LinkedIn Social Selling Index is a unique and innovative metric that determines your social selling success. Essentially, optimizing your LinkedIn profile and LinkedIn outreach campaigns makes you likely to experience a higher reach and better results.
However, the validity and usefulness of LinkedIn’s SSI are a source of debate among marketers and business owners. The real question is whether LinkedIn’s SSI index is a valuable benchmark for determining your profile’s rank or an advertising gimmick.
In this article, we discuss what SSI score on LinkedIn is, its importance, and ways you can improve your score.
What is Social Selling in Marketing?
Social selling is an innovative approach that enables those in sales, leadership positions, and digital marketing to focus on business prospects on social media. It’s also a valuable tool for fostering rapport with potential leads.
Social selling is a unique sales tactic that helps businesses hit their marketing goals quickly and effectively. Let’s discuss an example of social selling:
- Sam works as a salesperson for a flooring business. On Instagram, he comes across a woman named Mary is opening a restaurant in the same city, seeking contractor recommendations
- Sam recommends her several companies he contacted or worked with in the past
- Mary receives his message and sees Sam’s social profile revealing that he works for a flooring business. She’s been looking for flooring companies and adds Sam’s business to her short-list
- Sam sends a follow-up note, and Mary books an appointment to visit his flooring company’s showroom
What is the LinkedIn SSI (Social Selling Index)?
LinkedIn’s SSI is an innovative metric for measuring your brand’s social selling efforts. LinkedIn introduced the concept of social selling in 2014 as a sales and marketing tool for identifying opportunities, measuring success, and tailoring your approach.
The social media platform combines four components to establish your SSI score. LinkedIn identifies whether users:
- Establish a professional brand with industry leaders on LinkedIn
- Connect with the ideal members
- Share relevant, high-quality, and conversation-inspiring content
- Build and strengthen vital relationships
How Does LinkedIn Calculate the Social Selling Index?
LinkedIn doesn’t fully disclose its SSI calculation criteria; however, it reveals that the following factors influence its Social Selling Index score:
- Profile – You must establish a professional personal brand by completing your profile with an eye-catching cover photo, attention-grabbing multimedia content, recommendations from other users’ posts, and endorsements of listed skills
- Search – Identifying the ideal users by leveraging the people search and Lead Builder tools
- Sharing – Engaging with others’ posts, creating your posts, receiving engagement, checking your response rate in InMail messages, and sharing others’ posts
- Networking – Fostering long-lasting relationships by building your network, checking the quality of your connections, and identifying the acceptance rate for connection requests you send
What Impact Does LinkedIn SSI Ranking Have?
LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index directly influences the social media platform’s algorithm. Thus, it also affects the organic reach of your posts and your profile’s visibility and discoverability.
Achieving a high SSI is essential since it helps boost your reach, interaction, and awareness. A high overall Social Selling Index score also enables you to establish yourself as a thought leader.
Increased reach and visibility mean creating a more expansive platform to present yourself as a social seller. This way, you can effectively gain the trust of your LinkedIn followers and viewers to whom you’re not connected yet.
Can Other LinkedIn Members View Your Social Selling Index Score?
No, your SSI score is not visible to other LinkedIn users. Only members with access to your account can view your Social Selling Index score.
Why is LinkedIn SSI Important?
Today’s winning organizations use social selling tools throughout the sales process. Social sellers outsell those who don’t leverage social media. Moreover, 39% of B2B professionals revealed that they could reduce account research time using social selling tools.
Leveraging your well-established and professional network on LinkedIn is a valuable tool for sales prospecting. According to insightful research by LinkedIn:
- Users with a higher SSI score enjoy 45% greater social selling opportunities than those with a lower score
- Sales representatives experience are 51% more likely to reach the quota
- 78% of marketers who use social media for marketing outdo those who do not use it
Although LinkedIn says that the higher your SSI score, the more opportunities you have of making a sale. But remember that many connections do not translate to increased conversions.
That said, LinkedIn’s SSI tool is valuable for salespeople and marketers and helps create secure connections and increase opportunities for sales and lead prospects.
Should You Treat LinkedIn’s Four Elements of Social Selling Index with Equal Concern?
According to LinkedIn, its revolutionary Social Selling Index combines the measurements from its four elements to determine your SSI score.
If you’re wondering whether you should treat all four with equal concern, the answer is yes. Each element is worth 25% of your ultimate SSI score.
As for which order you should attend the four elements, you must establish a professional brand. Once you complete this task, you can acquire an average business level.
What is a Good LinkedIn SSI Score?
