Share of Voice Explained: How To Measure Share of Voice

The dizzying array of metrics, measurement systems, emerging platforms, and marketing channels can be overwhelming to navigate. Especially for new brands with modest marketing budgets or small teams lacking dedicated data resources, measuring your marketing performance can feel like guesswork.

How can you tell whether your marketing efforts and brand messages are resonating with your target audience? Or if you’re using the right mix of channels—across social media, influencer, PR, paid media, and beyond? What about how your brand stands up against your competitors?

To stay on the pulse of customer needs, gain valuable insights to focus your marketing strategies, increase your brand visibility, and accelerate growth, learn how to tap into share of voice.

What is share of voice?

Share of voice is a marketing metric that measures how your brand stacks up against others at a specific moment in time. Share of voice compares your brand’s slice of the conversation—via social media chatter, press mentions, and more—to that of your competition. Think of it as a tool that can save time, resources, and energy by revealing the marketing channels where you’re resonating most with your audience (as well as those channels that could use more attention).

Share of voice can help you identify competitive opportunities and take note of any positive or negative fluctuations in your brand’s relevance in the market.

Share of voice vs. share of market: What’s the difference?

Though both share of voice and share of market help illuminate and contextualize your brand’s position versus the competition in the market, the two are distinct. While share of voice measures your company’s portion of conversation, social chatter, and overall brand awareness relative to that of others in your space, share of market speaks directly to your company’s percentage of total sales within your industry.

For example, if you’re a new brand with a high share of voice but a low market share, it could indicate you’re gaining traction and on your way to sales growth. Conversely, if you’re seeing a low share of voice but a strong share of the market, it may be time to focus more on marketing campaigns. You’ll want to generate conversation, engagement, and excitement among your target audience so that your sales and growth efforts don’t stagnate.

These metrics are even more powerful together. To give yourself the most comprehensive view of your company’s standing, commit to habitually monitoring both. This will help you make informed, data-driven decisions and ideally gain a competitive advantage.

How to calculate share of voice on different channels

• Social media
• Public relations
• Advertising
• SEO
• LLM

The general share of voice formula is:

Share of voice (%) = Your brand metrics ÷ Total market metrics × 100

When calculating share of voice, brands focus on social media mentions, public relations (PR) or earned media mentions, conversations generated from advertising, search engine optimization (SEO) visibility, and large language model (LLM) share of voice. Let’s dive into how to accurately measure share of voice across each key marketing channel, along with which tools and platforms can be helpful:

Social media

Calculating social media share of voice will tell you how much social media conversation—across major platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and X—is focused on your brand versus your competitors. The social media-specific share of voice formula is:

Share of voice (%) = Social mentions of your brand ÷ Total mentions of competing brands in market × 100

Effective tools to measure your business’s social media share of voice include:

• Hootsuite Listening. Hootsuite Listening features an intuitive and comprehensive dashboard with a share of voice integration. Track brand mentions on major social networks, including X, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Pricing begins at $99 per month, though its $249 per month Advanced Plan offers deeper insights and competitive analysis benchmarking.
• Brandwatch. Brandwatch offers insights across a massive data library (including social media platforms and beyond), competitor analysis capabilities, and AI-powered sentiment analysis. Pricing is customized to your needs, but entry-level plans start at around $1,000 per month.
• Awario. Awario is a popular choice for small business owners or teams that are new to tracking sentiment. Track your brand’s share of voice across social media platforms and the internet at large. Pricing starts at $29 per month (billed annually) for a single user, though it also offers a Pro plan for $89 per month and an Enterprise plan for $249 per month.

Public relations

PR share of voice reveals the percentage of PR mentions—across news publications, media outlets, and other relevant earned media sources—attributed to your brand versus competitors. Tracking PR share of voice can also help you determine which specific outlets, journalists, or other possible media “friendlies” are covering your brand. Use this information to build strategic relationships with publications that resonate with your target audiences and align with your goals.

