Let’s face it, 95% of us are on here because we’re looking to grow our business in some way. Something that is working for me is a couple of blogs. I take real care in the articles I produce, some often taking a couple of days to write. They are thoroughly researched, fully illustrated, and on topic. When I write an article, I then share it on social media platforms like LinkedIn, Quora, Medium, and Patreon, giving a rich experience. I will share the first 1/4 of the article with a link back to the original article.
Over the years, I’ve dabbled with Reddit but with the format couldn’t deliver the rich experience I want. You have very limited options – if you post an image, you have no option to add the context and a link (as far as I can see!). If you write a post like this you cant add hero image which is what grabs the attention. This week I wrote a particularly popular article and so, for a test, I cross-posted it to an on-topic subreddit, Interestingreads. Within hours it blew up: 20k views, hundreds of upvotes, 95% positive. It was so popular I posted a couple more and went to bed with a smile on my face. I’d found a platform with real engagement that validated my format. Generate high-quality content and you’ll stand out from the sea of reposted and regurgitated posts.
Yesterday morning, I rushed to the office, keen to see how my posts were doing, only to find they had been deleted by the Mods and that I was banned.
It was a particularly gut-wrenching moment which was compounded by the deep toothache I’d been suffering with over that week.
I wrote to the mod and asked why such on-topic, popular posts would be taken down when it was clearly what the audience wanted to read.
“All you do is spam Bruh” was the reply from the jaded and pretty ignorant moderator.
Having only posted 3 times and the posts being more popular and upvoted than most others in the feed, I disagreed.
I then took a step back and looked at the feed. I also looked at the rules, and it became clear that this subreddit was not in the least bit interested in the quality of my article. It is clear that all they want is for people to contribute to their subreddit and any sort of self-promotion was treated with a ban.
And looking further into it, this appears to be the case. It’s all take, take, take; there is tension between those of us who need to grow our business and the self-serving gatekeepers who refuse to reward those who actually create their subreddits’ content.
Now I understand that there is a world of scumbags out there that do literally spam, but surely there has to be a happy middle ground?
What are your thoughts?
