Subreddit Analytics: The Top Six Tools

Reddit has users in the millions with an ever improving and expanding ad platform. That’s why the right subreddit analytics tools are essential for marketers looking to understand how the website’s users operate.

Below we’ve taken a look at the top Reddit and subreddit analytics tools around to see what they’re capable of.

SnoopSnoo

Named after Reddit’s alien mascot, SnoopSnoo is a free tool with a number of functions.

Its most in-depth one is its user analysis. With it, you can see someone’s data related to their posts, karma, and comments. Interestingly it also scrapes submissions to build up a demographic picture of the user. While slightly antithetical to Reddit’s dedication to privacy, it’s worth a look.

As you can only submit one user at a time, there’s not huge value here from a marketing angle. Although if you’re planning to outreach to specific users, such as contacting a mod to organise an AMA (Ask Me Anything), this might come in handy.

When it comes to subreddit analysis it’s pretty superficial. It doesn’t really offer much more than what you can find on the subreddit page itself. It does have a useful ‘related subreddits’ bit along with some trending ones around the wider topic.

Its subreddit search function offers some use though. It moves beyond Reddit’s search which is based entirely on keywords, and offers up some more diverse results. It’s certainly not perfect, but it’s an improvement when researching relevant subreddits for specific topics.

Along with that you can find some main topics to explore for related subreddits, while there’s a live list of new and trending subreddits too.

Later for Reddit

Later for Reddit has an incredibly powerful function: the ability to analyze a subreddit and see when the best time to post is. Previous research has shown that when you post is just as important as what you post in terms of success.¹

Later for Reddit’s subreddit analytics tool gives you the optimal time to post for that specific place. All you do is enter the minimum votes you want to get and it will tell you when you should submit your link or post.

There’s also a tool for finding subreddits related to others. For example, entering /r/dataisbeautiful returns places like /r/infographics and /r/mapporn. That’s about it for analysis.

There’s another feature worth mentioning which is the ability to schedule posts. This can come in handy if a subreddit you’re targeting has its prime posting time when you’re usually asleep. Once you have scheduled something, there’s also the option to X-post (cross post the same submission to another subreddit) with suggestions on relevant places.

Brandwatch Consumer Research

Of course, we need to mention ourselves in this list as Brandwatch is a great Reddit analytics tool. We recently became the first social intelligence provider to include data from Reddit that is regulated and compliant with the site’s user agreement.

With our Analytics tool you can set up queries to track whatever term you like. We also use boolean operators so you can be as broad or specific as you like. We even have a Query Wizard to make setting up a cinch.

Once you start pulling in your data you can set up massively insightful dashboards that analyze everything from volume of mentions to sentiment. You can see what the major talking points are or see when a subreddit is most active.

Want to know the most popular sports brand in /r/unitedkingdom? How about /r/Cooking’s favourite recipes? You can do all of that in Brandwatch. This is just scratching the surface, too.

We even produced an infographic about /r/GameofThrones to see what they thought of each character. You can check it out here.

Try a free demo of Brandwatch today and see what’s possible. We don’t just do Reddit either – we cover all major social platforms, forums, blogs, and the internet in general. Got any questions? Don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Reddit Metrics

This is probably one of the weaker ones when it comes to actual subreddit analysis. Searching for one just returns some milestones (such as when it trended or hit a certain number of subscribers) and subscriber growth. It adds a bit of context, but nothing hugely practical.

Where this option stands out is with a good overview of subreddits across the site. You can see the fastest growing ones, along with which ones are trending and the top new ones, too. This might be a good place to see where interesting conversations are happening. Fair warning though, NSFW subreddits will appear a lot.

There’s also some historical data too. This shows you a day-by-day account of how many subreddits were created and the top one from each day. There’s also a chart showing the number of subreddits over time.

There’s not a huge amount on offer here, but definitely worth having a regular check in for any interesting changes.

Reddit Insight

While not hugely in depth, Reddit Insight offers some nice visualizations. As an analytics tool, it’s not too strong though.

It can be good for tracking your submissions. One of their features is to follow a post live to see how it’s performing karma wise. Obviously, this is something you can simply check yourself, but it’s nice to see it happen in real time.

There’s a visualization tool for looking at a user’s post and comment history too, along with the ability to create word clouds around subreddits. They’ve also put together a chart comparing controversy, interactions, and karma.

Reddit Insight is generally a bit restrictive, unfortunately. A fair few features will only allow you to analyze popular subreddits rather than submit your own. It’s a nice site to have play around with, but it won’t be good for the long haul.

Track Reddit

This one isn’t so much an analysis tool, but it can be good for brand or topic monitoring. Track Reddit allows you to set up a dashboard that tracks mentions of specific keywords. You can even specify a particular subreddit if you like too.

But then that’s about it. The only other notable function is alerts so that you can be sent an email or SMS whenever your chosen keyword gets mentioned. Obviously this can be great to see when and where people are talking about your brand, but nothing beyond it.

You can set up two trackers with a free account, so it’s worth giving it a go for now. But in the end it won’t get you too far.

¹Olson, R. (2015, January 17). A data-driven guide to creating successful reddit posts, redux. Retrieved August 23, 2017.