Market intelligence
Is anybody talking about your business online?
Listening tools promise to monitor the whole internet. What they can really see, and what a share-of-voice figure means without a full feed.
How MarketWar handles it
It analyses only the mentions you SUPPLY and never fabricates a mention, a reach figure or a sentiment — so a share-of-voice number here describes the mentions in front of it rather than the internet. 5 outputs come off that: share of voice against named competitors, a sentiment split, topic velocity with emerging-topic alerts, influencer identification by reach times engagement, and a competitor momentum benchmark.
Social listening is sold as monitoring the internet. Nobody does that, and the gap between the pitch and what is possible is worth knowing before you read a single chart.
What is actually visible
Public posts on platforms with an accessible feed, public reviews, forums, news, and some of Reddit and YouTube.
What is not
Private groups. Direct messages. WhatsApp. Most of Instagram's actual conversation. Any platform that has closed its firehose — which is most of them, and the direction of travel is tighter rather than looser.
For a small local business that is the majority of what is said about them. The recommendation that brings you work happens in a village Facebook group or a WhatsApp thread between neighbours, and no product sees it.
So what is a share-of-voice figure?
A ratio within the mentions supplied. The engine analyses only what you give it and never fabricates a mention, a reach figure or a sentiment value.
Read correctly, that is still useful: with a consistent source, the trend over time means something — you were 12% of this sample in March and 19% in June. Read as "we have 19% of the conversation about plumbers in Leeds", it is wrong by an unknowable margin, and acting on it means budgeting against a number nobody has.
Five outputs come off the supplied set: share of voice against named competitors, a sentiment split, topic velocity with emerging-topic alerts, influencer identification by reach times engagement, and a competitor momentum benchmark.
Sentiment, and where it falls over
Good enough for direction. Poor on sarcasm, jokes, trade slang and the specific British habit of saying something is "not bad" as high praise.
So it is labelled an estimate, and the honest workflow is to use it as a filter rather than a verdict: let it sort the pile, then read the ones that matter. A negative mention that is actually a joke and a positive one that is actually a complaint both exist in every sample.
The alert that is worth having
Topic velocity, not volume. A mention count tells you about yesterday; a change in velocity is the early signal that something is starting — which is the only part of listening that is genuinely time-sensitive, and it feeds the escalation ladder where the first hour is the cheap one.
The cheaper thing that works better
For a small business, the highest-value listening is not a tool at all:
- a Google Business Profile with notifications on,
- a saved search for your business name,
- actually reading your reviews,
- and asking customers how they heard about you, which beats every attribution model at this size.
Then use your own feedback, clustered — a smaller sample that is entirely about your customers rather than a large one about the public internet.
The question to ask any listening vendor
Which platforms can you see, and which can you not?
A vendor who answers in specifics is worth paying. A vendor who says "everywhere" has not read their own data agreements.
What this does not do
Nobody monitors the whole internet, including the vendors who say so. Most conversation happens in private groups, direct messages and WhatsApp, where no tool has access — so treat every share-of-voice figure as a measure of the public, indexed, English-language fraction.
Common questions
Can a tool really monitor everything?
No. Private groups, direct messages and most messaging apps are invisible to every listening product. What is visible is the public, indexed fraction, and for a small business that is a small fraction.
So what is share of voice worth?
It is a ratio within the mentions supplied. Useful for tracking a trend over time with a consistent source, and misleading if read as your share of the actual conversation.
How accurate is sentiment?
Good enough for direction, poor on sarcasm, jokes and trade slang. The engine labels it an estimate, and anything you would act on is worth reading yourself.
Does it invent mentions to fill a chart?
No. It scores supplied mentions and never fabricates a mention, a reach figure or a sentiment value. A quiet week looks quiet.
Related
What do you do when bad reviews all arrive at once?
A reputation problem is a timing problem: the first hour decides the next month. The four escalation levels, and why nothing auto-publishes.
How do you research a competitor without writing knocking copy?
Research naming a rival's weakness is easy to turn into advertising that attacks them, which usually loses. What to do with it instead.
What are your customers actually telling you?
Reviews, surveys, support messages and sales calls say the same three things, and nobody reads them. How clustering differs from inventing.