How to increase your share of voice on socials

Sahail Ashraf posted on 5 April 2022

You may have heard of ‘share of voice’ on social media. It’s all about knowing how much attention you’re getting. We look at share of voice, what it is, and how to get more of it.

Social media is a noisy place to be. If you’re marketing in that space, you need to make sure you are getting the kind of attention you need. It’s all about ‘share of voice’.

What is the share of voice?

Based on social media conversation, social share of voice measures brand exposure. In most cases, it is calculated as a percentage of the number of total mentions within a specific industry or among defined groups of competitors.

What this means is that if you are able to get attention, and have people engaging with your voice through mentions, you will have a higher share of voice.

Simple, right?

Not quite. Getting to the place where you receive that share requires an awful lot of work. It also means understanding how the best marketing campaigns work on social media.

Why bother?

With social media, it is often the case that you have to tweak things here and there to make sure they are running properly. It’s such a dynamic space that you could find that changing just one approach in your campaigns makes for a better ROI.

If you find one campaign that does better than another, compare the metrics on social voice to see why that one campaign achieved so much success. You’ll find that some campaigns have a bigger share of social voice, and the impact of those campaigns is accordingly better.

To add to that value, you will know how your competitors are doing. By understanding share of voice you will be able to see what people are saying about your competitors. This means that you will gain an advantage and a clear focus on what is happening in your industry.

How to get it?

To get to the share of voice that your campaign receives you need to be able to find the total number of mentions on the topic in your industry. This is possible to do manually, but the vast majority of companies and marketers use platforms to help them find the total. It’s just a lot of work, so if you can automate it, all the better.

To work out your share of the total mentions as a percentage:

1. Divide your total by the industry total
2. Multiply that by 100

From then onwards, it’s about making sure you get more of the share. Here are some tips to help you up your game in this area.

1. Increase and maintain your activity on social media. Take the time to always be available on social media for your audiences. This is very important, because staying visible and current means you will be seen as relevant. If your brand isn’t around, then no one will see you, mention you, and be part of an increased social share of voice. The best way to make this happen is to have a social media calendar. If you are always posting, you’re onto a winner. And a calendar means you won’t miss out on any dates, as well as helping you maintain consistency.

1. Adding content that people would like to share is another way to increase your social share of voice. GIFs, videos, and images are all common ways to increase your share of voice. Whenever possible, try to come up with interesting, original, or meme-worthy content.

1. It’s usually the person who sets the agenda who spends most of the time talking. In many cases, holding a larger share of voice comes along with initiating and leading conversations from the beginning. Do this whenever you can, rather than jumping into discussions that are already underway.

1. You can grow your voice by delighting your customers. Customers who are enthusiastic about your brand create satisfaction-based content that you can use to market to other customers and prospects of your brand.

Essentially, increasing your share of public voice means creating great content that is better than your competitors, leading the conversation, and being consistent. Do this, and you’ll see that percentage rise.

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