How to Monitor Reddit Mentions Like a Pro: The Ultimate Guide

Contents hide

Why Monitor Reddit?

What you should monitor for on Reddit

Approaches to Monitoring Reddit

1. Leveraging a Tool Like Notifier to Monitor Reddit

2. Building Your Own Reddit Monitoring Solution

Conclusion

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Why Monitor Reddit?

Reddit stands as one of the internet’s most influential platforms, commanding massive reach and engagement that makes brand monitoring essential. With approximately 1.1 billion monthly active users and 365.4 million weekly active users as of 2025, Reddit processes 2.72 billion comments and interactions annually Backlinko Cropink. The platform ranks as the 10th most popular social network in the US, with nearly half of its desktop traffic coming from American users. Sources: Statista Oberlo.

The importance of monitoring Reddit becomes clear when you consider the volume of conversations happening about brands and services. Users generate over 500 million posts and 16 billion comments annually across more than 100,000 active subreddits Reddit User and Growth Stats (Updated January 2025). This creates countless opportunities for brands to engage with their audience, but also significant risks when negative conversations go unaddressed.

Companies that do not monitor Reddit are at a Massive Disadvantage

A perfect example involves Tegus, a company that reached out to our founder Timothy Bramlett about consulting opportunities. Timothy, wanting to verify the company’s legitimacy, searched Reddit and discovered multiple posts questioning whether Tegus was a legitimate company with no responses from the company itself. This highlighted a critical missed opportunity.

In the specific Reddit post Timothy found, someone directly asked “Is Tegus a legit company?” This represents exactly the type of moment where real-time monitoring becomes invaluable.

Had Tegus been monitoring mentions of their brand name, they could have immediately responded to reassure potential clients: “Yes, we are a legitimate company incorporated in [location]. We stand by our service, and if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to schedule a call with us for clarification.”

This simple response could have prevented significant damage to their brand reputation!

Instead, the unanswered question likely influenced countless potential customers who saw the post, potentially costing the company millions in lost business and tarnished brand image.

This example demonstrates why real-time Reddit monitoring isn’t just helpful but essential for protecting and building your brand in today’s digital landscape!

What you should monitor for on Reddit

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As demonstrated in the video above by our founder Timothy Bramlett, most businesses make a critical mistake when it comes to online monitoring. They focus solely on their own brand mentions, if they monitor at all. However, successful businesses understand there are three essential pillars of online monitoring that provide comprehensive market intelligence.

After thousands of conversations with business owners using Notifier, a clear pattern has emerged. Companies that thrive monitor all three pillars, while those that struggle remain completely blind to what’s happening in their digital ecosystem.

The Three Pillars of Strategic Online Monitoring

Pillar 1: Brand Mentions

Set up comprehensive brand monitoring to catch every conversation about your company. For example, if you’re Apple, you’d monitor for the keyword “Apple.” The critical component here is using AI-based verification to filter out irrelevant conversations. You want to capture discussions about Apple the technology company, not apple the fruit. This ensures you only receive meaningful alerts that require your attention.

Pillar 2: Competitor Intelligence

Monitor your competitors to gain valuable competitive intelligence and stay ahead of market conversations. Using the Apple example, you’d want to track mentions of Microsoft, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, and other key competitors. Think about whoever keeps you up at night in your industry. The goal is to know what customers are saying about your competitors before they do, giving you strategic advantages in positioning and response.

Pillar 3: Lead Generation Keywords

This is where most businesses fail completely. Monitor for keywords and phrases that your potential customers mention when they’re actively seeking solutions you provide. For Apple, this might include searches for “looking for a new phone,” “need a reliable laptop,” or “best smartphone for photography.” The key is identifying the language your ideal customers use when they have problems you can solve.

Why All Three Matter

With these three monitoring systems running simultaneously, you’re capturing everything that matters to your business. You’ll know what people are saying about your brand, gain intelligence on competitor positioning, and never miss potential leads actively seeking your solutions.

