People on Reddit ask for recommendations and complain about problems all day long. A lot of them would be glad to find your product, if only they knew it existed. You can catch those conversations while they are still happening, but how you go about it matters, because Reddit comes down hard on anything that smells like a sales pitch.
F5Bot watches Reddit, Hacker News, and other sites for words you choose, and sends you an email whenever one turns up. That makes it a decent tool for finding these conversations, as long as you are careful about what you do next.
Stop thinking about your brand for a minute. Someone who already knows your name is not the customer you are trying to find here. You want the person who has the problem you solve and has never heard of you.
So watch for the problem instead. If you make backup software, watch for phrases like "lost my files," "deleted my photos," or "no backup." If you sell a standing desk, watch for people talking about back pain at their desk. Think about the exact words someone would type at the moment they need what you make, and use those as your keywords.
When you give F5Bot a keyword, it emails you every time those words show up. That sounds great until you see how many people are venting rather than shopping. A phrase like "lost my files" catches the person hunting for a backup tool, but it also catches everyone just complaining about a bad day. You will want a way to narrow it down.
The filters on F5Bot's paid plans handle exactly this. An include filter says "only email me if the post also contains one of these words," so you can require a buying signal like "recommend" or "any suggestions." An exclude filter does the opposite, and throws out any match that contains a word you have marked as noise. Between the two, you can take a noisy problem keyword and cut it down to the posts actually worth your time.
F5Bot's AI-powered filtering on the top tiers is a good fit here, because "someone looking to buy" is easier to describe than to pin down with exact words. You could write something like "only show me people asking for a recommendation for backup software," and let it read each match and keep the ones that fit. You can read how the filters work in the documentation.
Go slow here. Do not drop a link and leave. Read the thread, answer the person's actual question like a normal human, and bring up your product only if it genuinely fits what they asked. Say that you work on it. Link to the specific page that helps them, not your homepage.
Check the subreddit's rules before you post, too. A lot of communities ban self-promotion outright, and some have a dedicated thread for it. Being a regular who is actually helpful goes over far better than showing up only to pitch.
This channel is slow and steady. A handful of good conversations a week is a real win. Do not try to automate the replies. It works because a real person showed up and was genuinely useful, and people can tell when that is missing.
You can start with the free plan and watch a problem keyword or two. It comes with a few limits: alerts are delayed, the most common words are off the table, and each keyword caps out after so many hits a day. Problem keywords tend to be noisy, so this is a case where paying pays off. Alerts arrive faster, the caps go up, common words open up, and you get the include, exclude, and AI filters that keep the junk out. The pricing page has the details.
Pick one problem your product solves, make a free account, and add the words people use to describe it. To watch for specific competitors and the people looking to leave them, see the competitor guide.