Quick answer
Share of voice (SOV) measures the percentage of total media coverage your brand earns relative to your competitors. The formula is: your brand mentions ÷ total market mentions × 100.
Getting clean, consistent data across your whole competitor set is where most teams struggle – that's where tools like Roxhill Media (earned media and press), Signal AI (broadcast), and Meltwater (blended social and press) come in. Roxhill's Spokespeople Share of Voice tool also tracks individual spokesperson visibility alongside brand SOV, which most platforms don't offer.
What is share of voice in PR – and why does it matter?
SOV tells you what proportion of all media coverage in your market your brand earned. Not how many mentions you got – how much of the conversation you owned.
A brand with 200 mentions in a quiet month can have a higher SOV than a brand with 500 mentions in a busy one when every competitor was also in the news. Raw volume is misleading. SOV isn’t.
Boards get this immediately. When you shift the conversation from ‘we got 247 pieces of coverage’ to ‘we grew our share of voice from 18% to 24% while both main competitors declined’, you’re no longer reporting activity – you’re reporting competitive performance. That’s a different conversation entirely.
SOV formula
Share of voice = (your brand mentions ÷ total market mentions) × 100
For example: if your brand earned 320 mentions last month, and the combined total for you and five competitors was 2,100, your SOV = 320 ÷ 2,100 × 100 = 15.2%
How do you calculate share of voice for earned media?
You need three inputs: a defined set of competitors, a consistent time window, and a reliable source of mention data.
- Define your competitor set. Two to five direct competitors. Too broad and the benchmark becomes meaningless; too narrow and you lose the context that makes SOV useful.
- Pick your time window. Monthly is standard. Weekly work during a live campaign or a crisis when you’re moving fast and need to react.
- Pull mention counts. Use a media intelligence platform to count press, broadcast, and online mentions for every brand in the set. Same keyword rules for all of them – no exceptions.
- Do the maths. Your mentions ÷ total mentions × 100.
- Break it down. National press SOV, trade press SOV, and broadcast SOV often tell very different stories. A single blended number hides a lot.
Earned media SOV vs social SOV vs share of search: what's the difference?
Three different metrics measuring three different things. Mixing them up – or combining them into one number – is one of the most common measurement mistakes in UK PR.
- Earned media SOV tracks what journalists and editors are writing about your brand versus your competitors. This is the core PR metric and what you should be putting in front of a board.
- Social SOV tracks brand mentions across Twitter/X, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok. It’s a marketing and brand metric. Brandwatch and Talkwalker are built for it. It adds useful context, but it’s not the same thing as earned media coverage.
- Share of search tracks your branded Google search volume relative to competitors. It’s a forward-looking indicator – research shows it predicts market share shifts months before they appear in sales data. Google Trends gives you a free starting point.
Run all three if you can, but keep them separate. Present each with its own benchmark and its own context.
What does good SOV benchmarking look like?
Setting the right competitor set
Your SOV competitor set should reflect how journalists frame your market, not just who you compete with for revenue. A challenger fintech brand will often get more useful data by comparing itself against the established high-street banks than against other fintechs – because that’s the competitive frame the FT, Sky News, and the trade press actually use.
Revisit your competitor set every six months. The way journalists group brands together shifts, and a comparison group that made sense at the start of the year can quietly become misleading by Q3.
Choosing the right window
Interpreting SOV spikes
Tool breakdown: top 5 platforms to track SOV for UK PR
| Tool | Data sources | Update freq. | UK coverage | Best for | Pricing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Roxhill Media | UK earned / press | Daily | Strong | Mid-size | On request |
| Meltwater | Social + press | Near real-time | Good | Enterprise | On request |
| Signal AI | Press + broadcast | Real-time | Strong | Enterprise | On request |
| Brandwatch | Social channels | Real-time | Strong | Mid–Enterprise | On request |
| Talkwalker | Social + news | Real-time | Good | Mid–Enterprise | On request |
Roxhill
Roxhill’s Spokespeople Share of Voice tool tracks earned media coverage for brands and their spokespeople across UK press, broadcast, and online news – 35,259 outlets, including national broadsheets, regional press, and specialist trade titles.
You can set custom competitor sets, run SOV reports by publication tier, and benchmark competitor coverage alongside your own media performance. The platform also tracks individual spokesperson visibility, while Custom Metrics dashboards export branded board-ready charts directly. Smart Folders handle ongoing competitor tracking without manual data pulls – more on that below.
Best for: mid-size and enterprise-grade UK PR teams and in-house comms functions that need accurate earned media SOV with real depth in UK trade and regional press.
Meltwater
Meltwater combines social and press monitoring into a single platform. Useful if you want a single tool, but social and earned media data are aggregated by default – getting a clean earned media SOV figure takes extra configuration.
Best suited: to large enterprise teams that need a single platform covering both channels and have the time to set it up properly.
Signal AI
Signal AI’s AI-driven topic modelling lets you track SOV within specific narratives – such as sustainability coverage versus product coverage – rather than just brand mention volume.
Strong in regulated sectors where nuanced narrative-level SOV matters.
Best for: large teams working in industries such as financial services, pharma, and energy.
Brandwatch
Brandwatch is a social listening platform. It’s excellent across Twitter/X, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, and TikTok, but it doesn’t offer meaningful UK press or broadcast monitoring. If social SOV is your primary metric – consumer brands, DTC businesses – it’s the right tool. If earned media is what you’re measuring, you need something else alongside it.
