When creating a social media marketing strategy, it's essential to understand where your brand stands in relation to its competitors. One metric you can use to determine this is the share of voice. This metric will provide insights into your brand's standing in various paid media, social media, and other contexts.  

Social share of voice will help you understand whether your business is being mentioned on social media, whether your consumers consider you an industry leader, and whether you get featured in the mainstream media. Share of voice will provide insights into this and help you to fortify your efforts and stay ahead of the competition. In this guide, we will take you through everything you need to know about “share of voice” and how to optimize it. 

What is Share of Voice?

Share of voice (SOV) is a metric that indicates how well people are aware of your brand compared to your competitors. While it has its basis in traditional marketing, this blog will focus on the share of voice on social media and SEO. Traditionally, SOV was used as a measure of your advertising on radio, TV, and print compared to your competitors. 

Today, share of voice tracks all the brand awareness metrics, such as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, site traffic for your keywords, online mentions, and more. By monitoring your share of voice, you can understand where your brand stands in relation to the competition. 

The share of voice is typically measured as a percentage and can be evaluated across various channels, including social media, organic search, media mentions, and paid advertising. It provides insights into the parts of the conversation your brand focuses on compared to other brands. 

For instance, if your brand receives 20% of brand mentions in your industry and competitors receive 80%, your SOV is 25%. This can help you track visibility across platforms and provide insight into your market share. When your SOV is high, it indicates that your marketing efforts are effectively reaching your target audience and driving increased awareness. 

Importance of Share of Voice

SOV isn't just a metric, but is a strategic tool that can be used in guiding key decisions in areas such as:

• Market positioning. When you can track your share of voice, you can understand your brand’s standing compared to your competitors. If your SOV is low, it indicates that your competitors are doing better than you. Therefore, you need to be more aggressive in your marketing to make your brand more visible than the competitor. It can also help you identify gaps in your marketing strategy and why your competitors receive more attention than you do. 
• Tracking growth. When you notice a sudden increase in your SOV, it indicates that your marketing strategy is already effective. On the other hand, if your SOV is decreasing, it means that your competitors are outperforming you, prompting the need to make adjustments. 
• Allocation of resources. When you understand your current SOV, you can improve in your decision-making, such as resource allocation. For instance, you might discover that one of your competitors is dominating social media engagement but not performing well in paid search; this may be a sign that you should focus on strengthening your presence in lower-competition areas. 
• More refined campaigns. Tracking your SOV offers insights into the areas of your campaign that need optimization. You can analyze insights for specific audiences by filtering them according to platform, language, and country. You can use the data to gain a deeper understanding of what resonates with your audience. If you have some positive encounters, you can replace them and improve your market share. 
• Improved audience insights. SOV can provide insights that deepen your understanding of your prospects or audience. For instance, it can help you determine the top platforms driving conversations. You can better understand why consumers choose your brand over the competitor, which can also improve your market positioning. 
• Better PR efforts. Understanding your SOV relative to your competitors' can yield valuable insights into the effectiveness of your strategy. Find out which media outlets are covering your competitors rather than your brand. If you realize that there are specific content formats that the media gravitate toward, create more stories of that type. 

How to Calculate Your Social Media Share of Voice

Here are the steps you need to follow when calculating your social media share of voice:

Determine Your Competitors

The first step in calculating the share of voice is identifying your competitors. These can be either your direct competitors, who sell products similar to yours, or indirect competitors, who offer alternative solutions. Understanding who your competitors are improves your chances of properly tracking your SOV.  

When conducting your competitor analysis, consider both emerging brands and established ones. To better understand your competitors, consider using keyword research tools such as SEMrush, Ahrefs, or UberSuggest. These can provide insights into the overlapping keywords. Social listening tools can also help you determine the shared audiences. 

Determine What Metrics to Track

When tracking your share of voice, you will need to determine which specific metrics to focus on. You can calculate the share of voice across various areas, including search visibility, impressions, and brand mentions. 

Some of the top metrics you may want to track are: 

Brand Mentions SOV

This provides insight into how often your brand is mentioned in comparison to your competitors. It shows the presence and visibility of your brand on social media compared to your competitors'. This metric can be calculated by dividing your total brand mentions by your competitor's total mentions, then multiplying the result by 100.

Achieving a high SOV indicates that your brand is well-known and influential in the market. A low SOV indicates opportunities to improve your engagement strategy and content.

Organic Search SOV  

This metric tracks the number of organic searches your brand receives for a particular keyword or set of keywords, compared to your competitors. It can be a good indicator of how often a website ranks for specific keywords, which can signal content authority and the level of competition. This metric can be measured by dividing your estimate of organic keywords by total organic traffic.

