Just 6% of online US adults are using Reddit to discover and share links, but thanks the unrelenting enthusiasm of that small user base, it’s become an undeniably powerful tool for spreading content quickly. The first hurdle in using the platform in your brand’s favor is to avoid promotional content, which will only land you in comment battles with testy Redditors. But even if you do manage to pull off that seemingly impossible feat, it can also be quite tricky to track the trajectory of your Reddit-fueled viral content. Since Reddit focuses on community rather than brands and promos, the platform has yet to follow in Facebook and Twitter’s footsteps with analytics tools. That’s why a team of engineering students got together to build a tool themselves.
Reddit Insight uses Reddit.com’s public API to build real-time analysis and graphic visualizations of the platform’s historical data. You can now track Reddit activity in the following ways.
Track a Reddit post in real-time
Get a live report on how your post is performing on Reddit. You’ll be able to watch Karma (Reddit’s measure of “how much good the user has done for the Reddit community”) fluctuate as your post gets upvoted and downvoted. You’ll also see the post’s score and an overall count of post comments.
Possible use: Decide in real-time whether or not your content is performing well on Reddit. If not, you might need to consider tweaking your post timing or location, or turning to another platform entirely.
Track a user over time
Reddit Insight also lets you take a step back and look at individual users. The graph shows how that user’s Karma fluctuates over time, and below that chart you check a breakdown of how each of that user’s posts performed, including score and number of comments. In the chart below we can see how Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s most recent posts have performed.
Possible use: Which content worked the best, and which received little to know feedback? Examine this data to optimize your posting strategy. Also check on how influential other users are on Reddit.
View word clouds from Subreddits
The word clouds functions lets you see which words are most frequently used within a specified Subreddit. In the example below, you can see that Google, Internet and Microsoft are frequently mentioned within the technology Subreddit.
Possible use: See which kind of language and or content is most used within a Subreddit before posting your link. If your topic isn’t commonly brought up, there might be a better Subreddit for you to post in.
Find the most active Subreddits
The SubReddit Graphs section of Reddit Insight shows the number of comments per post, per Subreddit as well as the average Karma per post, per Subreddit.
Possible use: Figure out which Subreddits have the most potential for driving traffic to your content or boosting your Karma.
For more tips on Reddit strategy, check out The Right and Wrong Way to Use Reddit for Brand Marketing.
