What is social share of voice?
Social share of voice is a social media metric that measures the percentage of mentions your brand received, against your competitors. It signifies how much people are talking about your brand on social media which defines your place in the market.
How to calculate social share of voice?
To calculate the social share of voice, you’ll first need to calculate the total number of brand mentions in your industry which will include – your mentions + your competitors’.
Now, divide the ‘number of mentions of your brand’ by the ‘total number of brand mentions’ and multiply by 100.
Formula for calculating social share of voice
Real-life example of social share of voice
For example, let’s say you’re a micro SaaS brand and you have 3 competitors.
Your brand: 50 mentions
1st competitor: 100 mentions
2nd competitor: 10 mentions
3rd competitor: 40 mentions
From the above info, the total number of brand mentions will be 200 (50 + 100 + 10 + 40) and your brand mentions are 50.
On plugging all the info in the formula, you’ll have a social share of voice: 50/200 x 100 = 25% of the total market share.
What’s considered a good social share of voice? (benchmark)
There is no set benchmark for social share of voice as it varies largely from brand to brand. However, you should always strive to achieve a higher rate than your competitor. If your brand is relatively new, you’ll have a less percentage of SSoV compared to your competitors.
Whereas, if your brand has been in the market for a while, you should beat your competitor's share of voice.
Calculating your comparative share of voice against your competitors will help you understand where you stand in the market and how much your brand is talked about.
Ways to increase your social share of voice
- Amp up your social media game: 39% of customers will only trust a brand once they’ve had some interactions with it on social media. You need to be active, post consistently and interact with your audience on social media.
- Create engaging and shareable content: Creating engaging, interesting, and useful content is the key to increasing your brand talks. In this regard, videos and memes are ruling the social industry presently. Over 60% of people say they would be more likely to buy from a company that uses memes in their marketing.
- Spark conversations and interact with your audience: 46% of consumers think that engaging with your audience on social media is what makes a brand best in class online. Reply to comments on your posts, spark conversations within your industry, and answer users’ queries. One effective way to spark discussion is through real-time marketing.