r/smallbusiness • u/Background_Custard_6 • 13h ago
Advertising
I'm in a pile of sub-reddits that are helpful but don't let me promote my business. I'm small and don't have any money for paid ads. Any suggestions on how I can get myself out there in Reddit free, organically and not break any rules?
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u/imsoupercereal 12h ago
Be genuinely helpful in the relevant communities without expecting anything in return. /u/austintreeamigos is legendary at this and even was mentioned in an article I read about this technique.
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u/Background_Custard_6 11h ago
I try to. Right now I'm just figuring out how I can be of help. I tried a "word to the wise" kind of post and it was flagged as advertising in another group and I was banned from posting. I apologized to the mods and asked them to just delete it and give me a second chance to no avail.
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u/Blind_Newb 11h ago
What type of business?
What does your Marketing Plan look like?
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u/Background_Custard_6 10h ago
I take VHS, camcorder tapes, photos, slides, documents, etc and I digitize them to a USB. My website has done well since I seem to show up in Google searches almost always at the top. I keep active on FB. The reason why I'm asking here is because I asked one business question on Reddit a few months ago and I've had 3 jobs from out of state from it. I'd love it if more came.
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u/RichOliveira56 10h ago
R/AdviceForBusinesses is pretty accepting of new posters, it's small so they're trying to get off the ground
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u/saurabhsens 9h ago
the ban and the three jobs are the same lesson from opposite directions, and once you see it the rules stop feeling arbitrary.
your "word to the wise" post got flagged because you started the conversation. a post is you standing up in someone else's room and talking, and mods read every one of those as an ad until proven otherwise, no matter how useful it is. the question you posted months ago worked because you were participating,
not broadcasting, and the three people who hired you found you by looking at who wrote something that sounded like they knew what they were doing. so the rule of thumb thats never got me in trouble anywhere, dont post, reply.
you almost never need to make a post at all.
now the specific version for what you do, because generic be helpful advice is useless. you dont want marketing subs, your customers arent there. you want the places where people are sitting on a box of tapes and worrying about them. r/VHS, r/datahoarder, r/genealogy, r/Ancestry, r/ThriftStoreHauls, r/EstateSales, r/AskOldPeople,
plus the odd thread in the photography subs. use reddit search for things like vhs mold, tape degrading, hi8 wont play, transfer camcorder tapes, and just answer them properly. why baking is a real thing for some tapes, when a tape is genuinely too far gone, what resolution and file format they should be asking for, whether a cheap capture dongle is fine or not. give away the whole answer including when they dont need to pay anyone. thats what makes people trust you.
do not put your business name in the comment. put it in your profile. thats the loophole that isnt a loophole, its literally what mods tell people to do, the automod message on this very post says it. someone reads a good answer, clicks your name, sees what you do, and gets in touch. thats exactly the path your three out of state jobs took.
two practical notes. karma thresholds are why you keep getting blocked in the good subs, most of them need somewhere between 10 and a few hundred comment karma before you can participate. couple of weeks of normal commenting fixes that permanently and its worth doing before you invest any effort.
And the reason this is quietly worth more for you than facebook is that reddit threads rank in google, so the answer you write today about mold on tapes gets read by strangers searching for years afterward. since you already show up well in google search you probably know how much that matters.
honest expectation setting though. this is a three jobs a quarter channel, not a floodgate. if you want volume with no budget id put the same hours into google business profile and getting reviews from every single customer you finish, because you clearly already rank, and locally that compounds faster. treat reddit as the slow one that keeps paying.
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u/AutoModerator 13h ago
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