# How to monitor Reddit for keywords

**The short answer**

Monitoring Reddit for keywords takes four decisions: **which terms** to watch, **which subreddits**
to watch them in, **what counts as relevant**, and **where the alert lands**. Reddit itself has no
keyword alert, so the watching is done by a tool that reads posts and comments in the subreddits you
name.

Redwatcher is a Reddit monitoring tool that scores every keyword match for relevance before it
alerts you. From $29 a month, seven-day trial, no card.

## Step 1 — Choose the terms, not just the brand

There are three groups to watch, and most people start with only the first.

- **Your brand, plus the spellings people use.** Different capitalisation, a missing hyphen, a
  dropped letter, the plural. A mention that misses the official spelling still counts.
- **Your competitors.** These threads are usually where someone is choosing between products, which
  makes them more useful than mentions of your own name.
- **The problem you solve.** People describe the problem long before they know your name. "Anything
  cheaper that still does automations" is a buying question with no brand in it.

![Redwatcher's setup listing the competitors being tracked, each with its domain and its spellings](img/product-competitors.png "**Then the competitors, each with its own spellings.** Every one counts as a single keyword against the plan, and the panel proposes more from what it read on your site.")

![Redwatcher's setup asking which words to watch for, with the keyword box, the plan's keyword count and the suggestions it added](img/product-keywords.png "**The words you want to hear about.** Your own phrases in the box, the suggestions it proposed from your site underneath, and the count against your plan — with every competitor you track counted as one keyword.")

### Broad terms and narrow terms

The same keyword behaves differently depending on how specific it is, and the two kinds need
different handling.

A **narrow term** is your brand, a competitor's product name, or a phrase nobody uses by accident.
It fires rarely and almost every match is worth looking at, so it can sit at a low score bar without
producing noise.

A **broad term** is the category language: *email tool*, *non-stick pan*, *project tracker*. It
fires constantly, and a lot of what it catches is people talking about something next door to your
product. These are the terms to keep an eye on while you tune in the first week, and the ones the
scoring does the most work on.

The common mistake is to add a broad term, find the first day noisy, and delete it. Threads with no
brand name in them are exactly the ones you want, and that is where they come from. Raise the bar on
the term instead.

## Step 2 — Name the subreddits you want watched

The same keyword means different things in different communities. In one it comes from somebody
about to buy. In another it is a passing remark. And watching all of Reddit means reading all of
it.

Naming the communities keeps the volume manageable, and it is the step most people skip because it
takes knowledge they may not have. Start from where your customers already are: the subreddits for
your category, the ones for products like yours, and the business or hobby communities where your
kind of question gets asked. Redwatcher's setup reads your website and proposes the list, then
checks each subreddit against Reddit as you accept it.

![Redwatcher's setup proposing the subreddits to watch, each checked against Reddit as it is accepted](img/product-subreddits.png "**The communities, named by you.** Setup proposes them from your site; each one is checked against Reddit as you accept it, so you finish with communities that exist and are still active.")

## Step 3 — Decide what "relevant" means before the alerts start

A term that appears often produces a lot of matches, and most of them will be someone using the
phrase in passing, a resale listing or a job post.

There are two common answers and they both cost you something. Narrow the keyword until it stops
firing and you lose the threads you wanted. Cap how many alerts a keyword may send in a day and the
one that mattered might have been the eleventh.

The other option is to judge each match before sending it. Redwatcher scores every match from 0 to
100 for relevance in context and sends only what clears the bar you set, with the reasons attached.
Anything below the bar stays in the app and is counted, so you can see how much came in and where
you drew the line.

![Redwatcher's setup asking how picky the scoring should be, with rules written in plain language and two suggestions to add](img/product-scoring-setup.png "**The bar, in your own words.** Rules are written as sentences — *ignore threads that are just job ads* — and it proposes ones drawn from your site. They are what the score is judged against.")

![The Redwatcher inbox for a Klaviyo project: a thread scored 94, a competitor comparison scored 88, and a job post scored 24 and skipped, each with the reasons underneath](img/product-inbox.png "**Every thread carries its score.** The term that matched is highlighted in the title, the reasons sit under it, and anything below your bar is skipped and counted rather than sent.")

## Step 4 — Send the alert where you will actually see it

Pick the destination by how quickly you intend to answer.

| Destination | Good for |
| --- | --- |
| Slack | A team that answers together, in a channel |
| Telegram | One person who wants it on their phone |
| Email | A daily read rather than an interruption |
| Webhook | Routing into Zapier, Make or your own system |

![Redwatcher's setup asking where alerts should be sent, offering Slack, Telegram, email and a signed webhook](img/product-alerts-setup.png "**Pick the destinations at setup.** Slack into a channel, Telegram to you or a group, email to any inbox, and a signed POST to your own endpoint — all four on every plan.")

## Step 5 — Tune it in the first two weeks

Expect the first week to need adjusting. The bar will be slightly wrong, one subreddit will turn out
to be quiet, and at least one keyword will turn out to be a common phrase.

Correcting a score takes one click, and the correction is written into your scoring rules, so what
you learn in the first week is applied automatically after that.

![A thread scored 94 being corrected to 38, and the correction saved as a scoring rule](img/product-scoring.png "**A wrong score is one click, and it becomes a rule.** Say what was wrong, and the correction is written into your scoring rules, the thread is re-scored — 94 to 38 here — and every later match is judged against it.")

[Start free](https://app.redwatcher.com/signup) Seven days, no card. From $29 a month after.
[See how the monitoring works](/reddit-monitoring)

## Four mistakes that cost coverage

**Only tracking your own brand.** If your name is the only term, you hear about people who already
know you. The threads where somebody is choosing have no brand in them yet.

**Skipping the spellings.** People drop capitals, hyphens and letters. Every name should carry its
variants underneath it, and adding them costs nothing against the allowance.

**Watching too few communities.** One subreddit is one room. Most categories have a main community,
two or three adjacent ones, and a general business or hobby community where the same question gets
asked by a different kind of person.

**Treating the first week's noise as a verdict.** When a term fires too often, the fix is usually in
the scoring and not in the term. Correct two or three scores and the same keyword starts earning its
place.

## How to monitor Reddit for keywords: questions people ask

### How can I monitor keywords on Reddit?
Name the subreddits and the terms, and use a tool that reads posts and comments in those communities
and tells you when a term appears. Reddit has no built-in keyword alert of its own.

### How much does it cost to monitor Reddit for keywords?
Redwatcher is $29 a month for 25 keywords and 25 subreddits, $49 for 50 and 50, and $89 for 100 and
100, with scoring and every alert channel on all three. The trial runs seven days and takes no card,
so the first week costs nothing to try.

### How many keywords should I track?
One brand with its spellings, three to six competitors and a handful of problem phrases fills most
of a 25-keyword plan, and it covers more ground than twenty variations of your own name.

### Should I monitor Reddit posts or comments?
Both. A post title starts the conversation, and the question you can answer is usually further down
in the comments.

### How do I keep keyword alerts from becoming noise?
Judge each match in context and set a score it has to reach, so anything below the bar is counted
and kept instead of sent. Narrowing the keyword and capping the daily count both work by throwing
away matches nobody has looked at.

/reddit-alerts | Reddit keyword alerts | What a scored alert contains, and the four places it can go.
/how-to-set-up-reddit-alerts | How to set up Reddit alerts | The same job, step by step, from an empty account.
/reddit-monitoring | How the monitoring works | Coverage, scoring, and what the Stats screen shows.

---

*Reddit is a trademark of Reddit, Inc. Redwatcher is not affiliated with or endorsed by Reddit, Inc.*

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