What Is Share of Voice & How to Calculate It? Tools & Tips

Businesses are constantly seeking ways to gain a competitive edge and stand out among the noise. Understanding how to effectively analyze and measure your online share of voice can provide valuable insights into your brand’s visibility and market presence.

How can you leverage this important metric for your own brand or business? This blog post will cover all the essential information about share of voice (SOV), as well as provide practical KPIs, tools, and tips to help you measure and increase SOV to realize better marketing ROI!

Stick around, because this guide covers information, from Share of Voice formulas and definitions to calculating tools and improvement tips.

So, let’s start!

What Is Share of Voice?

Share of Voice (SOV) is a key metric in social media and advertising that quantifies the presence or visibility of a brand, campaign, or individual in relation to its competitors. It is calculated as a percentage by dividing the total engagement activity or ads of one brand by the total activity within the entire market or defined competitive set.

In social media terms, SOV is based on mentions, likes, shares, comments, and hashtag usage. This metric provides insight into how much ‘conversation’ or ‘noise’ a brand is generating within its market segment and helps in evaluating the effectiveness of its marketing strategies against those of competitors.

So, out of everyone in a specific industry, who has the biggest share?

For instance, if the audience’s public voice was a pie, who would get the biggest slice?

SoV is a great competitive analysis feature, as it shows you which competitors are the ones to look out for.

In the past, Share of Voice focused mostly on paid advertising. Measuring your brand’s visibility meant counting how many broadcast and print media ads your brand got featured in. Of course, even then the point was calculating your Share of Voice compared to your competitors.

In reality, SoV –especially some variations, like paid search Share of Voice– is still a valuable indicator of a company’s brand positioning. However, now the process goes beyond the success of one’s marketing efforts.

At present, leading brands are analyzing big data to calculate their Share of Voice more accurately. Thanks to social listening you can now count how many people are talking about your brand on social media.

SoV is a prominent social analytics tool, as it gauges awareness about your brand between users of different social media platforms.

Nowadays, companies learn how to calculate Share of Voice to also assess their online visibility, engagement, authority, and search intent. There are different SoV types. Some of them are the following: SEO, PPC, social media mentions, organic website traffic, CTR, and PR.

Share of Voice vs. Share of Market

SoM (Share of Market) and SoV (Share of Voice) sound similar and definitely share a connection. While the two terms are often used interchangeably, they’re different. So what is Share of Market and how’s it different from Share of Voice?

On one hand, share of voice cares about your brand awareness KPIs compared to your competitors. That’s why most social-focused competitive analysis tools are tremendous SoV calculators.

On the other hand, SoM measures your brand’s percentage of revenue, customers, and sales within your market.

To help you understand how both SoV and SoM work, let’s look at a hypothetical example. So, let’s say your brand makes $50,000 in sales each month, while your market’s monthly sales total is $1,000,000. That means your brand has a 5% SoM percentage. Now, let’s say that in the previous week, your brand was mentioned 50 times in digital and social channels. If your market’s competitors were mentioned 200 times at that time frame, your brand had a 25% SoV percentage.

In any case, both are very important when it comes to assessing your brand’s marketing and financial success.

While the evolution of marketing KPIs has resulted in multiple share of voice types, the main focus still lies in social media. After all, measuring Share of Voice means actually listening to the voice of the audience. Hence, social media monitoring comes into play.

However, brand marketing involves a bunch of different cool metrics –some of which probably fit better with another version of marketing shares. For instance, PPC (Pay per click) and CTR (Click-through rate) are a better fit for measuring your brand’s Share of Market.

Why Measuring Share of Voice is Important?

What does measuring Share of Voice do for a brand that makes it one of the most valuable social metrics?

Here are 5 use cases that Share of Voice helps you with;

1- Gaining Audience Insights

Audience insights are newly found valuable information that helps businesses gain a deeper understanding of their audience.

Knowing their core audience better helps brands perform more targeted social media and digital marketing efforts. Share of voice reports showcases the real, unfiltered, and unbiased voices of your audience for your brands, products, and services –as well as your competitors.

Analyzing your audience’s online behaviors and key demographics helps you understand what type of content fits your brand best.

Ask yourself: What topics do your audience care about and talk about the most? Couple this information with a free AI content writer tool to speed up your content creation and nurture your audience with the topics they really love.

SoV helps businesses turn their casual audience into passionate brand communities that see their interests and values reflected in the brand.

2- Better Picturing Your Brand Image

A thorough Share of Voice analysis using a social media analytics tool will let you understand how your brand is perceived by your audience. Moreover, you can compare your target audience’s perception of your brand to what they think about your competitors.

So, listen carefully to what your audience has to say about your products and make changes to improve them.

