What Is Share of Conversation?
Share of conversation (sometimes abbreviated to SOC and occasionally used interchangeably with share of voice in a social context) is a competitive brand metric that measures the proportion of total category mentions online that reference your brand specifically. If your brand appears in 3 000 posts, articles, and comments over a month, and the entire category including competitors generates 15 000 mentions over the same period, your share of conversation is 20 per cent.
The metric captures organic and earned media: product reviews on Takealot, tweets about a recent campaign, Reddit threads comparing mobile network providers, Facebook comments on a service experience. Unlike paid share of voice, which reflects how much a brand has spent in media, share of conversation reflects how much people are actually talking about the brand on their own initiative. It is therefore a more authentic indicator of brand salience and cultural presence.
Share of conversation is closely related to brand awareness. Research by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute has shown a strong correlation between a brand's share of conversation and its eventual market share. When people are talking about your brand relative to the category, consideration and purchase tend to follow. For South African brands competing in crowded sectors like insurance, retail, or telecoms, owning a greater share of the conversation is a long-term growth lever.
The metric also surfaces sentiment. A brand might have a high share of conversation but a predominantly negative tone, indicating a crisis or reputation problem that requires immediate attention. Social listening tools can separate positive, neutral, and negative mentions so marketers understand not just how much they are being talked about, but how they are being perceived.
Share of Conversation In Practice
The scenario below is an illustrative example, not a Juicy Designs client result. The figures indicate the scale of effect that share of conversation work typically produces, so treat them as indicative rather than measured.
Consider two Durban-based property developers competing for the attention of first-time buyers. Developer A invests heavily in Google Ads and gets clicks, but earns little organic social conversation. Developer B runs a series of educational Instagram Reels about the bond application process, is featured in a Property24 article, and receives dozens of WhatsApp shares from satisfied buyers. Developer B's share of conversation would typically climb relative to Developer A, and when first-time buyers discuss which developers to trust in Facebook groups, Developer B's name is the one likely to appear consistently.
For Juicy Designs clients, we track share of conversation as part of monthly social media marketing reporting. We benchmark brand mentions against three to five named competitors, identify the content types and topics that generate the most conversation, and use that intelligence to inform the next content cycle. When share of conversation drops, it is typically a signal that publishing frequency, content quality, or earned media activity needs attention.
Why share of conversation matters
Share of conversation measures how much of the discussion about a topic, category or market involves your brand, relative to competitors. It matters because visibility in conversation, on social media, in communities, and increasingly in what AI systems surface, is a leading indicator of awareness and consideration. A brand that features prominently in the relevant conversation is more likely to be recalled, recommended and chosen than one that is absent, even if its advertising spend is similar. Unlike sales, which are a lagging outcome, share of conversation shows whether a brand is winning or losing mindshare now, which is why it is a useful early signal of whether marketing is building the presence that later drives demand.
Measuring share of conversation
Measuring share of conversation means tracking mentions of your brand against those of competitors across the channels where your category is discussed, social platforms, forums and communities, review sites, and, increasingly, the answers AI systems give. Social listening tools gather and quantify mentions and sentiment, so you can see both how much of the conversation you hold and whether it is positive. The figure is most useful as a trend and a comparison: rising share against competitors signals growing mindshare, while a fall is an early warning. As AI-mediated discovery grows, extending this measurement to how often and how favourably AI systems mention your brand becomes part of the same discipline of tracking presence in the conversation.
FAQ
How is share of conversation different from share of voice?
Share of voice traditionally measures paid media spend relative to competitors, while share of conversation focuses on earned and organic mentions across social networks, forums, and news. Share of conversation is broader and captures word-of-mouth and PR-driven visibility that paid spend cannot buy directly.
What tools can track share of conversation in South Africa?
Tools like Brandwatch, Sprout Social, and Meltwater can track mentions across South African social platforms, news sites, and forums. Google Alerts provides a free starting point. The key is setting up both brand keyword and competitor keyword tracking to calculate a meaningful percentage over time.
How do you track share of conversation?
With social listening and brand-monitoring tools that quantify mentions of your brand against competitors across social, forums and review sites, along with sentiment. As AI-mediated discovery grows, tracking how often AI systems mention your brand is becoming part of the same measure.