The earned media-specific share of voice formula is:

Share of voice (%) = Media mentions of your brand ÷ Total mentions of competing brands in market × 100

Tools to help you measure your earned media share of voice include:

• Meltwater. Meltwater gleans share of voice data from a massive database of global news outlets and publications (in addition to social media platforms), with dashboards that make it easy for you to track trends, sentiment, high-coverage media outlets, and competitor benchmarking. Pricing is customized to your needs and available upon request.

• Muck Rack. This platform provides share of voice monitoring and analysis across digital, broadcast, audio, print, and social media platforms. Muck Rack also delivers real-time alerts and AI-powered sentiment reports through an intuitive, user-friendly interface. Pricing is customized to your needs and available upon request.

• Cision. A comprehensive, tried-and-true media monitoring platform that pulls data from global news outlets (including print, TV, radio, and podcasts), Cision offers real-time mention streams, automated alerts, and AI-powered reports with actionable takeaways. Pricing is customized to your needs and available upon request.

Advertising

Tracking your advertising share of voice—also known as pay-per-click (PPC) share—enables you and your team to understand how well your paid advertising is performing. In other words, how visible are your ads versus your competitor’s ads? This helps you determine whether your ad strategy and investment are yielding impactful results and a positive return on investment (ROI). The advertising share of voice formula is:

Share of voice (%) = Ad impressions your brand received ÷ Total number of ad impressions your brand could have received* × 100

*Based on targeting, budget, and ad impressions your competitors received.

Popular tools to help you measure advertising share of voice include:

• Google Ads Auction Insights. Built into the Google Ads platform, Google Ads Auction Insights provides a clear, easy-to-understand view of how your brand’s ads are performing versus those of brands competing in the same auction. Reporting is free for Google Ads account users; you must be a user to access the platform.

• Semrush AdClarity. Semrush AdClarity provides a detailed overview of competitor ad performance with actionable learnings so you can identify the most impactful ad platforms, channels, and traffic sources for your brand. Pricing starts at $129 per month for the Starter plan, though the $349 per month Team plan offers deeper insights.

• Nielsen Ad Intel. Nielsen Ad Intel empowers you and your team to optimize your advertising strategy, find ways to stand out from competitors, and maximize your ad ROI. Pricing is customized to your needs and available upon request.

SEO

SEO share of voice compares your brand’s organic search engine results visibility against that of your competitors. Monitoring SEO share of voice can help you determine whether you’re leveraging relevant keywords effectively, highlight helpful keyword rankings, scan search engine results pages, and reveal your top organic traffic search competitors. The SEO share of voice formula is:

Share of voice (%) = organic impressions or clicks your brand received ÷ total number of organic impressions or clicks of competing brands in market × 100

Tools that measure SEO share of voice include:

• Semrush. A powerful analysis tool with an intuitive, user-friendly interface, Semrush makes it easy to track competitor intelligence and rankings, keyword gaps, website traffic, and SEO optimization insights. Pricing is $208 per month for a small-business-focused plan and $417 per month for an agency-focused plan.

• Ahrefs Rank Tracker. A sophisticated platform, Ahrefs Rank Tracker allows you to monitor SEO rankings over time against competitors, with interactive graphs highlighting your SEO share of voice, web traffic, ranking, and keyword analysis. Pricing starts at $129 per month for the Lite plan.

• Moz Pro. An easy-to-use insights tool, Moz Pro offers SEO keyword research and suggestions, competitor analysis, automated insights reports, brand authority measurement to help you track share of voice, and 24-hour online support. Pricing begins at $99 per month for the Standard plan or $179 per month for the Medium plan with expanded capabilities.

