Measurement19 September 2026
What is share of voice and how do you calculate it?
By Anil Salvi
Short answer
Share of voice is your share of the public conversation about a named set of brands over a set period. You calculate it by dividing your mentions by the total mentions of you and every competitor you are measuring against, then multiplying by 100. If you had 12,480 mentions and the four tracked brands had 36,700 between them, your share of voice is 34%. The arithmetic is trivial. The judgement is in the denominator: which brands you include, which channels you count, and whether every brand is measured with the same rules.
- Share of voice = your mentions ÷ total mentions of all tracked brands × 100.
- The number is only comparable if every brand is measured on the same channels, over the same period, with the same deduplication.
- Adding or removing a competitor changes everyone's share, so the competitor set must stay fixed to read a trend.
- It measures conversation, not sales. It is a leading indicator, not a revenue figure.
How do you actually calculate share of voice?
Fix the period, fix the brand set, count mentions of each brand on the same channels, then divide.
| Brand | Mentions | Share of voice |
|---|---|---|
| Northwind | 15,050 | 41% |
| You | 12,480 | 34% |
| Lumen Pay | 5,870 | 16% |
| Everyone else tracked | 3,300 | 9% |
| Total | 36,700 | 100% |
What makes a share of voice number untrustworthy?
- Different channels per brand. If you are measured across seventeen channels and a competitor across five, the comparison is meaningless.
- A moving competitor set. Add a fifth brand and everyone's share drops, which looks like decline and is arithmetic.
- No deduplication. One press release syndicated to forty outlets can swing a small category for a week.
- Mixed periods. Comparing your 30 days against their 7 is a common and invisible error.
- Branded search or ad impressions mixed in with organic mentions, which measures spend rather than conversation.
What is a good share of voice?
There is no benchmark, and anyone quoting one across industries is guessing. What it is compared against is your own previous period and the brands in your set. A 34% share in a four-brand market is unremarkable; the same number in a fifteen-brand market is dominance.
The useful reading is direction and cause: did it move, which channel moved it, and what happened that week. A share of voice figure with no explanation underneath it does not survive a follow-up question.
Where BrandRobin fits
Share of voice is only meaningful if every brand is measured the same way, so BrandRobin puts you and your named competitors through one channel list, one sentiment model and one deduplication pass, and recalculates hourly.
- One denominator across every tracked brand, split by channel
- Competitor tracking included from $129 a month, not a separate product
- Every figure opens onto the mentions behind it, so a board question has an answer
- Sentiment shown beside share of voice, so loud and bad never reads as good
Frequently asked questions
- Is share of voice the same as market share?
- No. Share of voice measures how much of the public conversation is about each brand; market share measures revenue or units. They can move in opposite directions — a recall generates enormous share of voice while market share falls.
- How many competitors should be in the denominator?
- The ones your buyers actually consider, usually three to five. Adding brands you do not compete with dilutes your share and makes the trend unreadable. Whatever you choose, keep it fixed, because changing the set resets the baseline.
- Should share of voice include paid media?
- Only if you say so. Mixing paid impressions with organic mentions measures budget as much as conversation, and it makes the number incomparable with a competitor who is not buying. Most teams report organic share of voice and treat paid separately.
- How often should you report it?
- Monthly or quarterly. Weekly share of voice is dominated by news events and reads as noise; the underlying conversation shifts over quarters, not days.
How this was put together
The formula here is arithmetic and uncontested. We have deliberately published no benchmark for a 'good' share of voice, because no credible cross-industry dataset exists and the figure depends entirely on how many brands are in the set. Where this page makes a claim about what distorts the number, it is describing a mechanism you can check against your own data rather than citing a study.
Go deeper on the blog
What people ask next
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Reading what people say in public about your brand, your competitors and your category, then acting on it — as opposed to counting how often your name appears.
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