How to make your content go viral on Reddit

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Have you ever wondered how a piece of content goes incredibly viral within a matter of hours? Have you ever wondered how memes rise to the top of the internet and become celebrated worldwide? If you have any type of question regarding virality on the internet, Reddit is probably the answer. No matter how hard you try to escape it, the fact stands that Reddit is one of the most respected platforms on the internet. Therefore in this article, we’re going to discuss how to go “viral” on the platform so you can apply it to the music industry.

Firstly, you need to produce good content that pretty much anyone can relate to. It’s absolutely pointless creating a meme that only a few hundred people will understand in the hope of it going viral. By creating content for the mainstream, it’s likely to be upvoted by more people, and thus have a stronger probability of becoming a well-respected piece of content. For example, you could create a meme-style photo around a relatable situation in the club with your artist logo in the image (e.g. on a T-Shirt). If the content goes viral, there’s a good chance of several thousand people checking our your music.

Next, you need to be able to empathize with the different communities on the platform. Every single Subreddit as its own vibe, dialect, and way of communication with other people. Just like people in Los Angeles use different slang words than people living in New York, you can expect the same situation on the internet. Every time you join a new community, take a few minutes to understand the wording of popular posts, so you can make your posts more like that. By relating directly to your audiences on Reddit, you won’t seem like an outsider that has no clue what they’re doing. 

A great example of a piece of content recently going viral is Yes Theory fooling the internet with a fake picture of Justin Bieber eating a burrito in a weird way. After posting the image into a SubReddit titled “Mildly Infuriating”, it quickly became one of the biggest trending stories of the day, and generated media attention from all around the world.

Also, it’s definitely worth engaging heavily within each community (SubReddit) before trying to promote your own posts. A few greats way to do this is commenting on popular posts, sharing pieces of content, and essentially adding value to each SubReddit that you join. If you become a valued member of the community, it’ll make it much more likely that people will want to engage with your posts when you eventually end up trying to promote a piece of content. It’s also worth noting that doing a “hit and run” is an extremely bad idea. If you just post & then leave the platform, you’re losing out on potential virality. Similar to the Facebook & Instagram algorithm, Reddit loves posts that are getting extremely high engagement. After all, the more upvotes a photo or video or link gets, the higher it’ll rank on the platform in a certain category. By engaging with people commenting, and prompting discussions, it’ll potentially allow the post to be seen by thousands of other people.

Finally, enjoy the rewards from your hard work engaging with the community on Reddit. Whether it’s a music production meme, travel tip, or simply a funny cat video, the potential to go viral on the platform is definitely more exponential than pretty much every other social network. With the right tools & planning, you too can make your content go viral on Reddit!