Web & Social Analytics

A quick guide to social share of voice

Share of voice (SOV) has evolved from a simple advertising metric that measured the amount of money a brand spent on visibility (vis-à-vis its competitors) to a multifaceted tool in this digital age. Today, SOV encompasses website traffic, organic searches, PPC (pay-per-click) performance, digital PR, social media mentions, and much more. No wonder SOV is often referred to as ‘the voice of the industry’ metric.

Social SOV focuses on exposure gained through conversations on social media platforms in the form of brand mentions and hashtags. Modern social listening tools enable organisations to track what real users are saying about brands since these are the channels where consumers visit so that they can be heard. The information thus gleaned can help analyse your organisation’s visibility against competitors as well as provide insights into prospective customers and prevalent market trends. You can now leverage your social media data towards crafting far-reaching organisational strategies rather than just being a marketing resource.* There are many advantages to monitoring your brand’s SOV on social media. With the right strategies, metrics, and social media tools can help organisations in:

• Measuring and comparing with the competition:

  Social media analytics help you to know your competition better, as these tools not only track your own organisation’s social SOV, but that of competing businesses as well. You can measure and compare the number of times industry leaders mention your brand on social media and even explore the regions and languages in these mentions to understand the market better and form growth strategies.

• Gaining consumer insights:

  Social media tools track brand mentions by analysing real-user conversations and posts on social media, providing you with a clear picture of current and evolving consumer behaviours. Knowing what prospective customers are saying about your business and products, as well as that of your competition, can give you a better understanding of the market landscape as well as identify scope for improvement in your own processes.

• Engaging with customers:

  Social media allows consumers to reach out to brands directly. Having a system in place to respond to comments, queries, and resolution of grievances can be a powerful tool in building relations. Letting customers know that your organisation is acknowledging them, paying attention to their concerns, and providing timely support ensure a positive customer experience. Regularly engaging with consumers can enhance your brand’s popularity on social media, resulting in more people talking about you and, in turn, boosting your social SOV.

• Spending wisely on social media:

  Social media is an excellent marketing tool in today’s digital age. Knowing which platforms are working for you and which demand more attention can help you frame a social media action plan. This will help you in directing time and resources to where they would have the most impact on your brand’s SOV.

• Assessing and managing your brand’s image:

  Analysing data collected by social media monitoring tools can provide a clear picture of customer sentiment towards your brand. Not only can you see how often your organisation was mentioned on various social media platforms, but the data can be further segregated into positive, negative, and neutral metrics. You can also filter social media mentions by region, gender, or age group, which will provide you with accurate demographics of your customer base to create targeted marketing strategies. Tracking fluctuations in how the general public perceives your organisation and your competitors is invaluable in reading an ever-evolving market.

• Tracking the effectiveness of marketing campaigns:

  Systematic analysis of your organisation’s social SOV can identify the success of your marketing campaigns. Increased brand SOV (social shares) immediately following a campaign is a clear indicator of on-point marketing. Conversely, a campaign that doesn’t deliver appreciable impact on social SOV indicates that you need to rethink your marketing strategies.

How to measure share of voice on social media?

To calculate your brand’s social SOV as a percentage, divide your organisation’s mentions by the total number of industry mentions over a fixed time period and multiply the result by 100.

Brand measures/total market measures x 100 = Share of voice

How can Infosys BPM help?

Infosys BPM offers a comprehensive suite of web and social media analytics tools that can help you accurately track your brand’s social share of voice, as well as several other social media metrics that can help grow your business. Efficiently leverage the power of social media in today’s digital world with Infosys BPM offerings.

*For organisations on the digital transformation journey, agility is key in responding to a rapidly changing technology and business landscape. Now more than ever, it is crucial to deliver and exceed on organisational expectations with a robust digital mindset backed by innovation. Enabling businesses to sense, learn, respond, and evolve like a living organism, will be imperative for business excellence going forward. A comprehensive, yet modular suite of services is doing exactly that. Equipping organisations with intuitive decision-making automatically at scale, actionable insights based on real-time solutions, anytime/anywhere experience, and in-depth data visibility across functions leading to hyper-productivity, Live Enterprise is building connected organisations that are innovating collaboratively for the future.