Then, check back with your Share of Voice tools. Are people talking more about you or saying more positive things? Eventually, after testing their reactions to changes and improvements, you’ll know what strategies are working for them.

Share of voice helps people understand their brand better by analyzing how others are feeling about it.

3- Conducting Better Competitive Analysis

At present, competitive analysis is high on the marketing practices trends list and it’s easily explained. As markets are experiencing the highest levels of saturation right now, you must compare your brand to your direct competitors.

Social Share of Voice reports are essentially valuable when it comes to competitive analysis. So take a look at your competitors’ numbers now. What do your potential leads share on social media about your competitors?

Perhaps they’re excelling at something you haven’t already. For example, a Share of Voice that’s smaller than your competitors’ is your marketing team’s concern most of the time. Hence, invest more time, energy, money, and effort into improving your marketing methods.

4- Leveraging PR Campaigns

Social media has created an opportunity for PR campaigns to blossom in numerous ways. But how do you know if your attempt will go viral or fail at peaking?

As has been noted above, an organic Share of Voice analysis lets users know exactly what people think about. So just check your social SoV numbers and see how many shares, comments, likes, and impressions your marketing campaigns received. Additionally, even traditional PR campaigns can be assessed with an SoV calculator.

Did your Share of Voice increase after your chosen campaign ended its run? If yes, that means it was successful!

You can also use SoV to benchmark your marketing efforts against your competitors and help your future campaigns perform better.

5- Managing Your Brand

Brand reputation management isn’t easy today. Luckily, there are many brand monitoring tools for agencies and companies to be proactive. Brand monitoring and SoV reports can lead you to the top conversations being held around your brand and your industry.

They also share more valuable details with you, like the sentiment of these conversations and competitor comparison data.

With Share of Voice data, you can track changes, like your brand name being mentioned far more often than usual. This could indicate an alerting issue, like customers complaining about your products or even something your brand representatives said. Discovering those changes in the early stages of online conversations helps you prepare and plan a better statement or response.

How to Calculate Share of Voice?

To calculate Share of Voice, divide a specific brand’s metric by the total number of that metric in the industry. SoV is usually expressed as a percentage, so multiply the final number by 100 to get the percentage.

Share of Voice (SoV) Formula

So to calculate your share of voice, you need to specify what you’re assessing. Some popular types of SoV that we’re going to dive into are:

• Social media
• SEO
• PPC
• PR

The general formula for measuring Share of Voice is the following:

SoV = (Number of brand metrics ÷ Total number of industry or competitor metrics) x 100

We’re including formulas for some common types of SoV below, to help you understand how it works.

What is a Good Share of Voice Percentage?

All things considered, you can’t have an SoV percentage of 100% in your industry unless your market is competitor-free –as if!
The more saturated your market, or the stronger your competitor is, the more likely that you get a smaller SoV share. For example, there’s little hope for any other search engine to have a significant Share of Voice when Google is dominating the field.
That’s why a good SoV percentage is not easy to be determined as a simple number, since you have to consider many factors.

Social Media Share of Voice

Undoubtedly, most marketers asking how to calculate Share of Voice are talking about brand awareness on social media. For those wondering about Share of Voice in social media, it’s not always easy. Firstly, divide the number of your brand mentions by the total number of industry/competitor mentions. Secondly, multiply this number by 100 to get your actual percentage.

The formula is the following:

Social Media SoV = (Number of brand mentions ÷ Total number of industry or competitor mentions) x 100

If you wanted to measure your social media engagement, you’d replace the number of mentions with the total number of likes, comments, and shares.

SEO Share of Voice

How is share of voice (SoV) calculated in SEO?

There are multiple ways to benchmark your SEO rankings against your competitors that operate in your market using SoV. For instance, you could be measuring how often you appear on organic searches.

Hence, you’d start by dividing the number of times your website appeared in search engine results pages (SERPs) by the total number of times your competitors appeared in SERPs. Afterward, you’d multiply this number by 100 to get your actual percentage.

The formula is the following.

SEO SoV = (Number of SERP features for you ÷ Total number of SERP features for your industry or competitors) x 100

If you wanted to measure your brand’s visibility on organic keywords, you’d replace the number of SERP features with the total number of features in organic keyword searches.

PPC Share of Voice

Calculating your Share of Voice advertising percentage means looking at different pay-per-click metrics. For example, you can start by looking at the number of times your ads were shown to users, also known as impressions.

Start by dividing the number of your brand’s ad impressions by the total number of your industry’s impressions. Then, multiply this number by 100 to get your actual percentage.

The formula is the following.

PPC SoV = (Number of impressions for your brand ÷ Total number of impressions for your industry or competitors) x 100

For a better PPC understanding, you can measure metrics, like the number of clicks, your website traffic, your revenue, etc.

