Definition: Share of voice is the percentage of all mentions, conversations or ad visibility in a market that belongs to your brand, compared with the competitors you track.
Also called: SOV, social share of voice
Updated October 11, 2026
Share of voice = your brand mentions ÷ total mentions of you and your competitors × 100Share of voice measures visibility relative to competitors, not in absolute terms. A brand can get more mentions this quarter and still lose share of voice if competitors grew faster. It is a measure of awareness, so it belongs next to reach and impressions rather than conversions.
Decide the inputs before you measure and keep them fixed, otherwise the trend is meaningless.
Mentions across the open web need a social listening tool. Without one, you can approximate share of voice from public data, for example by comparing tagged mentions or engagement on your posts and competitors’ posts over the same period. In paid search the term means something narrower: the share of available ad impressions your ads received.
In September a coffee brand is mentioned 1,200 times, and its three tracked competitors are mentioned 2,100, 1,500 and 1,200 times. Total mentions are 6,000, so share of voice = 1,200 ÷ 6,000 × 100 = 20%.
Social listening is tracking public online conversations about your brand, competitors, products and industry, then analysing them to guide content, product and customer decisions.
Impressions are the total number of times a post was displayed on screen, counting repeat views by the same person.
A social media KPI (key performance indicator) is a metric you have chosen to track against a specific business goal, with a target and a time frame, to show whether your social media work is succeeding.
Reach is the number of unique people who saw a post or account at least once in a given period.
Write once, tailor each version yourself or with optional AI, and schedule to 6 networks from one calendar.