popular
New - uhhh new
or Top - which are the most popular posts over a customizable time range - E: You can also filter by Flair, which are basically preset tags, to find the type of post you are looking for.
- F: Click on a post to see a full view.
- G: Then scroll down to see the written content and the comments!
Again, similar to the posts themselves, the comments are prioritized by the number of upvotes that it has. These upvotes come from people who are interested in the same topic you’re planning on creating content around - basically, they’re your target audience.
You might be surprised on what feedback is the most popular, determined by the exact people you’re trying to reach.
This can be a great guideline in finding certain buzzwords and the tone of your article.
Finding Fresh Ideas
Now that you know the lay of the land, you can look into the best ways to find new ideas.
Ideas are better when found fresh, so let’s go back to the mainpage of r/travel, by clicking here:
Sort the subreddit by “Top,” and then set the time frame as “This Month.”
Next, scroll through the posts, and click on anything that looks interesting.
Generally, posts with more comments are better for new ideas because it proves the topic is hitting a hot button with people.
You want to capture that enthusiasm and maybe use it in your future content.
[Image Source]
This post ranked second over the last month, and it has 617 comments.
When we look into those comments, you can see people recommending different beaches that they believe should make this person’s list:
Comments frequently spiral off into tangents, where people comment on each other's comments; this is where things can get interesting.
In this thread, “Boltforce” suggests that the original poster should visit Greece!
And then others chime in with their favorite Greek islands and beaches.
What caught our eye was the final comment, where a user says - thanks to the comment thread - they now had a vacation destination that they would have never known about.
https://www.reddit.com/r/travel/comments/lf6eaz/comment/gmkfcox/
That’s inspiring stuff. You can use threads like these to create your own post about the best secret beaches around the world, or just in Greece, or whatever the most popular comments recommend.
This can apply to any industry or interest, not just travel. Reddit is so popular and vast, it’s actually difficult to think of a subject that isn’t being discussed.
*wrap up*
Although Reddit can be chaotic at times, often it's these raucous spaces that provide the strongest content ideas.
Make a habit of following subreddits where you know your audience hangs out and discusses what’s important to them.
Then build off of those discussions to create something unique but extremely relevant to the people you want to reach.
As always, thank you for watching.