How to Measure the Share of Voice?

The share of voice (SOV) is one of the most important marketing metrics. It helps you determine the visibility of your brand and the percentage of online discussions around your product or service. The higher the SOV, the more authority you have within your business niche.

How do you calculate the share of voice? What insights will it provide?

This blog post will answer all your questions about this digital marketing metric.

We discuss how to track different kinds of the share of voice, how to measure it, and, finally, what you can do to improve it.

Let’s dive in!

• What is the SOV?
• How to measure a brand’s share of voice?
• Best tools to measure the SOV
• Why is the SOV important?
• How to improve your SOV
• A quick recap

What is the share of voice?

The share of voice is a measure of your brand’s visibility across different communication channels.

The SOV of your brand is then compared to the SOV of your competitors. That’s why it gives you an overview of your brand’s position on the whole market.

The share of voice can be measured across different channels, for example:

• Social media (impressions’ share, hashtags, reach)
• Organic traffic
• PPC
• Revenue
• Volume of mentions

The SOV is important to measure the results of your PR and PPC campaigns.

Today, we’ll cover two types of this marketing metric — share of voice on social media important for PR and PPC SOV.

Which brings us to the problem we encounter with almost every marketing metric – how to measure the SOV so you can get actionable insights to improve your marketing strategy?

How to measure a brand’s share of voice?

First, you have to take a look at various marketing metrics. Some of them, especially metrics related to PPC, are easily available.

Measuring the social share of voice might be a bit harder, but if there’s a will, there’s a method!

Hopefully, this short guide will help you assess the results of your marketing efforts and make the calculations much easier.

Share of voice in PR

The share of voice is a great metric to assess the results of a PR campaign.

PR is all about interacting with other users. What better place to do it than social media?

If you focus your PR campaign on social channels, you have to measure the social share of voice.

Calculating the share of voice you generate while conducting organic PR activities is a bit trickier than measuring the paid share of voice. 

You have to know the social media reach of every single post, the type, and the number of interactions and compare these metrics to the whole industry. 

That seems like a lot of work. 

A helping hand is a media monitoring tool. Social listening tools collect and analyze the data you need to calculate the SOV. I will show you how to measure the share of voice based on Brand24, one of the top social media monitoring tools available on the market.

Brand24 collects all publicly available brand mentions containing your predefined keyword, including mentions posted on all major social networks, for example, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, or Twitch.

Moreover, the tool collects mentions of your brand from other publicly available sources, including news sites, blogs, reviews sites, podcasts, and newsletters.

Set up projects for your own brand and for your competitors. That way, you can conduct competitor research and measure the SOV.

You can calculate the share of voice manually or take a look at the social listening tool dashboard:

You get a list of the 10 most active profiles, so you can compare the share of voice your brand generated to the SOV of your competitors.

Brand24 will also give you the components of the metric, such as estimated reach or the total number and type of interactions. Combine all the data with sentiment analysis, and you have all the information you need about your brand’s online presence.

The best part is you can set up a project for your competitors. Not only will you get the information about your company, but also about all the brands you’re competing with.

A listening tool will automatically calculate the SOV, but you can also measure the metric by yourself.

To calculate the social share of voice, use this share of voice formula:

(the total number of your brand’s mentions/the total number of mentions within your market)x100

The percentage will indicate the share of voice a particular social media account generates.

This method of calculating the share of voice requires you to know the number of mentions relevant to your industry.

The share of voice in PPC

Of course, the easiest way to calculate the PPC share of voice is to use a dedicated tool. 

Fortunately, there’s a way to measure it without using a paid tool. It’s not an easy task, though.

I’ll do my best to make the whole process as comprehensible as possible!

To calculate SOV in PPC you must divide your brand advertising by total market advertising. 

PPC share of voice = (your brand advertising/total market advertising) x 100

What metrics will you need?

• List of your keywords or your competitors’ keywords (if you’re conducting a competitor analysis)
• The total value of your market
• CTR

The first two metrics are relatively easy to find, especially if you use an SEO tool. 

The CTR for each keyword, on the other hand, is hard to assess. Many external factors influence the CTR, for example, your domain authority or any changes in the Google algorithm. And that’s just for the share of voice of a single keyword.

If you want to calculate the SOV for a whole group of keywords, take a look at the monthly search volume (you’ll find it in Google Analytics). 

To calculate your share of voice, divide brand traffic by total market traffic. 

