Share of Voice

Share of voice (SOV) is the proportion of total brand mentions or conversations in a market that belong to your brand. It measures brand visibility relative to competitors — not absolute volume.

Share of voice (SOV) measures what proportion of the conversation in your market is about your brand, relative to competitors.

Formula:

Your SOV = Your brand mentions / Total brand mentions in category × 100

Example: In the project management software category, if there are 100,000 monthly social mentions total and 12,000 are about your brand, your SOV is 12%.

Why SOV matters

SOV is a leading indicator of market share. Research from brands like Nielsen and IRI has shown that brands with SOV higher than their market share tend to grow, while brands with SOV lower than market share tend to shrink.

For social media teams, SOV connects content effort to competitive positioning — it answers “are we becoming more visible in the market relative to competitors?”

How to measure SOV

SOV requires monitoring competitor mentions alongside your own. Tools that provide this:

Sprout Social: Competitor benchmarking on Standard plan and above. Shows competitor follower counts, engagement rates, and post frequency. Does not include share of voice by mention volume on lower tiers.

Hootsuite: Social listening streams can monitor competitor keywords and brand names. SOV analysis requires manual calculation or higher-tier plans with advanced listening.

Metricool: Competitor tracking on all paid plans — follower growth and engagement rate benchmarks, not full mention-volume SOV.

Brandwatch / Talkwalker / Mention: Dedicated social listening tools designed for SOV measurement. More expensive ($300+/mo) but provide full mention tracking across platforms.

SOV limitations

Not all mentions are positive. Raw SOV counts all mentions, including negative ones. A crisis can dramatically increase SOV. Track sentiment alongside volume.

Platform scope. SOV measured on Twitter/X may look very different from SOV measured on LinkedIn. Define which platforms are included in your measurement.

Keyword coverage. SOV depends entirely on how well your keyword set captures relevant mentions. Branded keywords plus product category keywords are the minimum.