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–an invaluable slice of AI marketing–from Reddit data is to produce insights into the overall sentiment of Reddit content around specific topics.

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, over 26 million Americans use Reddit monthly with 330 million active users. And in 2022 alone, Reddit users produced 492.3 million posts and 2.8 billion comments. Reddit is a massive repository of primarily text-based content, making it simple for most sentiment analysis softwares to understand the emotions of Reddit users’ content.

Furthermore, Reddit is one of the most sought out online platforms for internet users seeking candid answers across a variety of topics. It hosts posts and comments in various online communities, called subReddits, that create countless meaningful discussions.

There are many ways that Reddit’s platform produces valuable content as data for the use of sentiment analysis. To illustrate one example, 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.

The nature of Reddit increases the sentiment data available by someone simply asking a question on the platform. With Reddit posts that are asking a question, it’s like subReddits are focus groups, but the questions asked and opinions shared in the comments are posted online.

Reddit is much like a goldmine of data of real time honest opinions and reviews across a broad spectrum of topics and niches. This is why sentiment analysis from Reddit data specifically proves priceless for businesses for several use cases.

Understanding customer sentiment

Reddit sentiment analysis is invaluable for businesses keen on understanding customer sentiments because Reddit serves as a vast reservoir of user-generated content.

Through Reddit’s nature of sharing content, engaging in discussions, and voting on comments and posts, it hosts Reddit users’ colorful unfiltered opinions and reviews of brands and products.

It’s not uncommon 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 that match the Reddit publishers’ needs.

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 said audiences around a broad scope of topics significant to them. It can help businesses to be relatable to its audiences’ interest and fine tune its offerings to appeal to expressed needs.

The weight of Reddit’s power can be illustrated through the 2021 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 quality of its sentiment data all the more valuable to marketers.

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 truly have the upper-hand of understanding that enables them to adapt their strategies to their markets–being able to know how to adapt to their targets’ up-to-date needs, concerns, and interests based on 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 delving into 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 in regard to brand reputation and customer satisfaction.

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.

a view of Sprout Social's Social Listening tool's Listening Templates for building a social listening query

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 around Barbie. First, you will add a Topic Title, define your Topic Type, and, if so desired, add a Topic Description for later reference.

a view of Sprout Social's Social Listening tool's Query Builder for social listening

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

a view of Sprout Social's Social Listening tool's Query Builder for social listening and the sources available in building a query

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.

a view of Sprout Social's Social Listening tool dashboard for a Query

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, and places.

a view of Sprout Social's Social Listening Smart Categories dashboard for a specific query made in the tool

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.