The businesses that fail to implement comprehensive monitoring miss critical conversations that could impact their reputation, competitive position, and revenue growth. Don’t let important discussions about your market happen without your knowledge.

Approaches to Monitoring Reddit

There are basically two approaches you can use to monitor Reddit:

Use a tool like Notifier.so to monitor Reddit for you.
You can build your own solution to monitor Reddit by leveraging their API.

1. Leveraging a Tool Like Notifier to Monitor Reddit

Getting started with Reddit monitoring through Notifier is straightforward and can be set up in minutes. This is our recommended approach for comprehensive, real-time Reddit monitoring.

Here’s how to get started:

Step 1: Create Your Account Sign up for Notifier and begin exploring the platform with our free trial.

Step 2: Set Up Your Reddit Searcher Create a new searcher and select Reddit as one of your monitoring platforms. This ensures you’re specifically targeting Reddit conversations rather than casting too wide a net across all social media.

Step 3: Define Your Keywords Choose the specific keywords and phrases you want to monitor. This could be your brand name, competitor names, or industry-specific terms that your potential customers might use.

Step 4: Configure AI Verification Add AI verification to filter out irrelevant mentions. Simply explain to the AI exactly what you’re looking for. For example, if you’re monitoring “Apple,” you can specify that you only want mentions related to the technology company, not the fruit.

Step 5: Activate and Monitor Once configured, sit back and let Notifier handle the heavy lifting. The platform will monitor Reddit in real time, sending you instant alerts whenever relevant conversations match your criteria.

The entire setup process takes just a few minutes, but the insights you’ll gain from real-time Reddit monitoring can transform how you engage with your audience and protect your brand reputation.

2. Building Your Own Reddit Monitoring Solution

API Limitations

One of the biggest challenges with Reddit’s API today is that the platform’s popularity has led to strict rate limits and restrictions, making it impossible to comprehensively monitor all of Reddit through their API alone. This is where specialized tools become essential.

Notifier.so addresses this complexity by providing real-time Reddit monitoring at scale. As the only platform capable of monitoring Reddit in real time, Notifier delivers instant alerts within seconds when content matches your defined keywords. The platform goes beyond basic keyword matching by incorporating AI verification technology, ensuring you only receive relevant mentions that truly align with what you’re looking for.

This approach eliminates the noise and delivers focused, actionable insights from Reddit discussions that matter to your business or interests.

Understanding Reddit’s API

Reddit’s API is your gateway to automated monitoring. However, it comes with specific rate limits and authentication requirements that you need to understand.

Authentication Setup

First, you’ll need to create a Reddit application:

import praw

reddit = praw.Reddit(
    client_id="YOUR_CLIENT_ID",
    client_secret="YOUR_CLIENT_SECRET",
    user_agent="your_app_name/1.0"
)

import praw

reddit = praw.Reddit(
    client_id="YOUR_CLIENT_ID",
    client_secret="YOUR_CLIENT_SECRET",
    user_agent="your_app_name/1.0"
)

Rate Limits

Reddit’s API has the following key limitations:

60 requests per minute for OAuth2 applications
600 requests per 10 minutes for authenticated applications
30 requests per minute for non-authenticated applications

Setting Up Your Monitoring Infrastructure

Basic Monitoring Script

Here’s a simple Python script to get you started:

import praw
import time
from datetime import datetime

def monitor_subreddit(subreddit_name, keywords):
    subreddit = reddit.subreddit(subreddit_name)

    while True:
        try:
            for submission in subreddit.new(limit=100):
                for keyword in keywords:
                    if keyword.lower() in submission.title.lower():
                        print(f"Found mention in r/{subreddit_name}")
                        print(f"Title: {submission.title}")
                        print(f"URL: https://reddit.com{submission.permalink}\n")

            time.sleep(300)  # Wait 5 minutes before next check
        except Exception as e:
            print(f"Error: {e}")
            time.sleep(60)

import praw
import time
from datetime import datetime

def monitor_subreddit(subreddit_name, keywords):
    subreddit = reddit.subreddit(subreddit_name)

    while True:
        try:
            for submission in subreddit.new(limit=100):
                for keyword in keywords:
                    if keyword.lower() in submission.title.lower():
                        print(f"Found mention in r/{subreddit_name}")
                        print(f"Title: {submission.title}")
                        print(f"URL: https://reddit.com{submission.permalink}\n")

            time.sleep(300)  # Wait 5 minutes before next check
        except Exception as e:
            print(f"Error: {e}")
            time.sleep(60)

