Share of voice

Share of voice is how much of the conversation is yours. Count one every time a brand you track is named in an answer; share of voice is the percentage of those mentions that were you.

If the answers we measured produced 200 brand mentions and 40 of them were yours, your share of voice is 20%.

It moves when your rivals move

This is the competitive number, and it is the one people misread. You can change nothing and watch it fall.

Say you are named in 40 of 100 answers, and one competitor is named in 40 as well. You each have 40% visibility and 50% share of voice. Now a second competitor arrives and is also named in 40 answers. Your visibility is still 40% - you are in exactly the same answers as before - but your share of voice drops to a third. The room got more crowded; you did not get quieter.

So visibility answers "are we being mentioned more?" Share of voice answers "are we winning against these rivals?"

Only the brands you track are counted

Assistants name a great deal in passing: rival products, publishers, review sites, their own suggestions of what to read next. Every name we spot is offered to you as a possible competitor, and that can run to thousands, most of them irrelevant. Dividing the conversation among all of them would leave everybody near zero and tell you nothing.

So the denominator is your own roster - you and the competitors you chose to track. Their shares add up to 100%, which is what makes the number worth reading.

How the count works

A brand named twice in one answer counts once. Both sides of the fraction count answers, not repetitions, so a brand cannot buy share by being restated.

Adding a competitor changes your history. Because the denominator is whoever you track, promoting a suggested name adds their past mentions to it, and your earlier share of voice figures fall to match. Nothing about your performance changed; you widened the field you are measuring against.

A workspace that excludes a rival still measures against it. Share of voice always counts every brand you track, so the rows shown on a narrowed workspace can add up to less than 100%. A workspace that has deliberately left a real competitor out should not be told it owns the whole conversation.

Questions about your own brand are excluded, the same as they are for visibility. See Workspaces and topics.

Visibility - how often you are mentioned, regardless of anyone else
Rank - your placing among the brands you track
Brands and competitors - who is on the roster, and how to change it
Metrics at a glance - every metric in the set

It moves when your rivals move

Only the brands you track are counted

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