Social Media SOV

This refers to the number of likes, mentions, and engagement your brand gets on social media platforms. This is one of the most authentic shares of voice because it provides actual customer sentiment. It will also provide insights into how consumers naturally discuss you on various platforms.  

There are two ways to calculate SOV: manually or through paid listening tools. If you choose to go the manual way, it will be challenging to track social sentiment analysis, influencer metrics, and reach. You can get insights into mentions and the number of mentions your competitors are getting.  A good formula for manually measuring the SOV is to divide the number of mentions by the number of mentions for your competitors, then multiply the result by 100.

You can dig deeper and get better insights with the social media listening tools. These tools alert you when your brand name, social media handle, or any other targeted keyword is mentioned. 

Paid Search SOV

As noted earlier, SOV was traditionally used to measure the impact of ads on radio, TV, and print media. This is the same principle at work in PPC, where SOV can be used to track your brand's visibility on social media for targeted keywords compared to those of your competitors. The good news is that SOV for paid search is one of the easiest to track, as Google provides this data. 

When tracking paid search SOV, pay special attention to impression share, which indicates how often your ad may have been shown, depending on your keyword settings and campaigns. When calculating the share of impressions, Google typically divides your impressions by the total number of relevant impressions that have occurred.

Media SOV

This is usually considered the industry voice metrics. It reflects how your brand compares to its peers in the media and industry. The metric can be a good indicator of the strength of your content and PR initiatives, enabling you to expand your PR efforts. When using social listening tools to gain insights into your share of voice, many tools will crawl news websites and blogs.

General Online Presence SOV

This tracks your SOV across online spaces, such as news sites and forums, where people may be mentioning your brand. Ensure you're monitoring mentions from credible sources and sentiments to add weight to the SOV. Social media monitoring tools, such as Meltwater, Mention, and Brand24, are used to discover mentions of your brand and those of your competitors. 

Some key metrics to track include engagement rate, brand mentions, and comparative analysis. When you determine the SOV metrics to track, you can share your SOV more accurately across different channels, helping you improve your brand and marketing strategy. 

Tracking Organic and Paid Search Performance

Tracking your brand’s SOV in organic and paid search is as important as monitoring the brand mentions. You can leverage tools such as Google Ads and SEMrush to assess your visibility on the SERP and how you compare with your competitors. Tools such as Google Search Console and Moz can help you track traffic from specific keywords. 

When you track your industry keywords, you can track how many keywords you are outranking your competitors and how many of them they are outranking you. It can help you determine if there are gaps in your SEO or paid advertising strategy that may be limiting your visibility.

Analyzing SOV Data

After gathering the necessary data concerning your brand and its competitors, you are now ready to calculate your SOV. You can do that using this formula:

SOV: Your brand’s metrics (such as impressions and mentions) divided by the total industry metrics and multiplied by 100. 

For instance, if your brand was mentioned 1,000 times and the total industry mentions (yours plus the competitor's) were 5,000, your SOV is 20%. That means that across the industry, your brand accounts for 20% of the conversations. 

Monitoring and Optimization

Calculating the share of voice isn't a one-time affair. With ever-evolving marketing dynamics and competitor actions, the SOV is likely to continue fluctuating. To remain competitive, you need to regularly monitor SOV across various social key areas, including paid search, organic search, and social media.

If you notice competitors gaining momentum, it may be a sign that you need to refine your marketing or social media strategy. By continuously tracking your SOV and adjusting your marketing strategy as needed, you can build a more substantial market presence.

How to Analyze the Share of Voice Results

After calculating your SOV, you can use the data to gain actionable insights and improve your brand's performance. To get the most out of the SOV, you should do the following:

Understand Your Strengths and Weaknesses

If there are certain areas where you feel your brand has a high SOV, such as social media, it can be a sign that your campaigns resonate with the target audience. However, if you notice your SOV is higher in the other areas, such as paid search, you can either adjust the strategy or reallocate your resources. You might also see that you have a high social media SOV but low on paid search. In such a situation, it can help to balance your budget for a well-rounded marketing strategy.

Competitor Benchmarks

When you compare the SOV results with those of your competitors, you will gain a better understanding of their strengths and weaknesses. If you find that a particular influencer is doing better in influencer marketing, while you are performing better in the organic search, consider how you can use your strength to get a head start.

Keep Optimizing

While the SOV results reflect your past performance, they can also inform your future marketing decisions. If your SOV is low, this indicates a need to either increase your earned media value or reconsider your social media marketing strategy. On the other hand, if your SOV is high, it reflects your current efforts but can also indicate the need to invest further in more successful campaigns.

