reddit alien

Using Reddit for Market Research

Recently a friend asked me how to use reddit for market research. Here's a walkthrough of the approach I took. In this case the example I'm using is "homeschooling".

First, you can search to try and find a subreddit (a subsite at reddit) via a URL such as this:

https://www.reddit.com/search?q=homeschooling

...by simply typing the search term into the search box on reddit's front page.

The results will include some suggested 'subreddits', for example:

https://www.reddit.com/r/homeschool/

Then use the tool 'redsim' to find subreddits similar to the subreddit you've found:

e.g. https://anvaka.github.io/redsim/#?q=homeschool

(Here's a visual/force-directed network tool for viewing elated subreddits: https://anvaka.github.io/sayit/?query=programming)

force_directed_subreddits.png

From this we find:

At https://www.reddit.com/r/unschool/ there is a "related subreddits" in the sidebar.... so we can harvest that list too, for examination, part of which is to write down how many subscribers at each one:

And the counts for the others we found:

Once we've got the full list of subreddits we're interested in, we can create a 'multi reddit' like this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/homeschool+unschool+homeschooled+attachmentparenting+troubleteens+radicalparenting+orderofthearrow/

↑ With that link, you can see a combined view of all those subreddits at once,.

Also, you can see the top posts of all time, like this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AttachmentParenting+Homeschooled+homeschool+orderofthearrow+radicalparenting+unschool/top/

...which is usually very telling about how to appeal to that market.

Be careful though!

Lots of diversions will come up along the way -- so this top-level research can be hard to do without getting sucked into the vortex.

With reddit, to avoid diversions it's better to look at 'top' rather than 'hot' because 'hot' will be things that are more likely to 'draw you in' whereas top will give you more long-term information about the market you're researching.

Another more general tip I've picked up in this area:

When googling a target market, if you specifically want to look at forums, then use the "forum:" modifier/prefix in google. And if searching for blogs use "blog:" prefix.

Resources

My book "Choose Your First Product" is available now.

It gives you 4 easy steps to find and validate a humble product idea.

Learn more.