Reddit is widely considered the top online forum, especially in terms of user activity, content diversity, and cultural influence. And now you can tap into valuable insights with the new Reddit social listening tool available from Agorapulse. We’re really excited about the new addition, and we think you will be too. Let’s take a closer look at Reddit listening and how it can help you.
Why Is Social Listening Important For Marketers?
Social listening means monitoring social media for conversations, keywords, and topics relevant to your brand. Listening gives you valuable intel on your brand. But these conversations don’t usually happen on your company pages and groups. They happen on forums, public groups, and from individual social media accounts. That’s where social listening comes in.
According to a report by Statista, 76% of marketers use social listening to monitor brand health and to better understand their customers. By mining comments, reviews, and hashtags, marketers can uncover recurring pain points or feature requests, turning raw feedback into actionable data. Social listening also helps brands to identify key influencers and join emerging topics. Joining cultural conversations with relevance and timing is often a catalyst for viral engagement.
Why Is Reddit Important For Social Listening?
Founded in 2005 by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, Reddit is a community-driven platform. It’s built around thousands of topic-specific forums called subreddits, where users share content and engage in deep discussions. Reddit has over 73 million daily active users but a much larger number of monthly active users. Estimates range from 510 million to 1.2 billion per month. Known as the authentic, unfiltered platform, Reddit is where you will hear what people really think about your brand, product, founders and workplace!
Fun Fact: Steve and Alexis came up with the idea for Reddit while they were roommates at the University of Virginia. They were accepted into Y Combinator’s first class with their concept.
You might have heard the news that Agorapulse recently acquired Mention. Agorapulse CEO Emeric Ernoult stated that:
“Mention by Agorapulse marks a major step forward in our mission to empower social media managers and marketers with tools to better understand and manage their online presence.”
This mission continues with Reddit social listening now available through Agorapulse. Marketers rely on Reddit for raw, authentic consumer feedback that they can’t find elsewhere. And now those insights can be accessed alongside Agorapulse’s other social media management tools.
How Can Marketers Benefit From Reddit Social Listening?
1. SEO & Google Affiliation
Reddit posts increasingly dominate Google search results, often showing up right underneath the AI summary and People Also Ask on page 1. This emphasizes its importance for brand visibility and reputation management.
At Contentworks Agency, we work closely with foreign exchange (forex) brands battling it out in a very competitive SEO arena. Look at what happens when a potential trader types in “Is forex trading safe?” Under the People Also Ask section, you’re straight into the forex subreddits with people discussing just that. Undoubtedly, some of those people are brokers with fake Reddit user accounts looking to game the system. But you can see why.
Reddit search results are often the first public-facing mention of a brand in search
Reddit has become deeply intertwined with Google’s search algorithm. In 2023, Google began prioritizing user-generated content from Reddit, to provide more “authentic” search results, particularly for product reviews, niche topics, and personal experiences. A Reddit thread may now be the first public-facing mention of a brand in search. This makes it a critical place to monitor public perception and manage online reputation.
2. Unfiltered User Opinions (Whether You Want Them Or Not)
Social media users often won’t take to the comments to share their opinions on platforms like Facebook. That’s because the algorithm will show their comment to their friends and family, making it less than anonymous. Reddit’s anonymity and community norms foster brutally honest feedback that is a goldmine for marketers.
Unlike curated platforms, Reddit encourages transparency and critique. This means that marketers can access raw, unpolished opinions, giving them a more honest lens into consumer sentiment. And we’re talking the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Should marketers comment on Reddit? Marketers can comment on Reddit threads, but they should do so very carefully and strategically. Reddit is a community-driven platform with a strong bias against overt or deceptive marketing.
Example: Woody Harrelson’s AMA (Ask Me Anything)
If you’re going to put your brand out on Reddit, be prepared to be authentic. An example of the Reddit community turning against marketers was when Woody Harrelson came on Reddit to promote his movie Rampart via an “Ask Me Anything” (AMA).
Reddit users asked him a wide range of questions ranging from acting advice to personal philosophy. But, instead of answering organically, he (or more likely his PR team) ignored most questions and only responded to ones that mentioned the movie.
Unfiltered opinions on Reddit provide valuable insights for brands
Reddit users quickly realized it wasn’t a genuine AMA, but a thinly veiled marketing stunt. “I think this might be the worst AMA ever” and “Woody, blink twice if your publicist is forcing you to type this” were just two of the comments. The thread was massively downvoted and became a cautionary tale in the Reddit community.
