1. Case Study:Reddit Virality
BRENNEN SCHLUETER

2. My redditing background
I have been a registered redditor for almost 2 years,
after being a “lurker” (someone who neither posts, votes,
or comments) for 6 months
In these two years I have learned the way the
community works; their attitudes, norms, values, and
lingo.
I have accrued 2,605 karma points across many posts.
I have succeeded in becoming apart of the community,
with plenty of failed posts; a learning experience.

3. Defining the community
Like most large social media sites, Reddit is a
international community of many different people
with many different fields of “expertise”.
Google’s double click ad planner states the median U.S.
Reddit user is male (72%), 25–34 years of age, has
college education. The analysis also shows that many of
the top ten audience interests are in the tech field,
suggesting a computer savvy demographic.

4. What does that tell us?
Redditors are generally little
nerdy and mostly articulate.
People that will take the time to
nit-pick almost any content you
submit (I have been criticized
many times). But on the other
hand, they are also some of the
most helpful people you will
never actually meet (unless you
go to a meet-up, which having
witnessed some, are the nerdiest
thing you will come across).

5. Walker Texas Power Rangers!
(my original content)

6. “Welcome to Reddit, the site where
everything’s made up and the points don’t
[necessarily] matter.”
•Not all of it is made up and the points matter only
slightly.
•Reddit is based on a system of “sub-reddits” signified
by “/r/” as in: reddit.com/r/funny
•These sub-reddits are pages dedicated specifically to a
topic and has rules for the content allowed to be posted.
• Ex: /r/funny allows only funny content, while
/r/worldnews is strictly for international news

7. The holy karma
•Reddit content is driven by a communal voting system dubbed “karma”.
The basis of the system is an “upvote” for things that are good,
“downvote” for thing that are not.
•Posts then have karma that is the difference between upvotes and
downvotes.
•Posts with higher karma is the more popular posts.
Example: A post with 10 upvotes and 7 downvotes has a karma of 3.
Users are then credited with 3 karma points, however there are signs
that for higher amounts of karma received, there is a formula to
determine users karma. It is not always 1:1.

8. Traits of success
I have observed successful viral posts on reddit
have these similarities:
•Timing
•Relevance of content
•Engrain / Enter content cycle
•Lots of luck (most important)

9. Timing is key
•Timing has a large part in the submission of new
original content.
•Submissions on Reddit have a small window to be
picked out of a subreddit’s “New” postings and
become “hot” also known as the “Front Page”.
•From there, a post receiving many upvotes may
be be included on not only the subreddit’s front
page, but the sites main front page as well.

10. Ensuring opportunity to see
Along with timing comes choosing the appropriate
subreddit to post
For this content, /r/funny was the obvious choice
•5 million daily impressions
•Monthly unique visitors is 2-8 million
•609,308 unique visitors per day
•At least 25,000 uniques an hour.

13. Capturing an international audience
Being an international social media hub, it is
pivotal to post at a time when efficient to capture
this large audience.
Ex: posting at night to capture the high volume
United states users and allowing lower volume
international users to see during the day.

14. Reddit is heating up
Below is a heat map of international users

15. Its like an episode of 24
•Once content is noticed, it can take less than 24
hours to be on the front page or after 24 hours the
post has disappeared into the depths of reddit
archives.
•With the large volume of users and posts per day,
even hour, new content has a limited frame to connect
with the target audience, receive upvotes, and get
larger amount of impressions on the hollowed front
page.
•Being on the front page is not only seen an honor, but
a major accomplishment to the everyday redditor.

16. Title is pivotal
The title of the post is the attention grabber. It
must gather curiosity of the user to click into and
be exposed to the content.
The title of my post was:
“It’s morphin’ time” –Walker

17. Front page or bust! No matter what it
takes!
•New add-on applications for browsers such as Firefox
and Chrome have become very popular for many
online communities. – AdBlock plus, stumbleupon,
etc.
•Reddit is no different. The add-on “reddit
enhancement suite” or RES, allows faster browsing
for redditors.
•They can open all the image files on a single page
and become exposed to every one.
•This means if the content reaches the frontpage,
users with this feature will see it even if they don’t

18. It has to be relevant
•Content, aforementioned, is highly criticized.
The target audience wants a strong visual with a
basic message, while intuitive and complex
enough to not look completely stupid.
•Puns accomplish this goal easily.
Also anything with cats and/or Emma Watson.
However that content is also known as the classic
cliché.
•Content trends are relevant for a period of time.
Ex: Superstorm Sandy Posts

19. Infuse, engrain, and become one with
the reddit community.
•If the content is good enough, the community will
embrace it.
•“Reposts” (Unoriginal content) are both loved and
hated in the community.
•Redditors who have not seen the post before give it an
upvote, while the veterans downvote and let the world
know it is a repost.
•If someone reposts more than once, and the community
will check, they are seen as “karma-whoring”
•Successful posts become reposts, and then eventually
memes through the cycle.