Tracking the Impact of Your Campaign

By monitoring the SOV over time, you can determine how specific strategies and campaigns affect your overall visibility. For instance, after you launch an influencer marketing campaign, it may lead to an increase in brand mentions and SOV. You can utilize the feedback loop to refine your marketing strategy and optimize future efforts. 

How to Increase Your Share of Voice

If you realize that your competitor's content seems to be doing better than yours, consider using the following tips:

Improve Your Content Marketing

One way to increase your share of voice is by positioning your brand as the thought leader in your niche. If you publish content that adds value, whether in the form of blog posts, videos, or infographics, the higher the chances are that your articles will get linked to or referenced. 

You can utilize content marketing to enhance your brand loyalty and long-term visibility, allowing your brand to dominate niche conversations, particularly on search engines and social media platforms. For instance, if you create blog posts targeting longtail keywords in your niche and appear at the top of SERPs, you can increase your SOV. 

Have a Strong Social Media Presence

For your brand to remain in your customers' minds, you need to be more visible on social media and more engaging. You can achieve this by joining trends, responding to reviews, and sharing educational and relatable content to increase loyalty and encourage mentions and shares in organic conversations. Once you start appearing in your audience’s mind and feed, you will remain in their minds, resulting in a higher SOV.

For instance, you can leverage content formats such as TikTok UGC and Instagram Reels trends to showcase behind-the-scenes content. If one of your videos goes viral, you can increase your follower count, enabling you to get hundreds of organic mentions and to improve your SOV in your niche.

SEO Optimization

Another key driver of SOV is search engine optimization. When you rank for the right keywords, particularly those related to informational or commercial purposes, your brand will appear when your target audience is actively searching for a solution. It is essential to focus on keywords and campaign settings to improve your SEO. This can help you gain more backlinks and keep your content up-to-date, allowing you to remain competitive.

You can begin by identifying the gaps in your competitors' content. You can then create content optimized for keywords relevant to your niche. By leveraging strategic link building, you can increase your organic SOV.

Leverage Media Outreach and PR

One way to increase your brand visibility and authority is to get featured in media outlets. With strong PR, you can reach new audiences, secure media mentions, and establish backlinks, thereby boosting your share of voice. 

Start by fostering good relationships with journalists, pitching compelling stories, and utilizing expert commentary to secure the desired coverage. For instance, you can perform research and pitch the findings to the major news outlets. This can lead to increased media mentions and greater brand awareness. 

Create an Engaged Online Community

You need to ensure you create content that your followers will find shareworthy. Such content should spark a conversation around your brand. A good way to do that is to build a community around your brand. After launching a challenge, you can ask followers to tag you in their posts and stories. This can result in more mentions, increasing your brand awareness and reach at a cost-effective rate. 

Leverage UGC Content

Although tags and comments can increase your social media SOV, you can have a greater impact with original content. You can encourage your customers to create UGC content in different ways, such as: 

• Their videos while using your product.
• Unboxing videos of your product.
• Their results after using the product.
• Highlights of the store where the product was purchased. 
• How your company's services benefited them.

You can consider running organic UGC campaigns. However, providing freebies and prizes can increase engagement. 

Influencer Partnerships

Reports indicate that over 50% of customers trust recommendations from strangers as much as those from family and friends. To reach an even bigger audience than what UGC delivers, you should consider influencer partnerships. By working with influencers, you can increase your brand's visibility and SOV. However, you need to ensure you select an influencer whose values align with your brand's.

Leverage Guest Posting Opportunities

If PR isn't your preferred method, consider alternative approaches to put your brand in front of your target audience. This can be through methods such as:

• Podcasts. You can create a list of podcasts featuring guests in your industry and start pitching them.
• Guest posts. Sharing well-written thoughts in leadership can help increase your SOV, especially when you post on high-domain-authority sites.

Run Targeted Paid Campaigns

You can use paid UGC campaigns to enhance your SOV, primarily if you operate in a competitive space. All you need to do is target the right demographics, platforms, and keywords to ensure that your brand appears in the key spaces. You can leverage social media ads, a Google Ads account, and the display network to promote your message.

For instance, if you are a local business, you can launch geo-targeted Google ads. If you rank for local keywords, you can stay top of mind with your shoppers, leading to more store visits, clicks, and mentions, all of which contribute to a higher SOV. 

In Conclusion

Understanding your brand’s SOV is a powerful way to gauge its position relative to competitors. When you continuously track and analyze key metrics—such as impressions, brand mentions, and organic and paid search visibility—you can better understand your share of voice and adjust where necessary to maintain a strong market presence. 

You can achieve this by identifying top competitors, tracking key data, and utilizing social listening tools to inform data-driven decisions. By following the steps outlined in this guide, you can gain a better understanding of tracking your share of voice.