Ask the Mod Squad

What makes Colin and Samir’s Reddit tick

Author

Hannah Doyle
September 11, 2022

Sunday Story - Creative Juice

Illustration by Garrett Golightly

Inside Colin and Samir's Subreddit

If you’ve been watching Colin and Samir’s videos or listening to their podcast over the past few months, you know they’ve been pushing hard on one big idea: not Samir’s LinkedIn posts, not their gripe with wasabi peas—the Colin and Samir Reddit community.

“We dug into Reddit when we were making this video about KSI and actually stumbled upon our Colin and Samir Reddit. It had about 100 people in it and was fairly inactive,” Samir said.

Today, r/ColinAndSamir is nearly 2,000 members strong.

Why Reddit? Colin and Samir wanted to zero in on one platform to focus on community building, and the discussion-centered forum quickly emerged as the best choice—Discord and its infinite threads are hard to follow. YouTube’s community tab isn’t designed for meaningful dialogue. And image-based platforms like Instagram don’t have space for much in-depth public conversation.

“The simplest answer to ‘why Reddit’ is upvotes. Upvotes create a democratic system for us to know what our community is considering the best content,” Samir said. “What we didn’t anticipate was that our Reddit would be a place not only for us to engage with our community but for our community to engage with each other,” Samir said.

The Reddit community is now a regular part of our in-office conversation and team video calls. The constructive criticism, the story ideas, and the questions have shaped what goes on the channel, in the podcast, and even in this newsletter.

“I think it’s been really surprising and exciting to develop a new audio format pretty much based around our Reddit community,” Samir said. “I love that, it’s the first time we feel this level of intimacy with our audience. It’s a feedback loop that actually allows us to create content with them, not for them.”

But r/ColinAndSamir didn’t grow into what it is today by accident. The team was intentional about building out a community for creators on Reddit—which turned out to be an invaluable strategic decision.

“If the creator(s) aren’t involved, [the Reddit] is just a fanclub,” Valentin F. aka NoRobotYet, a Colin and Samir Reddit moderator, told us. “The participation of the creator(s) is what makes it a community and what gives it direction.” For Colin and Samir’s part, that participation includes engaging with posts, asking for input, and uploading behind-the-scenes videos and pictures.

Valentin has been a part of the C&S Reddit community since last year. He runs the YouTube channel Creative Ties and became more active on r/ColinAndSamir after the guys started talking about it on their podcast.

“Since then the subreddit has transformed from a forgotten corner of the internet into a hub for creators and people interested in the creator economy,” Valentin said. “It’s now a place where people can get good creator support, give feedback on Colin and Samir’s content, and of course post the memes about all of it.”

Fellow moderator JennyAndAlex got involved to connect with other creators. “Being part of the C&S subreddit and seeing the community blossom online has been very inspirational and has motivated us to keep the ball rolling as creators,” Alex of JennyAndAlex said. “We do a lot of private content nowadays that’s directed to friends and family, but we’re excited to also work on our first full-length documentary project involving the birth and early development of our child. I don’t think we would be doing this in quite the same way if it weren’t for C&S and the Reddit community.”

While our team relies on the feedback loop established by r/ColinAndSamir, the subreddit isn’t just an idea mine for Colin and Samir. It’s for everyone involved—consider Tear It Up Fridays, a weekly ritual during which creators offer their own content to the r/ColinAndSamir community for constructive criticism.

“Even though people have asked to get ‘torn up,’ what they actually get is a whole lot of great feedback that’s delivered with kindness,” Alex said. “Everyone knows that putting yourself out there as a creator can be really challenging. Having a platform where people care enough to watch your content and give you great feedback is really special.”

That culture of honest, positive feedback has infiltrated this newsletter, too. Valentin suggested we highlight smaller creators via a Riverside chat or perhaps add contributors from Reddit to the Publish Press editorial roster.

Big picture: KSI uses his subreddit to make reaction videos. Tommyinnit asks his subreddit for advice on what to post on TikTok. Colin and Samir are approaching Reddit with their own specific vision for a community of creators.

“The C&S approach will manifest itself differently than KSI but by listening to the Reddit tribe and continuing the feedback loop, I think great things will continue to happen. It’s gonna be exciting to see where things go,” Alex said.

Our Take

It can be tough for creators to maintain constructive dialogue with their community over a long period. Reddit, as far as we’re concerned, is the best place to do that. It’s improved our content and made our world bigger and richer. What’s next? Valentin suggested a special Reddit AMA, but the options are endless. Let us know what you’d like to see in the replies—or on Reddit.

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đŸ€ Creator Support

Publish Press readers share a problem they're facing and creators Colin & Samir respond with their advice.

Q: Has anyone noticed a harsh decline the past couple days with Shorts numbers? I normally hit somewhere between 100 and 1,000 views on Shorts. Occasionally I’ll have a few hit below 10, but recently it’s been on a growth trajectory.

But in the last three days, I’ve gotten zero views on all but one of my Shorts. And the one Short that had a view, when I checked the next day, I saw that it had gone down to no views. Thoughts and ideas welcome.

–Music by Drew

A: We’ve also seen a stark decline in Shorts viewership. Tallying the numbers on recent Shorts views—2.3 million, 1.6, million, 4.1 million, 7.7 million to start; now it’s more like 57,000 and 33,000.

One thing to remember about content-market fit is that it’s about what you want to make, what the audience wants to see, and what the algorithm wants to serve.

YouTube is testing new things with Shorts, and it appears something has shifted on the back end. So we’re shifting ourselves. Our plan is to take a step back from Shorts—it’s a part of our content ecosystem that isn’t gaining enough traction for the amount of time it requires. So a slow-down is in order.

In a way, you have to think of the platforms as creators themselves. They’re going to launch new things and work hard to drive eyeballs to those new things. But just like creators, platforms’ interests change and strategies evolve.

It’s a lesson we learned early on: In the beginning of our channel, we tried a lot of new formats. Maybe some worked for six episodes, then stopped working—and we had to change course. It seems platforms go through the same growing pains, albeit at a significantly larger scale. Still, it’s a reminder that, as a creator, you’re building a home on rented land.

–Colin & Samir

Facing a creator problem you want help with? Share it here→

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