20. To create a Meme: the highest honor
To become a meme means a deep connection
between the content and the community.
It has become a facet of the identity of the
community and can not be separated.
Such content as “rick rolled”, “forever alone”, and
“ridiculously photogenic guy” are examples of
meme’s.
Google them if you don’t know.

21. 3rd party sites and their affect.
There isnt even a party at all.
•If the post does not meet all requirements, but has
the content, third party sites will force it in.
•Something unique is happening with the content of
reddit, 3rd party sites are picking up the popular
entries, and posting them on their sites. This includes
other social media sharing as well.

22. The Content Cycle
3rd party
sites
Social
Media
Reddit

23. Some of weasels
These sites such as: 9gag, weknowmemes.com,
membase.com, memegenerator.net, and an ungodly
amount of copycat sites, create a cycle of getting the
content reposted on reddit, and then back into other
social media. It is never ending.

24. “Ok, I have a content cycle. How bad is
it doc?”
Not bad at all really.
For the original content poster, it is like spreading
your meme like a virus.
For the reddit community, it is their worst
nightmare.
However, those few affected by the “content cycle”
are heavily addicted to the site and even their
cries of “REPOST!” will be silenced by a funny
picture of a baby with a mustache.

25. Determining true reach
With this idea of content cycling, it is difficult to
calculate the true reach and impressions.
However, some tools give us an idea to how many
people saw the content.

26. Imgur, and reddit unite.
A popular image hosting site is imgur.com.
This site allows for users to upload content to
their servers and then share the link. Imgur offers
link views as well.
This also shows us the difference between the
voting members of reddit and the lurkers.

27. Results
• Created Oct. 29
• Due to hurricane sandy and power outages for a
large amount of east coast population, submitted
7:53 PM CST, November 4 to maximize audience
size internationally.
Not great, (or even the best) on the first try, but
lets see an example of how the content cycle works
to new posts…

28. Mini Case study: “I’m late.. For business!”
An example of this cycle working to the content
posters advantage is a piece of content I created in
January this year.

29. “I guess he’s ‘inline’ for a promotion.”
– reddit user “idodds”
The original post did not do
great.
But without reposting my
own content, this
happened…

30. “And on the 4th day, the lord said…
Let there be upvotes.”
Without my knowledge,
another user saw my post
elsewhere, reposted it, and
the content soared to the
front page.

31. All because the natural order was left alone
Even though my account
did not receive any credit
for the posting, the image
flew around the internet.
Through the social site
Stumble Upon alone, it
raked up 547k views.
Imagine the reposts to other
sites…

32. Around the world in 5 days
By the time a work week was through, this was the
scene on Google.

33. Engraining the meme: meme generator
status
It is said that when
you are on a meme
generator site, and
people are taking your
idea, creating their
own messages, and
reposting it, the
content has truly
become engrained in
the community.

34. The text that proves it.
After a few more weeks, I
received this text message
from a friend who had no
idea I created the meme,
and was just passing it
along to me.
This text is indicative of
the reach the content cycle
has.

35. Results
By following the criteria set above, the content has
gained:
•830,000 views from Reddit…
•540,000 views through Stumble Upon…
The content has gained 1,370,000 measurable
impressions it has more importantly become a meme of
the community and cannot be separated from the
definition.

36. There is a moral to every story…
Content drives,
Timing is the law,
The content cycle is the car, the road, and ultimately is
in control.
You cannot force success in this community.
With observance to these qualities, content will find a
way in front of your audience.
It is a self aware organism that is impacted by more
external forces it would like to admit.

37. See you at PDX.
BRENNEN SCHLUETER
BRENNENSCHLUETER.COM
BRENNEN.SCHLUETER@GMAIL.COM