Tracking Brand Mentions on Reddit: Two Proven and Effective Methods
With 430M+ active users and 21 billion screenviews per month, Reddit is gaining traction among advertisers, marketers, and SEO specialists.
On top of hosting many of the most interesting communities and discussions around the web, Reddit has been making significant efforts to iterate towards a more user and business-friendly platform.
This has led to many changes in the past couple of years, including:
A huge site redesign
Stricter moderation rules to prevent the proliferation of hate speech and fake news
The introduction of native mobile ads
While these actions have been instrumental in growing Reddit’s userbase, the platform remains puzzling for many newcomers. As a digital marketer and Reddit user (sorry, I don’t like the “Redditor” descriptor), I understand the feeling.
For me, Reddit is the best online platform out there, though learning to Reddit can be a sinuous path. As you can see in the detail of this recent job listing published by the company, even they acknowledge this situation:
So, is it hard to use Reddit for marketing purposes? I wouldn’t go that far, but it can definitely be challenging.
With this in mind, I decided to start sharing some of the tricks I’ve learned over the last couple of years. In this first installment, I will cover a vital piece of the social media marketing plan: tracking mentions on Reddit.
Manual or automated? Choose your favorite Reddit tracking method
Whether it’s a brand mention, a keyword, or a username, there are many ways to track mentions on Reddit.
However, I will focus on just two of them: a manual method, and an automated one using Make.
Let’s begin with the manual method, and leave the automated one for later.
1. Tracking Reddit mentions using Google
One of the simplest ways to track Reddit mentions is with refined Google searches. By doing this, you can search for terms within Reddit in its entirety, or else go after subreddits that are of your interest.
For example, let’s imagine that I work for the athleisure brand Lululemon, and that I wish to see what the brand mentions were like in the past 24 hours. This is what my refined search will look like:
And here they are, my mentions.
This is an easy method for finding them, but it may not be consistent with the demands of a robust, dynamic marketing strategy. Let’s take a look at the pros and cons here.
Pros
Easy
Virtually free
Cons
The more mentions there are, the harder it will be to keep track of them
Whole-site searches don’t say much about the context of mentions
More refined tracking (i.e. subreddit tracking) requires repeating the process countless times for different properties, which is time-consuming (and boring!)
All things considered, the manual method is more suited for brands or keywords that are sparsely mentioned.
On the contrary, if you are to track mentions of a more popular brand or keyword -- even a mildly popular one -- the task will consume a lot of your time, becoming increasingly costly as mentions pile up across Reddit.
2. Automated mention tracking using Make
As I mentioned before, I am a Reddit user, and I also work for Make.
Naturally, I have an interest in knowing about Make mentions across Reddit, and particularly within specific subreddits.
Since Make is a technology company specialized in workflow automation, I consider important to watch for mentions within tech-oriented subreddits, such as:
However, I don’t have the time to manually review these and many other relevant subreddits on a regular basis, so I automated the whole process using Make.
A bit meta? Sure! But since I implemented this solution, I never again had to perform a search to know about a new Make mention. Also, it only took me less than 10 minutes to set up the whole thing.
Now let’s take a look at what my scenarios look like:
I created individual scenarios like the one above to track Make mentions on specific subreddits. My scenarios routinely watch for mentions within the posts, post titles, links, and comments, and notify me via email whenever there is a match.
Here’s what I did:
Use the “Watch new comments in a subreddit” module
Specify the subreddit to track, along with the tracking frequency. My scenarios track the subreddits for mentions every 20 minutes, but you can set yours to track at your best convenience, up to a 1-minute frequency
Add a Gmail module. At the moment, this is where I like to receive notifications whenever there’s a brand mention. You can choose another app, or even send mentions to a Google Sheet for bulk and/or shared analysis.
Add a filter. This is the single most important thing you have to implement. The filter will search for the word (or words) you specify, allowing your scenario to be thorough in the tracking process. Pro tip: include alternative spellings of the mentions you are after
By doing this, you will have your first automated Reddit mention tracker up and running.
In case you want to track multiple subreddits, all you have to do is clone the scenario, and change the subreddit for the one you wish to track in the new scenario.
What I love the most about my scenarios is that I don’t have to actively track mentions on Reddit anymore. Instead, I get an email whenever the brand gets mentioned. Now, on to the pros and cons of this method.
Pros
Saves a lot of time
Affordable: it can even be set up to operate at zero cost using Make’s free plan
Scalable
Flexible: it can be included within broader workflows
Great for social media listening
Cons
Can’t track the entirety of Reddit all at once -- you need to pick subreddits (no limits here, though)
It is not possible to track mentions back in time. You can track every mention from the moment you set up your scenario, but not historical ones
Conclusion
With these two methods, you can effectively track mentions on Reddit according to your specific needs.
For those who work with brands that get mentioned a lot and need to track on a regular basis, this Reddit keyword monitor will prove a wonderful solution.
On the other hand, those who wish to check out mentions from time to time will be able to get by with refined Google searches.
To conclude, I can’t recommend Reddit enough if you are a digital marketer. The communities are engaging, and users tend to be clever in their answers and interactions.
For a brand, this can easily translate into opportunity and insight, providing new ways to interact with audiences and showcase products.
If you are not in there yet, give it a go, you won’t regret it.
Happy automating!