The disadvantage of calculating your SOV is that you have to do it manually. That’s not only a time-consuming process, but it is easy to miss important brand mentions. You also need to know your media spending and paid advertising.

Some SEO tools will calculate the SOV for you and will do it on a regular basis. You’ll be able to compare the fluctuations in the brand’s share over time and, ultimately, increase the share of voice for your brand. 

Best tools to measure the share of voice

As we mentioned earlier, measuring the share of voice manually may take a lot of your time and effort. Fortunately, some tools can do it automatically for you.

There are different types of solutions that you can use to measure the SOV depending on what kind of data and information you are looking for.

The first type of tools will help you measure the SOV in PR. We prepared a list of social media monitoring tools that you can check out for this purpose.

1. Brand24

Brand24 is one of the most robust and affordable social listening tools on the market. It monitors brand mentions in real-time, but it is a web monitoring tool with an advanced analytics section.

The tool covers various sources, including social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Twitch, review sites, news sites, blogs, newsletters, podcasts, other publicly available Web sources.’

Brand24 measures the share of voice, online presence score, sentiment, and other metrics that can give you an idea of how your company or PR efforts, campaigns are performing.

Brand24 offers a 14-day free trial.

It is very flexible since right away, it offers 4 pricing plans that you can choose from, depending on your needs, expectations, and budget.

Brand24’s price starts at $49 a month.

2. Brandwatch

Brandwatch is an enterprise-level social listening tool. It offers a wide range of functionalities, but it is one of the most expensive tools on the market.

Brandwatch can be useful for measuring the share of voice, as it will give you ready to implement insights that could boost your business online presence, help you make more informed decisions, and, ultimately, increase your market share.

Brandwatch does not offer a free trial period, and there is no information about its pricing on the official website.

One of the sources says that the price of Brandwatch starts at $1,000 per month for 10,000 mentions.

Here is an article about Brandwatch alternatives. If you don’t want to spend that much on a social listening tool, you may want to check it out.

3. Talkwalker

Talkwalker is a social listening and analytics company. It is used for social media monitoring by the biggest brands and agencies from all over the world. It offers multiple features to provide advanced results to all the clients. 

It offers analytics, so it will surely help measure the share of voice.

The basic plan aimed at smaller brands or owned media-focused companies costs $9,600 yearly. The prices of the two remaining plans, Corporate and Enterprise, are discussed on request.

Here is a post on Talkwalker alternatives if you are interested in trying different solutions.

4. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a media management tool that can be used for social listening as well.

The tool collects mentions of your brand across major social media platforms. It offers social media automation that will help you manage your online presence but also get the social listening insights you need to boost your business, including the information about your share of voice.

Sprout Social offers a 30-day free trial, which does not include a Listening feature.

Its starter plan costs $99 per month.

Here is a post on Sprout Social alternatives, if you are interested in trying different solutions.

Why is the share of voice important?

The share of voice tells you how well-known your brand, product, or service is among your target audience.

Measuring the SOV across various marketing channels has many benefits that will directly impact your business bottom line. Also, it will give you many valuable insights into your brand.

Let’s discover the most important applications!

Perform competitors analysis

The share of voice allows you to get the big picture of the market. The more you know about the market you operate in, the better decision you will make. Competitors’ analysis will also pinpoint your position on the market and show direction for development.

Calculating the SOV will tell you what are the levels of your online presence compared to your competitors. Analyzing the online presence of your competitors and their social media share can indicate the areas you can improve. You can identify the content that resonates better with your target audience, discover insights into your next product, come up with a newsletter idea, and much more.

What are competitive metrics worth tracking (beyond SOV)? Social media reach, sentiment, reputation score, source and a number of mentions.

Learn about your audience

The share of voice tells you a lot about your audience. You can measure the sentiment around your brand and learn about your strengths and weaknesses. Putting the data into segments will help you target your desired audience most efficiently.

Tracking the mentions of your brand will give you consumer insights that will be delivered straight to your inbox. People talk about your brand on different marketing channels. Social media monitoring tools can discover social networks where your audience is present.

Measure marketing campaign

Measuring the changes in the share of voice will help you determine whether a marketing campaign was successful. The SOV is one of the indicators of whether your digital marketing strategies are working or not.

By tracking the share of voice you will determine how many people your campaign had reached, what are the main sources of traffic and mentions, and what is the sentiment around the campaign.

The SOV data will help you improve your future campaigns.