Typically, industry leaders on LinkedIn should aim to have a Social Selling Index score of 75 or more. Acquiring an 80+ SSI score indicates that you’re using LinkedIn effectively. Below is a quick overview of LinkedIn scores.
If you add your job title and industry on your LinkedIn profile, the SSI tool tells you your industry’s average Social Selling Index score. This way, you can quickly identify whether your overall SSI score is good.
The SSI index on LinkedIn also reveals your average SSI score. It even tells you whether you’re performing better this week and your rankings in your network and niche.
You may even leverage LinkedIn’s sales. SSI also enables you to see your everyday improvements. But you’ll have to track your date-to-date performance manually. Remember to take screenshots of different pages to follow changes and tweak your content strategy.
How Often is LinkedIn SSI Updated?
According to LinkedIn, the social media platform updates its SSI index every twenty-four hours.
Finding Your SSI Score
Let’s now discuss how you can find out your Social Selling Index score on LinkedIn. Below we’ve created a step-by-step guide to identifying your LinkedIn SSI to learn how effective your current efforts are:
- Log in to your LinkedIn account
- Click on the ‘Work’ menu on the right side of the navigation bar
- Locate the ‘Sales Solutions’
- Find the ‘Resources’ option on the ‘Sales Solution’ page
- Select the ‘Social Selling Index’ button
- On the banner, find the option, ‘Get your score free’.
After identifying your SSI score, consider improving it based on the areas where you’ve scored less. Some simple ways of enhancing your Social Selling Index include:
- Creating valuable content and engaging in it
- Spending 10 minutes or more per day interacting with the Sales Navigator
- Finding the right people and connecting with them
- Engaging with relevant groups to establish your professional brand
How Can I Improve My SSI on LinkedIn?
Let’s discuss simple yet effective ways of improving your SSI score on LinkedIn:
Build Your Professional Brand on LinkedIn
Establishing and growing your brand on LinkedIn requires time and dedication. But typically, it’s worth it. A strong personal brand on LinkedIn indicates higher profile views, more contact requests, and greater engagement.
To improve your overall SSI score, you must focus on building a strong professional brand by:
- Completing Your Profile – It includes optimizing your LinkedIn headline, identifying relevant keywords, posting relevant content, writing a powerful summary, acquiring recommendations from relevant people, and adding a custom banner
- Adding Work Samples – Include recent articles, blogs, and other samples in your profile’s ‘Featured Section’.
- Increasing Visibility by Posting Content and Engaging – Try sharing high-quality and valuable content that is educational and fun for followers
- Gathering Recommendations – Consider asking your peers and past team members to give you work recommendations
Connect with Your Target Audience
LinkedIn encourages users to connect with people that are likely to benefit from your content, activities, and offerings.
For this reason, you must offer value when posting a new article or joining a conversation. You may improve this metric by following these steps:
- Leveraging LinkedIn Search – LinkedIn offers its members an innovative search bar where you can find relevant profiles to connect with
- Filtering Your 2nd Level Connections – LinkedIn recommends that you send a friendly and personalized introduction to LinkedIn members you want to connect with
- Joining Relevant LinkedIn Groups – Consider joining niche groups and subgroups to increase engagement rates
- Reviewing Interesting Profile Visitors – Strengthen relationships with industry leaders by checking their profiles
Engage with Insights
Engaging with insights includes interacting with other people’s comments and posts. Consider following these steps to improve this metric:
- Sharing Relevant Information – It includes sharing attention-grabbing yet valuable content with your network to establish yourself as a brand authority and thought leader
- Leveraging Timely Content – LinkedIn users often share news and press articles to discuss the latest industry-related information. Consider sharing the latest topics related to your niche to create value for your followers
- Joining Meaningful Discussions – Share your insights on LinkedIn’s comment sections or engage with members who comment on your posts
Establish Deep Relationships
Fostering deep connections is an integral part of maximizing the platform’s potential. Improve this metric by:
- Connecting with Contacts – When you visit a profile, seeks mutual relations to identify whether someone can introduce you
- Establishing Trust with Decision-Makers – Focus on building strong relationships with relevant industry leaders
Be Personable and Consistent
Lastly, being patient and consistent is an excellent way of improving and maintaining your social selling score.
Ensure your efforts don’t go to waste by actively seeking potential prospects on LinkedIn and improving your SSI score.
Conclusion
The validity and usefulness of LinkedIn’s SSI are a source of much debate within the LinkedIn community. But remember that having a good SSI score on LinkedIn enables you to identify whether you’re on the right track.
Focus on establishing yourself as a knowledgeable professional by sharing valuable content and engaging with your network to increase your SSI score.