LLM

Large language model (LLM) share of voice is a newer metric, measuring how your brand shows up across the world of AI and large language model platforms versus competitors. It will be increasingly important as AI use continues to gain traction and popularity. The LLM share of voice formula is:

Share of voice (%) = Mentions of your brand in LLM answers ÷ Total competitor brand mentions in LLM answers × 100

Tracking LLM search share of voice is still an emerging tactic, but Semrush offers an AI Toolkit add-on for subscribers, allowing you to gauge your brand’s presence in AI search (such as on platforms like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and others). It also delivers personalized recommendations to improve sentiment and lets you track visibility against competitors. AI Toolkit pricing is $99 per month per domain for existing Semrush users.

Tips to increase share of voice

• Create content that genuinely adds value
• Actively engage your community
• Track, adapt, and optimize

Here are some tips for increasing your brand’s share of voice so you can capitalize on competitive opportunities in the market:

Create content that adds value

Focusing on growing your brand’s social media presence and share of voice can pay dividends when it comes to authentically boosting customer engagement, visibility, and growth. The key is to make sure your brand’s content rings authentic to your offering and adds value to your customers. If you’re passionate about the content you’re creating, your audience will feel that, too.

Timm Chiusano, former VP of content at advertising agency Spectrum Reach, built a following of over one million TikTok followers and earned more than 50 million likes by testing and experimenting with different content pillars and themes until he landed on an approach he felt genuinely made his viewers’ lives easier.

“It always helps to start by asking: ‘What is the purpose? Is it delivering value to somebody?’” Timm says on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast. “The key to this, for me, was being intentional and true to myself and the things I care about, since that’s what built a true connection with my audience. They can tell I’m just out here doing my best, creating with my heart on my sleeve, which helps differentiate me. This led to a larger theme of people who saw me as a relatable creator who makes being an adult less scary, which transformed everything.”

Home in on content pillars that align clearly with your business priorities, and before you post, ask yourself: Will this make someone want to stop scrolling through their feed, engage with it, and share it with others? If so, you’re on the path to sparking conversation and growing your brand’s share of voice.

Actively engage your community

One way to stand out from competitors and genuinely engage your audience is to grow beyond simply broadcasting product messages and instead encourage two-way conversation that invites your customers to provide feedback, interact, and feel like they’re part of the journey.

For Aliyah Marandiz, founder of Sugardoh, building a community goes well beyond strategy—it’s the heart and core of how she built her business. “We depend on our community. We rely on our community. We couldn't do this without our community, but what is your community?” she says on Shopify Masters. “For me, it was my sisters, my mom, my neighbor, my friends, my neighbor's kids who helped me pack orders in our earliest days. My dad would help with business operations.”

Aliyah’s deep commitment to engaging her community online and offline enabled her to build a loyal fanbase of brand advocates who feel a personal stake in Sugardoh’s success. “I felt so strongly about Sugardoh that I was not afraid of yelling it out into the world,” she says. “I was super excited to share it with friends. And that’s how you build the community from the start.”

Now, Aliyah and her team can ask for guidance via Sugardoh social media accounts and receive reliable, valuable feedback. “Every time we’re thinking of putting out a new product or need feedback, we’ll do a poll or ask direct, open-ended questions so our community can be part of the journey, and to make sure we’re doing right by our customers,” she explains. “We’ll ask: ‘Is this something you’d actually buy? Would you spend this amount of money on it?’ The beauty of social media being anonymous is that you’ll get honest feedback.”

Engaging your audience on the platforms your customers are already using can naturally encourage an increase in social conversation and, ultimately, social media share of voice.

Track, adapt, and optimize

Once you’ve started sharing content that aligns with your brand priorities and adds user value—and you’ve taken steps to proactively engage your community in a two-way conversation—it’s time to analyze its performance.

Use social listening tools and share of voice tools (focused on social media and earned media) to decipher which content topics, themes, different marketing channels, and formats are generating the most conversation, positive sentiment, and share of voice among your target audience members—and which have the lowest impact. From there, you can double down on the content types yielding the most return on investment (ROI).

Making a commitment to tracking share of voice metrics will empower you and your team to quickly identify what’s working (and what’s not) so you can adapt, pivot as needed, and fuel growth-driving share of voice performance.