PR Share of Voice

Public relations is all about being mentioned –anywhere, literally. So you want to look at every mention your brand might get. This can mean broadcast and print media, social media channels, blogs, websites, etc.

Start by dividing the total number of your brand’s media mentions by the total number of your industry’s mentions. Then, multiply this number by 100 to get your actual percentage.

The formula is the following.

PR SoV = (Total number of your brand’s media mentions ÷ Total number of your industry or competitor media mentions) x 100

Another way to look at media Share of Voice would be to compare your number of media mentions (for each media platform separately) to your total number of media mentions. By doing that, you’d find out what media channels and publications work for your brand the best.

Media monitoring is a lot. While using social media monitoring tools always does the job better and faster.

Top 5 Tools to Measure Share of Voice

If you’re tired of wondering how to calculate the Share of Voice for real, here are 5 tools that will help you.

1- Mentionlytics

Mentionlytics is an all-in-one media monitoring tool that offers valuable insights to marketers, including a very detailed share of voice report. The tool’s software tracks all conversations about your brand online. You can discover what’s being said about you on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and many more channels.

Moreover, Mentionlytics promises quality and quantity of brand mentions and insights about numerous important metrics, offering 3 different reports:

• Top Mentions Report
• Influencers Report
• Share of Voice Report

The SoV Report gives users the chance to compare data (including mentions, reach, and social engagement) with competitors. In detail, you can compare your share of:

• Monthly, weekly, or daily mentions
• Sentiment
• Countries

Key features

• Advanced share of voice calculator and social media analytics;
• Social Intelligence Advisor (SIA) for personalized advice on social media strategy optimization;
• Advanced Boolean search for result filtering via keywords and hashtag combinations with operators such as AND, NOT, and OR;
• Intelligent media monitoring and sentiment analysis for brand mentions in 24 languages;
• Free social media report builder for customized reporting;
• Simplified team collaboration, with real-time notifications, tags, labels, and task assignments;
• Competitor & review monitoring and influencer identification

Pricing: Starts at $69 per month.

2- Hootsuite

Hootsuite is an established social media management solution that helps users schedule content for social accounts. The software operates with 35 different social media platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and more.

Additionally, it allows clients to look at their competitors and receive valuable insights about their content strategy. Users can check their media share with Hootsuite Streams and their social media SoV with Hootsuite Insights.

Key features

• Unified social media content creation, curation, and management
• Online presence check and keyword tracking
• Brand monitoring and Share of Voice reporting
• Social media analytics tools and reporting features
• All-in-one management of your social profiles and relationships

Pricing: Starts at €99 per month.

3- Talkwalker

Talkwalker is a Consumer Intelligence Acceleration platform that features AI-powered tracking tools focusing on social listening.

This consumer intelligence platform automates your SoV monitoring process with broader coverage and more cool features. For example, the platform gives users the chance to break down large volumes of data based on topics, channels, markets, languages, etc.

Key features

• Fast campaign and social channel management
• AI-powered intelligent content and trend analysis
• Social Content Ratings for performance bulk measurement
• Social intelligence insights and automated SoV monitoring
• Flexible Boolean search with smart filters for data fragmentation

Pricing: You have to get in contact with them.

4- SEMRush

SEMrush is a leading online visibility management software-as-a-service platform. In detail, it’s a valuable SEO competitor tool, offering valuable insights on several topics. For example, you can analyze your competitor’s top-paid keywords and backlink profile to optimize your marketing efforts.

SEMrush’s position tracking features will give you an analysis of your SEO Share of Voice. Additionally, you can divide your data by location or topic.

Key features

• Organic keyword analysis and PPC keyword analysis
• SEO SoV analysis and rank tracking
• Competitor PR monitoring and analysis
• Website audit and backlink analysis
• Content marketing metrics and link building

Pricing: Starts at $129.95 per month.

5- Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a globally trusted software platform that specializes in SEO. The tool’s competitive analysis techniques include the site explorer, offering metrics on any website’s keywords. In addition to reporting on competitor backlinks, it helps you understand what works and what doesn’t.

Ahrefs offers great SEO SoV monitoring features, letting users peak at their organic traffic compared to their competitors. Furthermore, you can look at your competitors’ share of voice, by measuring their performance in keywords that you aim to rank for.

Key features

• Keyword explorer and traffic potential research
• Rank tracking and SEO SoV analysis
• Link Building and WordPress SEO plugin
• Site explorer and website audit
• Content research and calendar reporting

Pricing: Starts at €89 per month.

How to Conduct a Share of Voice Analysis?

So let’s say you’re using the Mentionlytics app for online (web) and social media Share of Voice.

Learn how to calculate Share of Voice using Mentionlytics below.

