Reddit sentiment analysis

Reddit sentiment analysis refers to the process of evaluating the sentiments expressed within discussions on the Reddit platform. It involves Reddit data mining, the process of extracting information from the vast amount of posts, comments and discussions on Reddit. It uses natural language processing and machine learning to analyze users’ attitudes and feelings. The end goal of sentiment analysis–a key component of AI marketing–from Reddit data is to produce insights into the sentiment of Reddit content.

Businesses use sentiment analysis of Reddit content to gather an understanding into customer opinions and detect trends. Armed with the awareness of these sentiments, they can make informed decisions about how to better resonate with their target audience, from marketing to customer service to refining their products or services.

Importance of sentiment analysis on Reddit data

At the time of writing, there are over half a billion Reddit accounts worldwide. According to Statista, in the first half of 2024, the total number of pieces of content on Reddit was 5.3 billion, with approximately 1.7 billion of them being comments from users.

Reddit is the most sought out platform for internet users seeking honest answers across a variety of topics. It hosts discussions in various communities on the platform, called subreddits, that spur countless candid and unfiltered discussions.

The nature of Reddit exponentially increases the sentiment data available each time someone simply asks a question on the platform. Many discussions on Reddit start with a post with a title phrased as a question. Once a question is posted, it typically results in more Reddit users commenting their answers to the question.

In fact, on Reddit, a post title that is phrased as a question is likely to produce twice as many comments in response than a post that’s title is phrased as a statement. With Reddit posts that are asking a question, it’s almost as if subreddits are focus groups, but the discussions are posted online.

As a result of its ongoing online active discussions, Reddit is a massive repository of primarily text-based content and packed to the brim with real time opinions and reviews across a broad spectrum of interests and niches. It makes it simple for sentiment analysis softwares to understand the emotions of Reddit users’ content. This is why sentiment analysis from Reddit data specifically proves priceless for businesses.

How can I use Reddit for sentiment analysis in my business?

In today’s dynamic digital landscape, understanding consumer sentiment is paramount for business success. Leveraging sentiment analysis on Reddit empowers companies to refine their offerings, enhance brand reputation and stay ahead of the competition by directly addressing the evolving needs and concerns of their target audiences.

Understanding customer sentiment

Reddit sentiment analysis is valuable for businesses keen on understanding customer sentiments because Reddit hosts real-time unfiltered opinions and reviews of brands and products.

In fact, it is more than common for Reddit users to discuss a product or service on the public platform. Users often share if they are dissatisfied or satisfied with their purchases, even recommending to one another purchase alternatives.

By analyzing sentiments from Reddit around their brands, services or products, businesses are provided a deeper understanding for improvement or potential issues that might be overlooked. This empowers companies to refine their initiatives to better align with the needs of their target consumer.

Understanding customer and market trends

Reddit sentiment analysis provides dynamic insights into emerging trends and customer preferences across a range of target audiences and demographics. With foreknowledge of its target audiences, a brand can leverage sentiment analysis from Reddit to understand common thoughts, concerns and questions of their audiences around a broad scope of topics significant to them.

The weight of Reddit’s power of influence can be illustrated through the GameStop social media coordinated buying regime, where regular people posting in a subreddit of 4.8 million people, influenced the masses to buy shares with the hope that it would drive the price of certain stocks up using the internet. And, it worked. Reddit–a platform that gives power to the voices of regular people–undoubtedly, holds a lot of influence to regular people. This makes the value of Reddit’s sentiment data incredibly useful for marketing and business.

In its nature, sentiment analysis on Reddit permits brands to easily identify what is currently trending for their target demographics. Furthermore, it assists brands in staying attuned to these evolving conversations seamlessly by tracking them with third-party sentiment analysis tools. Businesses using sentiment analysis can have the upper-hand by having understanding that enables them to adapt their strategies to their markets. This way they can know how to adapt to their target audiences’ needs, concerns and interests based on current sentiments from Reddit.

Identifying product or service issues

Sentiment analysis of Reddit content is a game changer for businesses seeking to spot product or service defects or problems fast. By drawing insights from Reddit sentiment analysis data, companies can promptly pinpoint recurring issues related to their offerings. It helps businesses pinpoint notable sentiments to hone in on and remedy growing brand reputation concerns speedily. This proves Reddit sentiment analysis vital for online review management.

As it equips businesses with real-time feedback on their products or services, sentiment analysis on Reddit helps them facilitate fast-acting issue resolution. This proactive stance sets companies up for an upper-hand against their competitors in regard to brand reputation and customer satisfaction.

Interested in learning how Sprout Social can help you with Reddit sentiment analysis? Request a demo and explore how sentiment analysis can help you to build an impactful Reddit marketing strategy.

How to do Reddit sentiment analysis using Sprout Social

Through using Sprout Social’s Social Listening Query Builder, you can build a Query for the purpose of sentiment analysis. Sprout’s tool has 6 built-in Topic Templates to choose from, including a Custom Topic Template.

To cut through the noise and understand the sentiment for a particular trend, we will show an example of using Sprout’s Social Listening Query Builder to create a Custom Topic Template to analyze sentiment. First, you will add a Topic Title, define your Topic Type and, if so desired, add a Topic Description for later reference.

From there, you’ll want to define your data Sources for sentiment analysis. In this use case, we want to include Reddit.

Next, you will want to provide keywords to include (and exclude if relevant) in the Craft Your Query section.

Unless you want to adjust any other settings to the Query, the Query is ready to be created. Once the Query is built, it pops us into the Performance section under Topic Summary within the Social Listening dashboard. Within 24 hours, you will be able to get a myriad of valuable data and insights around the Query you have created.

Sprout’s Social Listening tool grants you to access unfiltered data to guide your brand’s strategy with easy understanding. It provides a broad scope of data and AI and automation functionalities that assists you to cut down the data to view insights that matter to your team most. It makes it seamless to glean insights and adjust filters instantly to craft sentiment analysis reports for Reddit.

For sentiment analysis, we recommend hopping into the Smart Categories widget. There, you can see conversations around your Query organized by media, people, events, mentions, keywords and more.

Furthermore, you can use the Keyword Filters to include or exclude any additional keywords around your Query to better understand sentiment with more nuance.

The importance of Reddit as a platform

Reddit hosts a highly diverse user base with millions of active users participating in various subreddit communities. This diversity provides a breadth of opinions and sentiments on a wide array of topics. With highly engaged users in Reddits’ discussion forums across subreddits, it documents real-time sentiments in text-format that is perfect for the use of sentiment analysis.