Every single time there’s an algorithm update, someone writes about how they create great content, and they still lost 20, 30, or 50% of their organic traffic.
“I was creating great content; I was doing everything right!”
Well, maybe you weren’t. Maybe you were creating doodoo-ass content that happened to rank well on Google.
This got me thinking: if everyone claims to write great content, how can they get real feedback from readers who’ll tell them if it’s great or shit.
Solution: share your content on relevant subreddits and see how people react. Either by self-promotion “I wrote this article about X:” or learn to manipulate the platform and do some undercover self-promotion “TIL that X does Y.”
Feedback is quick
You will learn quickly whether the stuff you’re creating is junk that no one wants to read in its entirety, and people need a quick answer.
I would say within an hour, you’ll know what people think. Between the upvote/downvote system and comments, you’ll know.
Comments might even be more important than upvotes because controversy might bring on a slew of downvotes, but the discussion could be money.
An overused example
An overused and easy-to-go-back-in-time-and-look-at example is Pat from Starter Story. I won’t waste your time talking about what he was doing; you can see what I mean from the image below.
You can go in and look at those comments and see that most were positive, but there’s always a handful of salty fucks that don’t like what he’s doing.
Fuck em.