Building a Custom Monitoring Solution

Advanced Monitoring System

Here’s a more sophisticated monitoring solution using asyncio for better performance:

import asyncio
import aiohttp
import logging
from datetime import datetime

class RedditMonitor:
    def __init__(self, subreddits, keywords):
        self.subreddits = subreddits
        self.keywords = keywords
        self.logger = logging.getLogger('reddit_monitor')

    async def monitor_mentions(self):
        async with aiohttp.ClientSession() as session:
            while True:
                tasks = [
                    self.check_subreddit(session, subreddit)
                    for subreddit in self.subreddits
                ]
                await asyncio.gather(*tasks)
                await asyncio.sleep(300)

    async def check_subreddit(self, session, subreddit):
        url = f"https://www.reddit.com/r/{subreddit}/new.json"
        try:
            async with session.get(url) as response:
                data = await response.json()
                self.process_posts(data['data']['children'])
        except Exception as e:
            self.logger.error(f"Error checking {subreddit}: {e}")

import asyncio
import aiohttp
import logging
from datetime import datetime

class RedditMonitor:
    def __init__(self, subreddits, keywords):
        self.subreddits = subreddits
        self.keywords = keywords
        self.logger = logging.getLogger('reddit_monitor')

    async def monitor_mentions(self):
        async with aiohttp.ClientSession() as session:
            while True:
                tasks = [
                    self.check_subreddit(session, subreddit)
                    for subreddit in self.subreddits
                ]
                await asyncio.gather(*tasks)
                await asyncio.sleep(300)

    async def check_subreddit(self, session, subreddit):
        url = f"https://www.reddit.com/r/{subreddit}/new.json"
        try:
            async with session.get(url) as response:
                data = await response.json()
                self.process_posts(data['data']['children'])
        except Exception as e:
            self.logger.error(f"Error checking {subreddit}: {e}")

Automated Alert Systems

Setting Up Notifications

Implement a notification system using webhook integrations:

async def send_alert(webhook_url, mention_data):
    async with aiohttp.ClientSession() as session:
        payload = {
            "content": f"New mention found!",
            "embeds": [{
                "title": mention_data['title'],
                "url": mention_data['url'],
                "description": mention_data['text'][:200] + "..."
            }]
        }

        async with session.post(webhook_url, json=payload) as response:
            return response.status == 200

async def send_alert(webhook_url, mention_data):
    async with aiohttp.ClientSession() as session:
        payload = {
            "content": f"New mention found!",
            "embeds": [{
                "title": mention_data['title'],
                "url": mention_data['url'],
                "description": mention_data['text'][:200] + "..."
            }]
        }

        async with session.post(webhook_url, json=payload) as response:
            return response.status == 200

Best Practices and Tips

Rate Limiting

Implement exponential backoff for API requests
Cache responses when possible
Use batch processing for large-scale monitoring

Data Management

Regular database maintenance
Implement data retention policies
Back up monitoring data regularly

Alert Configuration

Set up different alert priorities
Use filtering to reduce noise
Implement alert throttling

Performance Optimization

Use asynchronous programming
Implement connection pooling
Optimize database queries

Conclusion

Effective Reddit monitoring requires a combination of the right tools, proper setup, and ongoing maintenance. Whether you’re using pre-built solutions or creating your own monitoring system, the principles and code examples in this guide will help you track Reddit mentions like a pro.

Remember to:

Stay within API limits
Keep your monitoring system updated
Regularly analyze and act on the data you collect
Test and refine your alert criteria

With these tools and techniques in place, you’ll be well-equipped to capture and analyze Reddit mentions effectively.

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