3. Deep Topic-Specific Subreddits (e.g., Finance, Tech, Gaming)
Reddit’s subreddit structure creates deep, focused communities which are so ideal for targeted social listening.
Subreddits like r/personalfinance, r/investing, r/tech, or r/skincareaddiction provide concentrated discussions on niche topics. These communities often shape consumer opinions, buying decisions, and even viral trends. For brands monitoring these subreddits, it’s critical for staying relevant, catching sentiment shifts, and discovering early signals of market opportunities or crises.
Tip: Utilize Reddit social listening to get feedback on new product ideas. For example, did anyone from BIC ask women if they needed a special range of pastel pens (priced higher) and labelled “For Her”? I feel like if those marketers had asked Reddit first, that product range would not have happened. Of course, the Reddit community went to town on the pen range in the pointlesslygendered subreddit:
Reddit is a valuable source for consumer opinion
4. Early Signals of Crises & Sentiment Shifts
Last year, I talked about how to spot signs of an incoming crisis. Negative mentions spike, customer complaints escalate, misinformation spreads, and employees start venting. One of the best platforms to take a ringside seat on all that is Reddit. Reddit offers valuable early insights into crises, sentiment changes, and feedback not surfaced (or blocked) on other platforms.
Because Reddit conversations are organic and anonymous, users tend to voice frustrations earlier than they do on mainstream social media. Marketers can use this as a radar for potential PR issues, product flaws, or negative experiences before they go viral elsewhere. This valuable time can be used for product recalls, product redevelopment, risk mitigation, customer education and PR statements.
Example: Asana’s Response to UX Redesign Backlash
Back in 2023, Asana rolled out a major UI/UX redesign that many long-time users hated. Complaints poured into Reddit (especially on r/Asana), with users saying the redesign slowed their workflows, hid critical features and felt like change for the sake of change. Users were angry, some even threatened to leave Asana for competitors.
But here’s where the story took a turn. A product team member from Asana joined the thread and openly acknowledged the negative feedback. They explained why changes were made (accessibility, scalability). They gathered user feedback in follow-up threads, made timely product adjustments and posted their updates transparently in r/Asana.
By proactively listening to the subreddit and promptly responding, Asana was able to turn their fortunes around.
- While not everyone loved the redesign, many users appreciated being heard.
- Asana’s credibility improved among Reddit users despite the rocky launch.
- The threads went from angry to constructive. This is very rare on Reddit during a product backlash.
How Do I Create An Advanced Reddit Listening Search in Agorapulse?
Creating an advanced Reddit listening search in Agorapulse is simple, and you don’t even need a Reddit account.
- Start a free trial if you don’t already have the Listening add-on
- Click Listening (or the antenna icon) on the left-hand menu
- Click +Create a new search
- Enter a search name (required)
- Enter a search description (optional)
- Toggle across to select the sources to be included in the search
Add Reddit and any additional sources you would like to use - Enter the Listening search parameters
Multiple parameters can be added per Listening search - (Optional) Add geographic or language filters for Reddit, blog, and news sources
- Click Save search
After you’ve set your Reddit social listening parameters, you can sit back and monitor conversations, hashtags, and sentiment. You can also include it in reports for your brand or client’s brand.
Social listening reports in Agorapulse
Reddit Social Listening Just Got Easier With Agorapulse
With the new Reddit social listening tool, you don’t need to create a fake Reddit account to monitor what’s being said about your brand. There’s no need to spend hours conducting manual searches for hashtags and terms. And, you don’t need to do the sentiment calculations. Here are some of the features you can enjoy:
- Monitor brand mentions, hashtags, and keywords across Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn and now Reddit.
- Combine up to 60 search parameters including keywords and hashtags, with exclusion filters and geo/language targeting.
- Access up to 24 months of past mentions to analyze long-term trends. This one is great for showing our agency clients.
- Create custom listening queries and set alerts for volume spikes or sentiment shifts (e.g crisis warnings)
- Track total mentions, unique authors, and daily averages in a dashboard view
- Automatically classify the sentiment of mentions as positive, neutral, or negative and generate sentiment scores over time.
- Visualize frequently used keywords and their sentiment as a color-coded word cloud.
- Break down reactions, comments, and shares for each keyword search.
- Compare your brand’s mentions and engagement against competitors to spot what’s working, or not working, for them.
Reddit is one of my favourite platforms with its unfiltered opinions, niche deep dives and unrestricted content. Add the Listening add-on to your existing Agorapulse account or schedule a free demo and start uncovering real audience insights for your brand.
