How to Do Reddit Sentiment Analysis? Example & Guide

Have you ever wondered what people really think about something? Reddit is the perfect place to find out – its users are brutally honest, making it a great source of real opinions. And thanks to Reddit sentiment analysis, you can uncover the true feelings behind thousands of posts.

For example, in the last 30 days, Lululemon was mentioned 2,470 times on Reddit, reaching 37 MILLION people (!).

Only 3% of those mentions were negative, which shows how good this brand is.

Reddit sentiment analysis applies Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML) to determine the emotions expressed in Reddit discussions. Thanks to it, you can see whether people feel positively, negatively, or neutrally about any topic, including brands and products.

I’ll show you how to perform sentiment analysis on Reddit!

Let’s get started!

What is Reddit sentiment analysis?

Reddit sentiment analysis is the process of analyzing what people say in Reddit posts about a specific topic and categorizing it into:

• Positive mentions – the topic is mentioned favorably, showing admiration or joy

• Negative mentions – the topic is discussed negatively, expressing anger, sadness, disgust, or fear

• Neutral mentions – the topic is mentioned without strong positive or negative emotions, often in an informative manner

You can analyze Reddit sentiment on almost anything: companies, brands, products, services, hashtags, campaigns, industries, or any other keyword you choose.

Analyzing sentiment on Reddit is very important for:

• Businesses: By analyzing sentiments around brands, products, services, competitors, or campaigns, businesses can gain deeper insights into consumer opinions. It allows them to:
  • Monitor brand reputation and customer satisfaction.
  • Identify product or service aspects needing improvement.
  • Spot and address potential crises before they escalate.
  • Refine products, services, or campaigns to meet customer needs better.
  • Make informed decisions.
  • Discover their competitors’ strengths and weaknesses.

Reddit sentiment analysis is particularly effective since up to 85% of Reddit users agree that posts are honest and truthful (source: Study “Find your People” conducted by Reddit & Talk Shoppe, 2021).

• Researchers: Researchers can leverage sentiment analysis to:
  • Check public opinion on specific topics.
  • Monitor the impact of events or campaigns.
  • Track trends.
• Individuals: Sentiment analysis helps consumers make better purchasing decisions. They can see the sentiment of different brands, products, services, etc.

90% of users trust Reddit to learn about products and brands (source: Reddit).

As you can see, the possibilities are endless – Reddit sentiment analysis can provide valuable insights in many areas.

How to do Reddit sentiment analysis?

You can try to perform sentiment analysis on Reddit manually, but it will never be as effective as using third-party sentiment analysis tools.

Why?

• It’s time-consuming! Only if your brand is rarely mentioned on Reddit is possible.
• Reddit is huge (over 97 million daily active users and over 1 million daily posts), and without a tool, it’s easy to miss mentions.
• Tools don’t just classify sentiments; they also provide valuable insights that can be difficult to identify on your own.
• Tools provide real-time monitoring; you are not able to do it.
• Tools use algorithms to classify sentiment reasonably; manual analysis can be subjective.

To show the scale, here’s how often some brands are mentioned on Reddit each month: Lululemon – 2,470; CeraVe – 1,680; Audi – 3,150; Nike – 7,100.

However, even though such tools are advanced and easily handle large amounts of data, they also have certain limitations. For example, they struggle with sarcasm.

Reddit sentiment analysis example

You now know why analyzing sentiment manually isn’t the best idea.

Here’s how you can do it in 6 easy steps using Brand24, an AI-powered sentiment analysis tool:

Step 1: Set up the monitoring project and collect data

Start by creating a project with your chosen keyword. Let’s create a project for Lululemon.

Once the project is set up, the tool will collect data.

When the data is ready, you’ll see a dashboard with mentions from various sources, such as social media, news sites, and many others.

You might not know this, but Brand24 can perform sentiment analysis across many sources, not just Reddit.

If you want to go beyond overall sentiment and focus specifically on Reddit:

• Go to the filter section on the right-hand side
• Enter “reddit.com” in the domain field

Now you can see only Lululemon’s Reddit mentions:

The tool also allows you to filter them by:

• The sentiment (positive, negative, neutral)
• Influence score
• Geolocation
• Language
• Importance
• And more!

Step 2: Check the sentiment breakdown

Now, it’s time to take a closer look at the sentiment.

First, switch the chart view from “Mentions & Reach” to “Sentiment”. You’ll see two lines: green for positive mentions and red for negative ones.

If you click on a specific day, you’ll see the exact number of positive and negative mentions:

Based on that, you can calculate the sentiment breakdown for a single day or any other time frame.

But why do it manually when Brand24 does it for you?

Just go to the Analysis tab, where you’ll find the sentiment breakdown chart:

Speaking of Lululemon, the brand was mentioned 2,470 times in the past 30 days, with only 3% of those mentions being negative.

That’s a fantastic result!

It’s also worth noting that a significant percentage (87%) of mentions are neutral. Why?

Because many Reddit posts were either informational (Lululemon’s Black Friday sale) or asking for advice (for example: “Is Lululemon worth the price?).

Step 3: Discover the exact emotions

Sentiment analysis can go beyond just labeling opinions on a particular topic as positive, neutral, or negative.

Brand24 shows specific emotions: admiration, joy, sadness, anger, disgust, and fear.

Thanks to the Emotion Analysis, you get:

• The pie chart showing the emotions share, so you can quickly see which emotions dominate the discussions
• The line chart showing how audience emotions change over time

As you see above – people mostly feel admiration when they talk about Lululemon on Reddit.

Step 4: Check the emojis

The tool also analyzes the emojis people use on Reddit.

Emojis became an essential part of digital communication. It’s natural for people to express their feelings about something without naming their emotions directly but through emojis.

Let’s take a look at the Emoji Analysis for Lululemon:

The larger and more central an emoji is on the map, the more frequently it’s used – “😄” dominates discussions about Lululemon.

Step 5: Dive into topics

You can also discover in the context of what topics people are talking about your brand on Reddit.

Isn’t it awesome?

Just go to the Topic Analysis tab, where you will see the most important topics and their statistics.

So, let’s take a closer look at the topic that generated the most positive emotions – Lululemon Products and Shopping:

Here’s what you can uncover:

• How many times has the topic been mentioned? 45
• How many people has the topic reached? 675,000
• Hw many conversations about Lululemon does this topic own compared to other topics? 4.44%
• What emotions does this topic evoke? 33% positive, 58% neutral, 9% negative

Want even more details? Click “More stats” for more:

Step 6: Track the sentiment over time

Sentiment analysis is an ongoing process. You should do it regularly.

Why?

It lets you catch negative feedback early, preventing small issues from escalating into big PR crises.

Brand24’s Compare periods feature gives you an overview of key Reddit metrics, including positive and negative mentions:

This makes it easy to track changes over time and identify sentiment trends.

As shown above, Lululemon’s week-by-week comparison reveals a decline in overall mentions, resulting in fewer positive and negative mentions.

However, the percentage of negative mentions remains the same (4%).

Conclusion

Reddit serves as a goldmine of valuable insights.

You don’t know your brand sentiment on Reddit? You lose a lot.

Final thoughts:

• Monitoring your sentiment on Reddit helps you catch potential issues early and protect your brand reputation.
• Manual sentiment analysis is almost impossible, especially if your brand is often mentioned.
• The right tool, like Brand24, makes it effortless to monitor Reddit (and other sources) and uncover how people feel about you.

Try Brand24 for free and discover how easy it is to keep track of your sentiment on Reddit!