How to Get the User’s Attention According to Reddit’s Rules

There have been a lot of discussion about how Reddit has made its app better and more user-friendly. It has created multiple functions and roles around user management, admin related issues, and created newer communities for interactions. People love taking part in in-depth communities and also sharing their lovely memes.

There is also a lot of hate-speech, and trolling that occurs on the website, but that’s besides the point. Reddit has become a prime example of what a website can do to change the way that people communicate.

Incentivizing Human Interactions

By incentivizing human interactions, they have made it easier for anyone to talk to anyone else. That’s the problem though – they’re talking. They’re not really haring insightful information backed by research. That’s the biggest problem that they’re facing right now, with the fake news and the problems related to massive trolling. Reddit groups can send massive amounts of traffic to celebrities’ pages to harass and threaten them.

Users of reddit have gone above Reddit’s control and they have a mind of their own. Kudos for Reddit for remaining open and transparent when it comes to how they moderate communities. This has made the platform more accessible and open to all users, thereby incentivizing human interactions even more.

Focusing on the Little Things

Nowadays, mobile apps have focused on the little things. They want to focus on everything from notifications and small buzzes and beeps that keep the user hooked. Keeping them hooked, says Nir Eyal is the key to keeping them from straying. A lot of the times, there is a lot of attrition from when you create a service to when people start to mass-adopt it.

When that happens, you need to be able to weather the storm and ensure that you focus on the little things that create the biggest value. This could be something as small as a custom notification buzz, or something like a new colour that you can pick and choose for your avatar.

You can decide which small thing makes sense for you, but it’s something that the market will dictate. Small changes can make a huge impact in your service/business, as these are the happiness-factors that many users will consider invaluable. When a competitor copies it, or a user abuses it, you need to switch it up so that it keeps existing users happy.

Reddit started a gravatar model when it realized that people were communicating more when there was a character that reflected their interests. Then they later switched it up to creating full profiles.

Gamification

Gamification hasn’t worked so well for Reddit in terms of user attraction, but it has done wonders for retention. Reddit has been doing the Secret Santa connection for years now, and it has done a lot of positive PR as a result of it. Reddit users love the simple gestures that Reddit does like celebrating birthdays and accomplishments on certain communities.

This makes the whole process fun and you feel like you’re a part of something bigger. You feel like you’ve shared something with the community and you can earn Reddit gold – which is another positive feature that it has introduced.

Reddit Gold has become a key feature of the website and app as well, with new amenities being offered to users who can purchase or earn it. This gamification, combined with a micro-transaction like feature makes the whole process a lot more interesting and fun for users who are looking to connect with like-minded people.

Exclusivity

When there is value-based exclusivity, it’s a lot of fun to see users pop-in. That’s the strategy that Facebook, Gmail and Reddit’s communities used early on. They realized that what they had was too precious, and restricted invitations to a few members. This created the buzz early on and people started to flock to the site quickly.

This also helped them go viral soon enough and aided in their development of the platform. There was another competitor called Digg – the frontpage of the internet, but it died off after breaking the trust of its users. Reddit stayed committed to their original message of community, and moderation when needed. They never tried to game-the-system and let the website do the talking.

They also didn’t attempt to create something new or unique. They stuck to the basics and became an exclusive place where people could connect behind a screen name and talk about the things they love. These communities grew rapidly and became some of the biggest groups on the internet overall.

Why Would People Want to Engage With You?

This is a really soul-searching type of question that you must ask yourself in order to get the desired answer. There used to be app developers and designers that would use the Noah’s Ark strategy of if you Build it, they will Come. But they failed eventually.

What really works in the new landscape of digital, is to ask yourself why is it that someone would use your application. When you get the hard facts around that question, you have a better idea of what your app really is.

Whether that’s for the news, or for a particular service, you need to ask yourself why people want to come back. Reddit wanted to have the most interesting content on its platform and designed the service to reflect just that.

When they were successful with that model, they scaled it up and ensured that they incentivized power-sharers to continue using the product often. When they became influencers of good content and interesting engagements, the website blew up. Everyone loved it and wanted to participate in the conversation.

Alexis Ohanian, founder Reddit, understands this more than anyone else. He wanted to get to the meat of why people wanted to use Reddit, so that he could scale it up. But to get there to that point, he had to make sure that he fully understood what Reddit meant to everyone using it.

Conclusion

When you can create something that gets people’s attention, it’s a work of art. With so much noise out there, you need to be someone who respects people and gets their attention naturally.