Analysing Reddit Data: A New Perspective On Shareable Content

Reddit is similar in many ways to a discussion board. Users submit posts, known as submissions to categories known as sub-reddits. These posts can be questions, original content or links to external content. Other users can then add comments to the post and also rate both posts and comments by “upvoting” or “downvoting” them. This user voting drives the display of posts and comments on the site. Reddit reports over 24 million votes each month.

Content Engagement Across Social Networks

The content that engages the Reddit audience is often very different to the content that engages audiences on other social networks. This can be seen in just a few simple BuzzSumo searches. For example, if we search for ‘design’ and sort by Reddit engagements we can see that top content is about the design of a workout suit and a solar cell.

If we sort by Pinterest shares we get content on interior design.

If we sort by Facebook we get humorous articles on design fails.

The differences across networks is not surprising. It is also no surprise that content about technology tends to engage the Reddit audience, for example, this article about net neutrality gained over 400,000 engagements.

You can use BuzzSumo’s content analysis feature to compare engagement across social networks. Below is the chart for net neutrality where we can see Reddit generates as much engagement as Facebook.

Trending Content

Typically we find Facebook drives trending content because of its scale and reach. However, in some particular topic areas we see can content being driven by engagements on Reddit. Below are a few examples.

Exploring Questions on Reddit

People ask a lot of questions on Reddit. For example, there have been over 6m questions asked in the general sub-reddit called AskReddit.

BuzzSumo’s question analyzer gives you the opportunity to tap into Reddit data and analyze the questions asked in any sub-reddit. For example, there were over 50,000 questions asked in the askscience sub-reddit on the following topics.

For sub-reddits such as diabetes there have been over 14,000 questions on the following topics.

Here are just a few sample questions on Novolog vs Humalog.

Find Questions By Topic

You can also search the whole of Reddit for questions on a specific topic by using the Reddit filter.

If you are interested in what questions young men are asking about a topic Reddit can provide you with some useful insights. You can also explore the answers being provided and the discussions around the questions.

Reddit As A Source Of Traffic

Reddit can also be a good source of traffic. To check whether Reddit currently drives traffic to your site dig into your Google analytics. Simply go to “Social,” then “Network Referrals”. Find and click on reddit, then use the secondary dimension option to choose “Behavior” and then “Full Referrer”. This will show you the specific sub-reddits that are driving traffic to your site. For example in our case they are as follows.