Share of Voice

What it actually means

Share of voice started as a media buying term. It was a percentage measurement of a brand's media spending compared to the total media expenditure by all brands within the category. If five companies in your space spent a combined $10 million on advertising and you spent $2 million of it, your share of voice was 20%. The number only means something in relation to the other players. There is no such thing as share of voice in isolation.

That comparative logic carried over into content and social. On LinkedIn, share of voice is your visibility in the category conversation relative to the competitors fighting for the same buyers' attention.

Why it matters if you sell B2B

For B2B marketers, winning share of voice on LinkedIn means winning the attention and trust of the people who matter most to their business. If a buying committee sees your competitor's founder, product updates, and customer stories three times for every one of yours, you are losing the category even if your own post metrics look fine on a standalone basis. Share of voice forces you to ask the right question: not "is our content doing well," but "are we winning the room compared to who else is in it."

The misconception

The most common mistake is treating share of voice as a synonym for engagement or reach. A brand can rack up impressions, likes, and comments and still be losing share of voice if three competitors are growing their own visibility faster. Reach and engagement are absolute numbers about you. Share of voice is a relative number about you versus the field. A post that gets 10,000 impressions is meaningless as a share of voice signal until you know what the total category conversation looked like and how much of it belonged to competitors.

How it gets measured

In practice this means tracking your visibility (mentions, impressions, engagement on category-relevant content) against a defined set of named competitors, not against a vague industry average. You need a competitor set, a time window, and a consistent way of counting visibility across that set. Without the competitor set, you don't have share of voice. You just have your own numbers, which is a different and much easier thing to feel good about.