Social listening is monitoring social media for mentions of your brand, product, or industry. It’s a way to track what communities are saying about you online, and it can be an incredibly valuable tool for understanding your customers and improving your marketing strategy.
However, many marketers make the mistake of using too many content sources when trying to analyze social conversations. They will include social media posts, news media, blog posts, and forums in one data pull and then wonder why they can’t get accurate insights. The answer is simple: each content source needs to be analyzed separately.
This is especially true for Reddit.
Reddit is one of the most vibrant and active social communities on the internet and has its unique culture and norms. To understand what people say about your brand on Reddit, you need to use social listening specifically for that platform.
Here are a few tips for using social listening on Reddit:
Use specific keywords and search filters
When you’re searching for mentions of your brand on Reddit, make sure to use specific keywords and search filters. This will help you narrow down the results so that you only see relevant conversations.
For example, if you’re trying to find mentions of your brand in the context of customer service, you might use the following keywords and filters:
(Brand) AND (“customer service” OR custserv OR “customer care”)
This is referred to as Boolean Logic, and it’s a powerful way to get more accurate results from your social listening. Another example of social listening on Reddit is if you want to track general industry conversation. In this case, you might use the following keywords and filters:
(healthcare) AND (“artificial intelligence” OR “patient records” OR “data analytics”)
Most social listening platforms will allow you to choose a specific Subreddit, and you would select/r/healthcare. This is an excellent way to get even more targeted results.
Monitor specific threads
In addition to using keywords and search filters, you can monitor specific Reddit threads. This can be especially useful if a particular thread is relevant to your brand or industry. To do this, go to the relevant subreddit and find the thread you want to track. Then, copy the URL of the thread and add it as a search filter in your social listening platform.
Analyze brand sentiment on Reddit
When looking at social media mentions, it’s crucial to analyze the sentiment of each one. This will help you understand how people feel about your brand, product, or industry. I currently use the Brandwatch Sentiment Analysis engine because they have a really strong NLP.
There are a few different ways to do this. One can manually read through each mention and categorize it as positive, negative, or neutral. Another way is to use a social listening tool with built-in sentiment analysis. This can save you a lot of time, as it automatically categorizes mentions. Regardless of your method, sentiment analysis is helpful to get insights into how people feel about your brand.
Be patient. Insights take time
Reddit moves fast. Really fast. If you want to use social listening on Reddit, you must be prepared to keep up with the pace. That means setting up alerts for when new mentions are made, so you can jump into the conversation as quickly as possible.
It also means being patient when waiting for results. The platform’s search function isn’t always accurate, so you might need to sift through many irrelevant results before finding what you’re looking for. But if you’re patient and persistent, you’ll be able to get the insights you need from Reddit.
Using Reddit for In-Depth Purchase Intent Analysis
Consumers always use Reddit to talk about buying new products or services. They often seek feedback from others in the community to make well-informed decisions. There are deep consumer insights on Reddit, and purchase intent is one of them. You have to know where to look.
Reddit has thousands of SubReddits. There are SubReddits for everything from video games to beauty products to home improvement. And within these SubReddits, people are constantly talking about their purchase intent.
The example below identifies a Reddit user’s intent to purchase a new bicycle. The post shows how they plan to use the product and a few specific user challenges, and the Reddit community is chiming in and responding.
This is valuable information for marketers, as it can help you understand where people are in the sales journey. It can also help you identify potential roadblocks that might prevent people from completing a purchase.
Social Listening on Reddit: A Quick Example
I ran an analysis on Reddit, just for kicks. If you know me, you’ll learn how much I love the Niners and Lakers, so naturally, the study will revolve around the two best teams in the world. Below is data from 1/1/2018 to date, and the data source is Reddit on social media.
The data was a little surprising, to be honest. I didn’t realize how relevant sports are on Reddit, much less the amount of conversation about my two teams. A few insights from the data:
There’s zero value by looking just at volume. You’ll find the insights when you filter through the data to find what triggered spikes in conversation. Was it the news cycle? Was there an AMA with Kobe Bryant or Magic Johnson? Or is it just a bunch of haters talking about King James and Jimmy G? Whatever the case, you’ll have to spend some time mining the data to find an insight.
It’s clear that the Lakers conversation (153,22 forum mentions) was much larger than the 49ers conversation (33,933 forum mentions), but it’s not because Reddit is swarming with Lakers fans. There were a lot of whiners and complainers talking about LeBron James in May, June, and July after he signed his contract. May you’ll see the Niners spike in conversation over the last month since Football season is upon us?
