Where does your brand stand in the industry and how many people are talking about your products and services online and offline? Do you know, but want to improve your position? Don't know what your Share of Voice is, but want to learn what it is and how to do it? Kolsquare has the answer on how to increase your visibility and therefore your Share of Voice.
Visibility and awareness are two essential marketing metrics that can be significantly improved, especially through influencer marketing. So, if you want to get in on the conversation, possibly shut out competitors and become a leader in your industry, the Share of Voice is an important benchmark for marketers.
Read more about how you can use benchmarking for your social media strategy.
SOV can be defined as the share or presence of your brand in the marketplace compared to your competitors across different channels. Share of Voice serves as a metric to determine how well-known and visible your brand is, in short, what your market share is in a figurative sense. This is transferred because Share of Voice does not refer to the percentage of sales but to the percentage of discussion. Consequently, a high Share of Voice means dominance in your industry and most likely an increase in sales. However, the latter is not the immediate focus.
The Share of Voice indicates which part of the discussion you belong to in your industry. Are potential consumers talking about you? Do they know who your brand is and what you offer? What is your target audience talking about, including in relation to your brand?
In earlier times, aka before the success of influencer marketing, the Share of Voice was used as a metric for the success of paid advertising. Today, as influencers dominate the advertising industry and attention has shifted from traditional channels such as television and print newspapers to social media, marketers can calculate Share of Voice for organic traffic online as well.
The importance of Share of Voice is clear, but to what extent can the metric be interesting in the field of influencer marketing? Precisely because the KPIs of working with influencers are to increase visibility and awareness, Share of Voice is an important part of your planning.
If you know exactly what your brand’s Share of Voice is, the better you understand who knows what about your brand. Accordingly, you can determine your target audience and use these insights for your next influencer marketing campaign, making it even more successful. Plus, of course, you can see what you need to work on or focus on. It gives you the opportunity to get a better understanding of the current challenges of the market,the position of your competitors and to draw conclusions.
Awareness and visibility – these two terms still seem abstract and difficult to measure? Wrong thinking. Your brand’s Share of Voice is calculated as follows: You divide a target metric that represents your brand by the total number in your market or industry. To get the percent, you then multiply that number by 100.
Your brand metric / total market metric x 100
Things get a little tricky when you need to determine these very metrics because you’ll need some marketing tools to do so. These include, for example, the analytics tools that platforms like Instagram offer. So, for example, the total number of your mentions can be analyzed as one such metric. To illustrate: if you are mentioned 30 times compared to 50 times in the entire market, you have a SOV of 60%, making you the market leader.
Other metrics you can analyze to calculate your SOV are:
This process can then immediately help identify weaknesses in your overall strategy: Which channels need more attention, especially compared to your competitors?
A tool like Kolsquare will help you identify and determine the metrics. Kolsquare is a complete- solution platform based on the latest technologies, such as Big Data, AI and Machine Learning. We support businesses from A to Z by providing personalized guidance and help optimize your influencer marketing campaign. Try our free demo anytime and make an appointment with our experts today.
Enough theory, now let’s briefly go over these five tips to increase your SOV that will help you improve your Share of Voice.
1. Be active and present: One way to be socially present is to actively interact on social media. Of course, this means regularly posting and engaging with your audience. Using a content calendar, you can prepare content for important dates and strategically rotate your content. Also, by posting at the times when your audience is most active on each network, you can ensure that your content gets the most reach and engagement.
2. Spark conversations and discussions: Sparking discussions organically grows your social Share of Voice. Taking an unequivocal stand on a hot-button issue can obviously create buzz, but if you stand behind your brand values, asking questions or soliciting feedback from your audience can be an effective way to generate engagement.
3. Create content that can be easily shared: Post images, GIFs, and videos, as those are usually popular and more likely to be shared. That said, as always, quality over quantity is key and again, you should match the tone of your target audience.
4. Respond promptly: Respond promptly to what your followers post, comment or ask. This will help you build a relationship and increase brand loyalty. Empathy and a touch of humanity can also help build a positive image for your brand.
5. Budget accordingly: Determining your Share of Voice will help you allocate your resources effectively in the long run. If your brand is not present on a particular social media channel, investing in sponsored content or working with appropriate influencers can help increase your Share of Voice.
Kolsquare is Europe’s leading Influencer Marketing platform, offering a data-driven solution that empowers brands to scale their KOL (Key Opinion Leader) marketing strategies through authentic partnerships with top creators.
Kolsquare’s advanced technology helps marketing professionals seamlessly identify the best content creators by filtering their content and audience, while also enabling them to build, manage, and optimize campaigns from start to finish. This includes measuring results and benchmarking performance against competitors.
With a thriving global community of influencer marketing experts, Kolsquare serves hundreds of customers—including Coca-Cola, Netflix, Sony Music, Publicis, Sézane, Sephora, Lush, and Hermès—by leveraging the latest Big Data, AI, and Machine Learning technologies. Our platform taps into an extensive network of KOLs with more than 5,000 followers across 180 countries on Instagram, TikTok, X (Twitter), Facebook, YouTube, and Snapchat.
As a Certified B Corporation, Kolsquare leads the way in promoting Responsible Influence, championing transparency, ethical practices, and meaningful collaborations that inspire positive change.
Since October 2024, Kolsquare has become part of the Team.Blue group, one of the largest private tech companies in Europe, and a leading digital enabler for businesses and entrepreneurs across Europe. Team.Blue brings together over 60 successful brands in web hosting, domains, e-commerce, online compliance, lead generation, application solutions, and social media.