Talkwalker
Talkwalker’s real advantage is multilingual monitoring across social and news, which is why it’s popular with EMEA and global teams. UK press coverage is solid, but not as granular as UK-native platforms for niche trade titles.
Best suited: to teams managing brand monitoring across multiple European markets.
How to use Smart Folders for competitor SOV analysis
One of the most practical approaches to ongoing competitor SOV tracking – without a monthly manual data pull – is Roxhill’s Smart Folders.
Set up a folder for each competitor
Monitor article mentions, salience, and sentiment in one view
Custom folders for campaign and keyword tracking
Export board-ready charts directly
Practical tip
Set up one Smart Folder per brand in your SOV competitor set before your next reporting cycle. At the end of the month, the mention counts from each folder give you everything you need: your brand mentions ÷ total folder mentions × 100. No spreadsheet required.
Client story
How Animo PR tracks campaign impact with Roxhill
Animo PR is an award-winning strategic communications agency based in Yorkshire.
Before Roxhill, measuring whether a campaign had actually moved the needle meant cross-referencing mastheads, social profiles, and coverage manually – a time-consuming process that made campaign reporting harder than it needed to be.
They now use Roxhill’s Pinpoint trend analysis tool to track keyword mentions over defined time periods and identify spikes in coverage that correlate directly with PR activity.
When a campaign lands, Animo can show clients exactly how coverage of their key terms moved – and compare that to competitor mention volume – without pulling data from multiple sources.
“Roxhill has made our work so much easier – it’s been so beneficial to us in the quality of our work and ensuring that client reports are accurate”
How to present SOV data to a board or C-suite
The one chart that works every time
Share of voice · June 2025 – June 2026
12-Month SOV: Your brand vs Competitors
Your brand SOV
23%
↑ +5pp vs 6mo ago
Competitor A
31%
↓ −3pp vs 6mo ago
Competitor B
19%
— flat
Others
27%
↓ −2pp vs 6mo ago
A stacked bar chart showing monthly SOV percentage for your brand and two to four competitors over 12 months. It shows direction of travel, competitive context, and the effect of major campaigns – in a format any director can read without a briefing.
Three things that make it land
Lead with the trend
A move from 18% to 23% SOV over six months is a story. '1,200 mentions this month' isn't.
Annotate it
Track campaign launches, competitor news, and crises so the board can link coverage changes to business events.
Break down by tier
National broadsheet SOV and trade press SOV tell different stories about credibility and audience quality.
Common SOV mistakes UK PR teams make
Mixing earned and social into one number
Ignoring sentiment
Changing the competitor set mid-year
Change your competitor set retrospectively, and your historical comparisons become meaningless. Lock it at the start of each planning cycle.
Tracking too many brands
A simple SOV tracking template for UK PR teams
| Cadence | What to measure | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly | Earned media SOV by brand; sentiment split; top coverage wins | Baseline tracking; feeds into quarterly board pack |
| Quarterly | SOV trend chart; competitor activity summary; tier breakdown | Board presentation; strategic planning input |
| Post-campaign | SOV during campaign window vs. baseline; message pull-through rate | Prove campaign impact; inform next campaign brief |
MEASURING SHARE OF VOICE
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a good share of voice percentage for a UK brand?
There’s no universal benchmark. SOV only means something relative to your specific competitor set. In a two-brand market, 50% is parity. In a ten-competitor market, 15–20% might be a strong position. Track the trend over time against your own baseline – that’s the number that matters.
How often should UK PR teams run SOV reports?
Monthly for the baseline. Weekly during active campaigns or when a competitor makes a significant move. Quarterly for board presentations.
Does share of voice include social media?
Only if you include social data in your calculation. Earned media SOV and social SOV are separate metrics. Most PR teams track earned media SOV as the primary number and layer social SOV in as context. Don’t combine them.
How do I benchmark my SOV if my company is new to the market?
Set up your competitor set and use Roxhill Media Monitoring to pull three to six months of historical coverage data for each brand. Your starting SOV will be low – that’s expected. What you’re tracking over your first 12 months is direction of travel, not the absolute number.
Conclusion
SOV is the metric that makes earned media coverage make sense to people outside PR.
For UK teams, Roxhill Media’s Spokespeople Share of Voice tool, Smart Folders for competitor tracking, and Custom Metrics dashboards give you the most practical way to measure earned media SOV with real UK press depth – and turn it into reporting your board will read.
As social listening becomes an increasingly important part of the mix, the direction of travel is clear: bringing earned and social SOV together in one place is where things are heading next.
On the horizon
Social listening is coming to Roxhill
We’re not ready to lift the lid on this one just yet, but social listening is coming to Roxhill. Our ambition is to change the way you track conversations, spot opportunities, and understand what’s being said about your clients beyond traditional media. Keep an eye on your inbox. We’ll be sharing more very soon.
MEDIA INTELLIGENCE YOU CAN TRUST
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Roxhill’s all-in-one media intelligence platform will save you time, highlight your impact, and drive your business forward.
MEDIA INTELLIGENCE YOU CAN TRUST
We’re with you, every step of the way
One login. Multiple solutions.
Roxhill’s all-in-one media intelligence platform will save you time, highlight your impact, and drive your business forward.
Click a product to explore its features.