Forums Monitoring: is it worth it in 2024? [Reddit and other forums]

Are forums dead in 2024? Oh well, no! Reddit (the most popular forum in the U.S.) now has more than 500 MILLION users. It is the 5th most visited platform in this country! Forums are becoming popular again… and you must watch what’s happening there!

Forum monitoring involves observing, tracking, and analyzing discussions on online forums. It can detect user mentions of a brand, product, service, or other keywords and offer valuable insights.

The power of forums is visible in Reddit’s example!

In the U.S., it is one of the most popular right after Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter.

Read this article to learn more about forums monitoring!

Table of contents:

• What is forum monitoring?
• How to monitor forums?
  • Monitor mentions
  • Explore forum analytics
  • Monitor the progress
• Forums monitoring tips
• Why monitor forums?
• Conclusion

What is forum monitoring?

Forum monitoring is all about observing what’s happening in discussions on online forums.

What, more precisely, is it?

It is analyzing forums to:

• Track your brand mentions to see how it is perceived and what your customer’s pain points are
• Answer questions related to your product or service, as well as industry
• Find your competitors’ mentions to see how they are perceived online
• Identify popular topics and industry trends

There are many forums. I don’t even know half of them.

But they can be classified into:

• Those focused on one topic, like Tripadvisor:

• Those on which discussions are raised about literally everything, such as Reddit:

According to Reddit, around 1.2 MILLION posts were published daily on this one forum last year!

Add the comments under each post and conversations on other lesser-known forums. These numbers are huge!

You must be alert and monitor all forums, not just one – you never know where you will be mentioned

How to monitor forums?

01 Monitor mentions

Want to find out which facial cleanser is the best for daily use, where to eat well in Miami, or what food would be best for your dog?

Forums are great places to find advice and different necessary (and unnecessary) information.

Forum users are eager to express their opinions and share their experiences, knowledge, and thoughts.

Monitor your brand mentions to learn what people say about your brand, products, and services.

People will mention you, wanting to recommend something to the enquirer or advise against it.

Reddit has a lot of negative and offensive content.

People are more likely to express their negative opinions on forums than on social media because they are anonymous there.

You should be incredibly attentive to the negative mentions. This will protect your reputation online!

Negative mentions can also be very valuable to you. Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?

Well, they can help you better understand your users’ needs and improve your product or service.

Let’s look at Apple, the tech giant and innovation icon.

In September 2023, iOS 17 (Apple operating system) was released to the public.

Many Apple fans complained about a large amount of bugs in this operating system, mainly on Reddit:

Apple didn’t remain indifferent – the company started rolling out improvements to address the bugs customers complained about.

As I mentioned earlier, you need to monitor all forums.

Sounds like a big challenge? With media monitoring tools, it becomes easier!

Media monitoring tools collect and analyze keyword mentions in forum posts and comments.

It’s up to you what keyword you want to track. It doesn’t necessarily have to be your company’s or competitors’ name. You can monitor any specific keywords you wish.

What’s more, the best tools, such as Brand24, monitor many sources, not just online forums:

• Social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, Twitch)
• Websites and blogs
• Review sites
• Newsletters
• Podcasts
• And much more!

Brand24 provides valuable insights into forum discussions and other online conversations.

Because Brand24 is an AI-powered tool, it has many valuable features, including the Anomaly Detector.

The Anomaly Detector shows you what caused the sudden spike in the volume of mentions or reach.

Let’s check out what happened when CeraVe had a reach of more than 13 MILLION on 21 May.

Here’s the answer:

In a nutshell, thanks to using a forum monitoring tool, you will:

• Find any mention of your brand in online forums and other sources
• Gain vital and dynamic customer insights from forum discussions
• Know which topics generate the most discussion
• Have all forums in one place with valuable AI-supported analysis and make your work more efficient

Check how Dealavo (competitor price tracking software) uses the Brand24 tool to know customer feedback

02 Explore forum analytics

Each forum has its own analytics. However, no matter what forum you choose, it will give you less valuable data than forum monitoring tools.

Let’s check Reddit analytics, as it is the largest platform.

Reddit shows you:

• How many views each post you create has, and how this has changed over the first 48 hours
• Upovate rate
• Number of comments under a post
• The number of shares

As you can see, the analytics are not very advanced and only apply to discussions you create

This is why I recommend you use external tools such as Brand24; it tracks the discussions in which you are mentioned and provides advanced analytics:

• Mentions volume and reach
• Sentiment analysis
• AI Insights
• Anomaly Detector
• And much more!

03 Monitor the progress

An essential element in monitoring the forums is tracking progress.

You need to be able to compare month-to-month how the number of mentions of your brand on forums (and across the whole Internet) changes.

Thanks to Brand24’s Comparison feature, I compared the last two months of the CeraVe brand.

I compared mentions in all sources to get an overall picture of how this brand was perceived online:

In the current month, CeraVe had a much higher number of mentions, which resulted in better results for other metrics.

Forums monitoring tips

The most important tips are:

• Give up checking each forum individually. Investing in a decent tool like Brand24 will have all forums in one place and provide advanced analytics, and insight is better.
• Set up alerts to be notified when the number of your brand mentions or reach suddenly increases. A sudden increase is not always associated with positive mentions; receive alerts and avoid potential reputation crises.
• Monitor various topic-specific keywords on forums. Then, comment on a topic and recommend your product or service. This will help you attract new customers.

Why monitor forums?

Do you still need clarification about the usefulness of monitoring forums?

I guess everything is clear, but most importantly, forum monitoring allows you to:

• See if customers are satisfied with your products or services
• Be the first to react when someone mentions you negatively, and keep your reputation clean
• Be familiar with your niche
• Be the first to comment on threads important to your business, where you can recommend your product or service in an unintrusive way
• Know what are the weaknesses and what are the strengths of your competition

Conclusion

It is impossible to monitor the forums only through the forum dashboards.

First, the forum dashboard provides too few, often unimportant, metrics.

Secondly, you need to have an account on every forum and jump from one to another to monitor what is happening.

Therefore, the only solution for comprehensive forum monitoring is media monitoring tools.

Not only do they deliver the kind of metrics that forums themselves don’t, but they monitor all forums.

Final thoughts:

• Once you’ve chosen the right tool to monitor the forums, set up projects to monitor the forums for your brand, your products/services, your competitors, and topics related to your niche.
• Pay particular attention to the number of mentions, reach, and sentiment.
• Compare data from different periods to see the progress of your marketing efforts.

Do you want to become the king of the forums and ultimately control what users say about your brand? Run to try Brand24 for free – a tool that monitors forums and other online sources!