Prioritise social media channels

Tracking the share of voice across different social media networks will help you identify the most attractive networks worth exploring. These are the networks where your SOV is the strongest. These channels are characterized by high engagement levels and positive sentiment.

Social media management is a great way to increase the number of online mentions. The more positive social media mentions about your product or brand, the better.

Build brand awareness

Brand awareness can be measured using the share of voice. High levels of brand awareness will translate directly into better business performance and online visibility.

Building robust and measurable brand awareness will help you establish your business as an industry leader. Ultimately, that position has a positive impact on your sales levels.

The benefits of raising brand awareness include also:

• influence consumers’ decision-making process
• encourage repeat purchases
• increase market share

Choose the right influencers

Influencer marketing can do wonders for your marketing campaigns. The trick is to find the right influencers to work with. The good news, the best influencers are probably already talking about your product.

To find the right influencers for your marketing campaign, measure their share of voice. The higher the SOV, the more significant the person’s influence on their followers.

If you include a data-based influencer marketing campaign in your marketing stack, you can expect a rise in the levels of customer engagement. Don’t forget to measure the campaign effectiveness by setting up KPIs beforehand.

Measure brand reputation

The SOV is a component you can use to measure brand reputation.

A high reputation will bring a lot of benefits to brands. The more consumers trust, the more they are willing to buy your products. Part of your marketing efforts should focus on improving your reputation.

Try to assess the reputation of your competitors as well.

How to improve your share of voice?

Once you measure your share of voice, you’ll know whether you need to improve it.

Compare your SOV to your competition. The comparison will give you benchmarks, and you will be able to correctly assess your SOV levels.

When people look for a certain service or product, they should think about your company. If your brand is not as recognizable as you wish it were, don’t worry!

Social media networks gave us, besides distractions and cute kitten videos, great platforms to broadcast your message.

Here are our tips and tricks on how to increase your share of social media share of voice!

1. Develop your social media accounts

The first tip sounds like a no-brainer, yet it’s still a surprise for many companies. Mainly because building a robust social media presence takes a lot of time, and you don’t see the results right away.

But choosing the right social media platform, posting regularly, and engaging with your audience is the best way to improve your share of voice on social media.

2. Don’t sell right away

The beauty of social media? It’s about being social – talking to your friends, sending GIFs, and sharing photos.

That’s why the primary purpose of your social media presence should be natural engagement with your audience. Thank them for their comments, reply to their complaints, and share their posts. People will come and buy your product, even if you don’t sell to them directly.

3. Invest in share-worthy content

The more people see your posts, the higher your SOV will be. That’s why it’s important to invest in content that people want to share.

If you have no idea what type of content works best in your industry, explore your competitors’ pages. They either already discover what works, and in that case, you can get inspired by their posts.

Or they’re completely lost, in which case you can learn from their mistakes.

4. Think beyond social media

Traditional media is not dead! You can raise your online share of voice by promoting your business offline, increasing organic search traffic, and improving your online advertising efforts. It does sound crazy, doesn’t it?

But it works!

Many people bring the conversation from offline to online. If your campaign is well-executed and interesting, there will be an online buzz around it. You can expand your reach by being featured on one of the news sites.

Moreover, you can invest in SEO of your website so that your home page or blog will rank high in Google search results. This will boost your visibility.

5. Become an industry leader

Being part of the conversation is one thing, but leading the industry will boost your share of voice. 

It’s the most time-consuming tactic of building the SOV, but it will yield the highest results. Start with initiating talk on your social media profiles.

The best way to build your industry leader position and spark a conversation?

Start asking questions! 

Nothing makes your business profile more approachable than showing a little behind-the-scenes footage. It makes people feel connected to your brand and humanizes it.

If you’re offering a tangible product, for example, clothing or cosmetics, there are plenty of opportunities to ignite a conversation. From the top of my head, you could:

• Ask how should you name your product.
• Ask which color should you produce next.
• Show how production looks like. Customers are more aware of the ecological and economic impact their purchases have on the environment.

The list can go on and on! The sky is the limit. 

A quick recap

That’s quite a lot of information for one blog post, so let’s sum it up quickly!

1. The share of voice is related to the share of the advertising market your company has. 
2. With the development of different social media networks, the definition of the share of voice changed. Nowadays, it includes online talk around your brand.
3. Measuring the SOV will help you better scale your marketing activities.
4. If you’re not happy with your current share of voice, there are easy ways to improve it. 

Interested in calculating share of voice automatically? Try the Brand24 tool for free!