What is share of voice?
Share of voice is your slice of all media attention in your market: how often your brand is mentioned relative to your competitors combined. It puts your visibility in proportion and makes PR results comparable over time. You measure it with media monitoring across a fixed set of competitors.
Written by Timon Hendriks · Last updated on 12 July 2026
How it works in practice
Share of voice turns loose publications into a strategic number. A hundred mentions mean little as long as you do not know whether your competitor had three hundred. By following a fixed set of competitors and counting mentions per brand, you see who dominates the conversation in your market and whether your slice is growing or shrinking.
Look beyond the count alone. A share built from positive trade coverage weighs differently than a spike caused by bad news, so combine share of voice with sentiment. And choose the comparison group deliberately: measuring against the biggest player paints a different picture than measuring against peers of your own size.
Example
A Hartford staffing agency for healthcare follows itself and four competitors in a monitoring tool. The baseline shows the agency holds a modest slice of the coverage, while one competitor dominates thanks to a fixed expert role at a trade publication. The agency starts offering op-eds and research systematically and sees its share of voice double within a year.
Common mistake
Measuring share of voice without a fixed comparison group. If the set of competitors changes per report, every rise or fall is meaningless; choose the group once, deliberately, and keep it.
Frequently asked questions
How do you calculate share of voice?
Count all media mentions of your brand and of your competitors over a period, and divide your count by the total. The result is your percentage slice of your market's media attention.
What is a good share of voice?
That depends on your position: as a challenger, growth matters more than the absolute number. Rule of thumb: a share of voice above your market share points to a brand growing faster than its market.