Want to launch your website into the stratosphere? Want to get more traffic than you know what to do with?
Then you’re probably interested in growth hacks. You’ve probably read a ton of them already in fact and you probably think you have a pretty good idea of what they entail and how they work.
But I am willing to bet that you’re probably missing THE single most powerful growth hack of them all: leveraging the power of community.
So what do I mean by this?
The answer is simple: using social sites like Reddit and like forums in order to make a name for yourself, to meet people and to promote your site in a way that otherwise would never be close to possible.
So, when people think about posting their content to Reddit, or a Google+ community, they often do so in a way that is quite cynical. That is to say that they will head over to the subreddit on the subject matter they’re most interested in, post their link and then leave.
And then they wonder why they don’t get any luck with it!
What usually happens in return, is that the link is viewed as spam by the existing community. They’ve never heard of you before, so why should they be interested in what you have to say? Very clearly, you are just using this page as a place to spared your content!
Downvoting means that your content will only be seen by a fraction of the people who could have seen it otherwise. And eventually it might be removed entirely.
But now let’s imagine you do this the right way. You spend a lot of time in that subreddit and you use this time to answer people’s questions, to ask thoughtful ones of your own and to engage in some witty banter.
People in there learn to trust you. They come to respect your opinion. And they look out for your future posts whenever you make them. And when you share your content now, you’ve actually earned it!
Not only does this result in hugely more clicks on your link but it also means that they may even try and help you to promote that content and offer you some free marketing. These aren’t just people to market to any more, they are friends. That’s a powerful difference.