Try Mentionlytics for FREE

Measuring Share of Voice

Measuring Share of Voice requires you to monitor at least one of your competitors as well. In order to add competitors from the Mention Trackers box, just use the + Add Mention Keyword/Tracker button.

Just make sure both your owned media and your competitor media are checked before you look at your SoV graph.

You can look at your SoV brand comparison graph in numerous ways. In fact, you can use the View selection button to choose one of the following options:

• In Groups: This option will compare all data points in your Brand Monitoring and Competitors sections.
• Individual keywords: This option will compare each individually checked keyword from the Mention Tracker. You have the option to check/uncheck any keyword.
• In groups with breakdown of Brand Monitoring: This option will compare your Competitors to each Mention Tracker group under the Brand Monitoring section.

Another looking option is that you can switch the data being displayed between:

• Mentions
• Reach
• Social engagement

Finally, you can download your SoV graph as a PNG image using the Download button.

Share of Voice Report

As has been noted, Mentionlytics offers users the chance to receive official SoV reports, like the one seen above.

In the Report’s first slide, you can look at an overview of your Share of Voice compared to your competitors. For example, here you can see Ryanair’s comparison to rival brands, like Vueling Airlines, Volotea, Easyjet, and Jetblue.

This is a strictly daily comparison of each brand’s number of mentions.

Subsequently, you get to observe your Share of Sentiment pie charts.

On the left, the largest round graph shows the actual SoV numbers for your selected timeframe.

On the right, the smaller round graphs show how are brands performing individually in Positive, Negative, and Neutral mentions.

This one comes in handy when it comes to determining what a bigger SoV percentage for a specific brand means. Are they doing great with public opinion or are they being negatively critiqued?

Afterward, there’s the Share of Weekdays chart. This one shows how much each brand got mentioned during each day of the week. This one could help you realize exactly what marketing efforts are working for a specific brand.

For instance, let’s say Volotea’s mentions were shown in surprisingly larger volumes on Wednesday. Perhaps you should do some research and find out what their social media game consisted of on Wednesdays.

Finally, there’s the Share of Countries slide. This one’s extremely important when it comes to comparing markets between online rival brands. In detail, each color represents a country and you can check what brands have the most mentions in which countries.

Want to calculate your share of voice for free?

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Share of Voice Marketing Tips: How to Increase Your SOV

So now that you’ve checked your Share of Voice, what’s next?

Without a doubt, it’s time for you to increase your SoV in brand awareness, organic search, and paid keywords.

Here are some tips that will help you improve your SoV results.

Create Shareable Content on Social Media

Social media marketing aims at creating content that’s going to be reshared by many users and become viral. Generally, some popular types of content are the following:

• Original and relatable content
• Informational content that will educate or update your audience on topics
• Fun and attractive content, like curated images, videos, and GIFs

When more people share your content, then more people will learn about you.

Get Higher Engagement on Social Media

In order to drive more visibility to your brand, make sure that your social media efforts are captivating your audience. So, be active and smart, spark conversations around industry-related topics, comment on other brands, and use engaging marketing techniques.

For example, try improving your copywriting methods by writing more interactive captions that call users to action, create polls, etc.

Work with Influencers to Create Buzz Around Your Brand

Don’t stick to your low-budget obstacles. Micro-influencing is the way to power through social media saturation today. So take risks:

• plan engaging social media campaigns with industry-related celebrities
• seek out guest-posting opportunities on popular blogs that can feature you
• use micro-influencers and experts on your blog and website

Moreover, when these people share your partnership on their own social media channels, you’ll gain more visibility.

Choosing the right influencers for your brand isn’t easy, but intelligent marketing tools, like Mentionlytics, can always help.

Expand Your Social Media Accounts

Staying active and responding to customers isn’t always enough with social media marketing. You need to always stay up-to-date with new social trends and new platforms. Discovering new channels means opening yourself up to new leads.

For instance, TikTok has bloomed over the past few years. Eventually, more and more companies are successfully investing in an active presence over there.

Build an Audience Outside of Social Media

While social media are currently overruling marketing efforts, you can always go beyond them to improve your SoV percentage.

Print and broadcast media campaigns can still be effective. Paid ads in search engines are also still able to drive a great number of users to your website.

Additionally, try working on your SEO efforts, with better keyword research and keyword usage, link exchanging with respectable websites, etc.

Now Over to You

So, this is everything you need to know on why and how to calculate Share of Voice.

Evidently, measuring Share of Voice with the right metrics and formulas is not always easy. While this may be true, there are media monitoring tools, like Mentionlytics, that can do the job faster and better.

Have more questions? Book a free live demo with Mentionlytics and let our experts explain how our media Share of Voice software can help you.

Or try it yourself, all you have to do is to enter your brand name in the box below.