When I first started posting Reddit, I didn’t quite get it.
What’s ‘Karma’? How do I get it?
Upvotes? Oh, those are like ‘Likes’ on Facebook.
Oh damn, these comments are kinds harsh.
It was a learning curve, but I was there for the ride.
And, though I’ve learned a lot thus far, there is still way more to learn. After all, you don’t know what you don’t know.
Each subreddit is a world of it own.
(best image I can find to paint the picture)
And, each one of these worlds is like a restaurant.
What I mean by this is that each subreddit operates on its own sense of time.
For example:
The subreddit that’s like a coffeeshop is open at the crack of dawn.
The subreddit that’s a bar is open until 1 AM.
And, the subreddit that’s a restaurant in Portugal is just never open. (This is a joke, but those siestas are long.)
See what I mean?????
Anyway, you get my point.
In order to figure out when to post on Reddit, think about it as knowing what time is best to go to that restaurant.
You never want to go when it’s too busy, when it’s not the breakfast or lunch menu you want, or when they are closing up the kitchen and you really wanted fries with that beer.
Side-note (because this is how my brain works):
It’s Monday, and in most of the world restaurants (and museums) are closed. I was curious as to why, so I Googled it:
Anyway, it’s kind of the same logic on Reddit, IMO.
Just like the restaurant business, most subreddits act the same way.
But, while restaurants can post their hours on Google (though, I can’t tell you how many times I went to a restaurant that Google said was open and it most definitely was not open), or on their front door, subreddits don’t exactly operate with OPEN/CLOSE signs.
So, How Do You Know When Your Subreddit is Open for Business?
The answer is traffic.
My father-in-law manages a restaurant, and he always told me that if a restaurant is empty, he’s not eating there.
Likewise, he doesn’t want to eat at a restaurant when you can’t get a table, either.
You might not like to go to the Cheesecake Factory on a Friday night at 7 PM.
But, with a subreddit, that’s precisely what you want to do.
(Okay, maybe a diner at 5:30 PM is a little better — I’ll tell you why).
But, you get the idea.
Find the Best Time to Post in a Subreddit
Go to the subreddit.
Check how many people are active. You can do this by hovering over the title of the subreddit, and on the bottom you’ll see ‘Members’ and ‘Online’. I don’t have an exact number, but you’d ideally want more than 10% of members online at the time you plan to post.
see the green dot, that’s not bad for active right now, considering how big the subreddit is.
the highest I’ve seen it is 20k
Check how many people are looking at a post, how recent the last comments were on that post, etc. This is like knowing what the buzz is in the restaurant at the time you plan to eat.
Who wants to go to Hooters at 8 AM?
(Note: This is only available on Reddit on your device.)
See the little green dot, that means 23 people are active on this one post!
And, to make all of this easier, check this tool: LaterFORReddit, which tells you when that subreddit is the busiest. But, I’ve found in my experience that it’s not totally accurate, so it’s good to cross-check this with the strategy above.
There’s also a tool called subreddittraffic. It’s more accurate, but they have limitations on how many subreddits you can check a week/you can only monitor one subreddit.
And, that’s all, folks.
One Caveat
If you’re wondering whether or not your post will be overshadowed if you post when there are way too many people active in that subreddit, that’s an important question.
The truth is, you don’t really know.
It’s better to post on a subreddit when it’s buzzin’ versus when it’s dead.
But, there is a chance that when there are too many people, your post might be overlooked.
So, you know what I do?
If my post doesn’t get a lot of traction in first 10 minutes (where you should try to aim for 1,000 views/100 views per minute — we’ll cover this in another post), I delete it and I try again.
Maybe when there’s not a 45-minute wait for the table, or when they ran out of the Bloomin’ Onion.
