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Share of Voice for Media Relations

Share of Voice is the percentage of all online content and conversations about your company, compared to your competitors. Knowing where you stand on a quantitative, qualitative and tonal basis is essential when evaluating your positioning. Is your company talked about positively or negatively? How are you responding? Is your company present in essential conversations? How does this compare to competitors? Should you do more, or less?

We regularly conduct Share of Voice analyses for our clients. Evaluations are often customized to focus on media relations, online reviews, social media, advertising, SEO or all of the above, depending on client industries and marketing initiatives. Using proven tracking methods, we keep tally of client and competitor activity year round. Then quarterly and/or annually we evaluate Share of Voice, calculating percentage ownership or market share in each particular area of interest.

Specific media relations evaluations include:

Quantitative: An overall numerical evaluation. For example, if you appeared in the media 20 times in 2013 and there were 150 instances of total coverage between your company and its competitors, your quantitative Share of Voice would be 13.3 percent (20/150 = 0.1333 x 100 = 13.3).

Qualitative: A quality analysis. Perhaps your quantitative Share of Voice is lower than desired, but how strong are your media placements? We score placements a few ways to help evaluate

– Scoring placements by tier. Tier 1 can represent national and trade coverage, while tier 2 most often represents local and non-specific outlets. If the majority of coverage is tier 1, your qualitative analysis would be high.

– Scoring placements by type. Were you quoted as an expert source? Mentioned within an article or comment? Or were you featured in your own story? Some instances hold more merit than the others.

Tonal: Positive or negative. When your company is mentioned, is it in a positive or negative light? Having a large amount of negative coverage is not ideal and should spur investigation and/or company change.

It is important to look at your media coverage from multiple angles. The amount of coverage secured is not the only available metric. It is essential to not only track your coverage, but to look deeper and compare your company to its competitors. A Share of Voice analysis provides tangible data that can help with ROI evaluations and strategic planning.

How else do you evaluate your media placements?

Mworks740 • December 17, 2013

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