# How to set up Reddit alerts

**The short answer**

**Reddit has no keyword alert.** Its own notifications cover replies to your posts and accounts you
follow. There is no setting that tells you when a word appears somewhere you are not already
watching. That kind of alert comes from a monitoring tool pointed at the subreddits you choose.

Redwatcher is a Reddit monitoring tool that scores every keyword match for relevance before it
alerts you. Setting it up is five steps: add the terms, accept the subreddits, set the score to be
alerted above, connect a channel, send a test. Seven-day trial, no card.

## What Reddit's own notifications do cover

Reddit handles the first two of these. It has nothing for the third.

| You want to be told when… | Reddit itself |
| --- | --- |
| Someone replies to your post or comment | Yes, in your notifications |
| An account you follow posts | Yes, by following that account |
| **A word appears anywhere you are watching** | **No** |

The last row is what a Reddit monitoring tool does.

## Step 1 — Put in the words you want to hear about

Add your brand and the spellings people use for it, your competitors, and the phrases people type
when they have the problem you solve. The third group finds threads before your name is in them.

Redwatcher's setup reads your website and proposes all three, spellings included, so you are
editing a list instead of writing one from scratch.

![Redwatcher's setup asking for your own brand, with the website field and the spellings listed under the name](img/product-brand.png "**Your brand, and the spellings under it.** Give it the website and it reads the site; every name carries the variants people actually type, so a mention that misses the official spelling still matches.")

![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.")

## Step 2 — Choose the communities to watch

Accept the proposed subreddits, add the ones you know, and remove any that do not apply to you. Each
one is checked against Reddit as you accept it, so the finished list holds only communities that
exist and are active.

![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.** Each proposed subreddit is checked against Reddit as you accept it, so you finish with communities that exist and are still active.")

## Step 3 — Set the bar

Set the score a match has to reach before you are alerted. Anything below it is kept and counted in
the app instead of sent, so the bar controls how much arrives without discarding anything.

70 is a good starting point. Lower it if the first days are too quiet. If a common phrase keeps
firing, correct one of its scores and the correction is saved as a rule.

![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.")

## Step 4 — Connect the channel

Email, Slack, Telegram or a signed webhook, all four on every plan. Slack and Telegram install in
one click, with no bot token to create and no chat id to look up.

![Redwatcher's alert destinations: a Slack message, a Telegram message and a signed webhook payload](img/product-alerts.png "**Email, Slack, Telegram and a signed webhook, on every plan.** Slack and Telegram install in one click, and every channel has a test button that sends a real message.")

## Step 5 — Send a test before you trust it

Every channel has a test button that sends a real message. Press it now, so you are not finding out
whether the channel works on the day something important gets posted.

## What a good first week looks like

Day one is quiet, and that is normal. Monitoring starts from the moment you finish setup, so the
first alerts come from new threads as they are posted, not from the back catalogue.

By day two or three you should be seeing a handful of matches a day in a normal category. If you are
seeing none, it is usually the subreddit list at fault before the terms. If you are seeing dozens,
the bar is too low for one of your broader terms.

By the end of the week you will have corrected two or three scores, and from there the scoring
starts matching your judgement instead of a general one. The rules those corrections write
are listed in Setup, and you can edit them by hand at any time.

## When nothing is arriving

Four things account for almost every quiet inbox. Check them in this order.

**The bar is too high.** A score of 90 is stricter than it sounds. Drop it to 70 and see what
appears.

**The subreddits are quiet.** The Stats screen shows how much was read in each one. A community with
few posts a day will not produce matches whatever the terms are.

**The terms are too narrow.** A brand nobody has heard of yet produces very few mentions. Add the
phrases people use to describe the problem, which they write long before they know your name.

**The channel is not connected.** Every channel has a test button that sends a real message. If the
test arrives and the alerts do not, delivery is working and the problem is the bar or the terms.

[Start free](https://app.redwatcher.com/signup) Seven days, no card. From $29 a month after.
[What an alert contains](/reddit-alerts)

## Setting up Reddit alerts: questions people ask

### Can you set up Reddit alerts?
Not for keywords. Reddit notifies you about replies and accounts you follow. To be alerted when a
word appears in a community you are watching, use a monitoring tool: you give it the terms and the
subreddits, and it tells you when they meet.

### How to set Reddit alerts for a specific subreddit?
Add that subreddit to the list you watch and attach the terms you care about. You then hear about
the posts and comments in it that mention one of your terms and clear your score, instead of
everything posted there.

### How to set up keyword alerts?
Add the words, name the subreddits, and set the score a match has to reach before it is sent. In
Redwatcher the first two are proposed from your website and the third is a slider.

### Why am I getting Reddit notifications I did not ask for?
Those come from Reddit's own settings, such as recommended posts or replies, and they are turned off
in your Reddit notification preferences. They have nothing to do with keyword monitoring, which
sends nothing until a term you chose appears in a place you named.

### How long does it take to set up?
The five steps take a few minutes. Expect to spend the first week or two adjusting the bar and one
or two keywords once you have seen what they catch.

/reddit-alerts | Reddit keyword alerts | What a scored alert contains, and the four places it can go.
/how-to-monitor-reddit-for-keywords | How to monitor Reddit for keywords | Choosing terms, places and a bar that holds.
/how-to-get-alerted-when-someone-posts-on-reddit | Alerts when someone posts | One account, or anyone using a word you chose.

---

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

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