Spent 2 months marketing on Reddit. Went viral, got removed. Here's what works (and what doesn't)

Hey everyone!

I’ve spent the last two months promoting my project on Reddit. Went viral, got removed by moderators, and everything in between.

Here’s a recap of what I did, what works, and what doesn’t.

Launch posts (work): there are a ton of communities that let you showcase your product without getting banned, I made a list of subreddits with my target audience -> read the community guidelines on self-promotion -> checked if they have a dedicated flair or a designated day (usually on Saturday) -> shared my product. The first time it didn’t get any views/upvotes but I continued working on the copy until I found one that goes viral regularly. My best tips?

• Match the tone of the community: this is what makes the difference between going viral and getting ignored (or banned).
• Subreddit size doesn’t matter that much: people ignore smaller communities, but I had the same post go viral in a 95K subreddit and in a 9.5K one and got nearly the same visits to my project.
• Let Reddit help you: if you’re struggling to find subreddits that match your product go to Reddit ads page -> setup your account -> click "create campaign" -> insert keywords related to your product and Reddit will auto suggest the most relevant subreddits.

Shameless plugs (work, but probably I shouldn’t say it): general advice to write a comment to promote your product is something along the lines of "I had the same problem last year. Tried a bunch of solutions but found [tool] worked best for my use case. The key was [specific feature]. Went from [before state] to [after state] in about [timeframe]". That’s a lot of work and not always needed. If your product is a direct answer to the question just share it, but make sure to disclose you’re the founder (proof: one of my shameless plugs got 25 upvotes and a couple hundred visitors to my project).

“What are you building?” posts (don’t work): I’ve shared my project in a few “what are you building” posts. Results? Crickets. People are there to write comments, not to read the comments.

Tracking conversations (works): I’ve set up f5bot to get alerts for keywords relevant to my project and it’s super helpful. I don’t always have the time to leave a reply but just scrolling trought the comments helps me better understand users (I’ve already stolen a couple of ideas to improve my copy). If you have no idea about what to track, start with competitor mentions, keywords related to the problem/pain point you solve, or mentions of specific features.

DMs (don’t scale): I’m not really a fan of DMs, Reddit is great at getting views and moving the conversation in 1vs1 won’t get you any. They only make sense when you fear your comment could be downvoted into oblivion.

Content Strategy (not sure): I’ve created a how to guides or just posts I thought would be interesting for my audience (A Practical Guide to Get Your First 100 Users for $0, How Unicorns Got Their First Users, 8 Dead Simple Easy Wins for Your SaaS, for context my project is Marketing for Founders on github) sometimes adding a link at the end or a softfer CTA inviting to check out my project. Some got a few thousand views, others were so bad that they didn’t even get AI-generated comments. However, none of them brought a significant spike in visitors (probably a skill issue on my side).

There you have it, nothing fancy, nothing controversial. This strategy got me more than 800 GitHub stars and anywhere from 100 to 400 daily uniques to my project.

I’d love to hear if you’ve tried something similar or if you have other tips on marketing on Reddit.