Empower my brand
Empower my brand

4 Ways to Improve your Share of Voice on Social Media

Social media is the world’s busiest place right now and makes the task of capturing customer attention increasingly competitive. There is a fight between brands to gain a small share of visibility and attention. Especially when there are over 52 million photos being shared on Instagram alone each day. Millions of Tweets are going out each second. And your posts are getting lost within seconds, hence the decreased reach. The challenge of increasing the Share of Voice on social media is real and increasing by the day. 

Increase your Share of Voice on Social Media

What is Share of Voice?

The definition of Share of Voice is quite simple. You may actually know what it is, without knowing the exact term. Traditionally Share of Voice, as a term was used in reference to paid advertisements. But over time, it has evolved and now refers to your brand’s Share of Voice when compared to that of your competitors in the online world. Meaning, the amount of mentions your brand receives online versus the number of mentions your competitor receives. If your share is larger than your competitors’, it shows that consumers are more aware of your brand than any other. This is the dream of every digital marketer, for his/her company. So how do you get there?

How to Increase Your Share of Voice on Social Media?

A large Share of Voice is desirable but many have a hard time getting there. Here are some methods which, if followed consistently, can help you improve your Share of Voice on social media.

1. High-Quality Content

Nothing beats high-quality content which has the potential to go viral. Even if you’re not expecting it to go viral, quality content can grab attention and get people talking. Share content across all social media platforms that you’re on. Share visuals, videos, or even a small text but include a call-to-action. 

If you are running a campaign, plan your content calendar ahead of the launch date. Get all your material pre-approved and make the process smooth. This aids a smooth transition for further steps like measuring results and planning future campaigns. 

2. Be Active and Consistent

Being active and consistent is key to improving your Share of Voice. As we all know, when you are out of sight, you are out of mind. On social media, with millions of posts coming in every second, it’s your posts that can easily get out of sight. To cut through the noise, being active across your social media platforms is imperative. If you find it difficult to brainstorm about daily posts, plan a content calendar in advance and schedule your posts. 

3. Engage with the Audience Members

Another foolproof way to grab and retain audience attention is to engage with the audience. Being active doesn’t mean only posting content daily. Social media isn’t just a content distribution channel. Your content may get lost despite all your efforts, however, if you interact one on one and focus on building lasting relationships, consumers will remember that. In fact, 72% of consumers expect a brand to respond within one hour of posting a complaint on Twitter. 

4. Listen to Your Consumers and Lead the Conversation

You would notice that social listening is an essential part of all the steps mentioned above. You need to know your audience well to be able to produce quality content. Try to know their interests if you wish to engage with them. You have to know the leading and trending topics to create your content calendar and be active. Listening to and responding to the needs and wants of your audience is a sure way to increase your Share of Voice on social media. 

Once you know the interests and expectations of your audience, do not hesitate to participate in existing conversations or even start new ones. Encourage your consumers to post reviews for your products and services. Share the stories on your social media platform. If your consumer posts a negative review, reach out to them and try to understand the pain point. Re-evaluate the situation after you have extended help. Share the story of how you reached out and helped a consumer. Build a community around your brand and keep it thriving. 

If you are starting to build a strong Share of Voice for your brand, start with these simple steps. Before you start, measure your current Share of Voice. It will be easier to track your progress. Remember, increasing your Share of Voice on social media takes some time and consistency.

Share of Voice – What is it and How to Measure it?

Marketers often use the term “Share of Voice”. So what is it – an important metric or just another buzzword? Don’t we already have a lot of other metrics to measure and analyze? And if you do try to measure this, what benefits does it bring to your business? Let’s dig in.

Share of Voice

What is Share of Voice (SOV)?

Share of Voice is the measure of your brand’s visibility. This is often measured in comparison to your competitors’ SOV across multiple channels. This gauges your brand’s dominance within the industry-specific conversations. So the more your market share is, the more popular you are. SOV refers to a brand’s share of paid advertising. But now, in a broader definition, it has come to include other digital marketing elements too. SOV now considers social media mentions, traffic for keywords et cetera. An understanding of your brand’s share of voice, only helps you understand how dominant your current position is, in the marketplace. 

SOV can be calculated for:

  • Impressions and reach on social media pages
  • The organic traffic on your site
  • PPC
  • Revenue 
  • The volume of mentions across the Internet.

Why is Share of Voice Important?

If you are investing all your energy and resources into a business, you wouldn’t profit from it if people aren’t even aware of your brand. Share of voice helps you measure the level of awareness for your brand. This in turn tells you what percentage of your target audience you are reaching, through your marketing initiatives. 

The benefits of knowing your share of voice include:

  • Competitive analysis: Get a true picture of your standing in the market, your affinity to your customers, and how you are performing when compared to your competition.
  • Market segmentation: Calculating your SOV can bring out useful insights into the regional markets and the demographics of your target market. Organize this information, analyze and know all about your weaknesses and strengths.
  • Measure the success of your campaigns: When you run campaigns, one of the major goals is to increase your brand awareness. So, measuring the share of voice helps you gauge the success of a specific campaign.
  • Improve future marketing campaigns: When you measure the SOV of your current campaigns you have access to all the data. Analyzing them can help you to make improvements to your future campaigns. Social listening tools store all historical data from your previous campaigns and provide precise insights into your areas of improvement.

How to Measure it?

To know your current position in the market, you need to calculate your share of voice. So how is it done? Easy! Divide your target metric by the total metric for your market/industry. Multiply the result with 100 to get the percentage of your market share. 

(Your target metric / Total industry metric) x 100

For instance, if your brand hashtags appear 10 times among the industry total of 50, you have a 20% SOV. This means 80% of the market is taken by someone else and you are yet to catch up before you become a market leader. 

All this seems easy until you realize that calculating the total number of industry keyword mentions manually is almost impossible. AI and SEO tools like Google Analytics or social listening tools can easily monitor and calculate the SOV for you. They even provide a comparison between the fluctuations in your SOV. These insights help you in your future campaigns.

Quick Recap

Share of voice mostly refers to the advertising a company does. However, it has now come to measure other elements of digital marketing. Measuring and monitoring your SOV over time will help you better equip for and scale your marketing campaigns.