LinkedIn has become an indispensable platform for professionals to network, build relationships, and establish a personal brand. One key metric that measures your effectiveness on LinkedIn is the Social Selling Index (SSI).
A high SSI can significantly boost your visibility, credibility, and lead-generation efforts. However, SSI isn’t just for salespeople. In this article, we’ll delve into what SSI is, why it matters, and how you can increase your score for improved results.
What is Your Social Selling Index?
Think of your LinkedIn SSI as a scorecard. It assesses your overall social selling ability on a scale on 1-100. Aim to have this above 60 – although don’t be hard on yourself if it’s a lot lower. All that means is you have room to grow.
LinkedIn measures four components to calculate your SSI:
- Establish your professional brand: This includes factors like your profile completeness, headline, summary, and use of multimedia. A strong professional brand helps you stand out and attract the right people.
- Find the right people: This component measures how well you’re connecting with people who are relevant to your professional goals. It considers factors like your network size, quality of connections, and the industry/job title of your connections.
- Engage with insights: This assesses your ability to share valuable content and participate in discussions. It takes into account factors like the frequency and quality of your posts, as well as your engagement with others’ content.
- Build relationships: This measures how well you’re building and maintaining relationships with your network. It considers factors like your response rate to messages, your ability to start conversations, and your overall engagement with other users.
In a one-sentence summary, your SSI is a numerical representation of how effectively you’re leveraging LinkedIn for networking, lead generation, and professional development.
Why Does SSI Matter?
According to LinkedIn, social selling leaders create 45% more opportunities than peers with a lower SSI. How exactly does this play out in the real world, however? Here’s what appears to be true for those with SSI above 75:
- Credibility: First off, a well-optimized profile with a high SSI signals that you’re knowledgeable, engaged, and committed to your industry.
- Enhanced visibility: A higher SSI makes your profile more discoverable to potential clients, employers, and industry peers (meaning you’ll appear higher in search results).
- Draw in more leads: While having a high SSI won’t bring leads right to your door, focusing on the four components of SSI can directly impact your ability to generate leads and build relationships with potential customers.
A common misconception is that SSI is only for Sales Navigator users. It’s not – everyone has an SSI. Check yours by visiting linkedin/sales/ssi.
How to Boost Your LinkedIn SSI
If you haven’t been focusing on your SSI, the odds are that your score is lower than you want. Here are some actionable steps you can take to improve your score:
Step 1: Complete Your Profile
A comprehensive and well-crafted profile is the foundation of a strong LinkedIn presence. To fully flesh out your profile, ensure you have:
- Professional headshot: A high-quality headshot that makes you look approachable and professional (note: this isn’t calculated into your SSI; however, it’s fundamental to your profile).
- Compelling summary: Your LinkedIn summary, or ‘about’ section is a fantastic place to highlight your skills, experience, and career goals. Use action verbs, quantify your achievements, and include industry-relevant keywords if possible.
- Detailed experience: You certainly don’t want to slack on your experience on LinkedIn. Aim to highlight your responsibilities and achievements in previous roles in bullet points that make your experience easy to read and understand.
- Skills, endorsements, and recommendations: Professional brands have reviews. On LinkedIn, your skill endorsements and recommendats are your review. Consider asking your former colleagues to write you a public recommendation.
- Optimize your headline: Your LinkedIn headline is one of the first things someone sees when looking at your profile. Make it informative, keyword-rich, and reflective of your career goals.
Step 2: Build a Strong Network
A robust network is the second pillar of LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index. To make the most of your network, connect with people in your industry, potential clients, and thought leaders. Remember to personalize your connection requests and follow up with meaningful messages.
Here are some ideas to improve your network:
- Target using advanced search: Leverage LinkedIn’s search features to identify potential connections based on industry, location, job title, and interests.
- Join relevant groups: Participating in industry-specific groups is a powerful way to meet like-minded professionals and expand your network.
- Attend industry events: Network with people in person and online at conferences & webinars. Those hosting events can be strong connections to include in your network – improve your SSI.
While we want you to have a strong network, sending out too many connections can land you in LinkedIn jail. Learn what limits exist and how to avoid them.
Step 3: Engage Regularly
The third pillar of your SSI is engagement. This refers to any interactions with your network, inlcuding liking, commenting, and sharing their posts. Again, these actions will provide your account with increased visibility and a few new connections!
That being said, it can be awkward to know how to engage with people you don’t well. Here are some tips:
- Provide value: Offer thoughtful comments and insights on the content you’re engaging with. Sometimes, a thought-out response is all it takes to start a conversation.
- Ask a question: Follow up with their content by asking a relevant question. Not only will you learn more, but you just might bump up your social selling index.
- Tell a joke: Humor can spark interest like nothing else. If appropriate, make a humorous comment under a post for some engagement.
Step 4: Share Valuable Content
While engagement is essential, commenting and liking others posts is only half the battle. The rest of your attention should be on posting valuable content of your own. This could include articles, blog posts, industry news, or original thought-leadership style insights.
If you’ve never shared content on LinkedIn, or just want some tips, here are some types of content we post:
- Personal updates: Share updates about your career, projects, or personal achievements. For example, you could share a post about a new job, a successful project, or a personal milestone (LinkedIn loves selfies as of recent).
- Thought leadership: Share your thoughts on industry trends, challenges, and best practices. This can help you position yourself as an expert in your field.
- Behind-the-scenes glimpses: Give your followers a peek into your professional or personal life. For example, you could share a photo of your workspace, a video of a recent event you attended, or a post about a hobby or interest.
- Thought-provoking poll: Open a poll with a question that sparks discussions. For example, you could ask, “What are your biggest challenges in [your industry] right now?”
- Curated content: Share articles, blog posts, or videos from other sources that you find interesting or informative.
Remember, consistency is key. Aim to post regularly, whether it’s once a week or several times a month. Experiment with different types of content to see what resonates best with your audience.
Step 5: Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator
If you’re in sales, upgrading to LinkedIn Sales Navigator can unlock some additional features to help you improve your SSI.
Here are some features you might find useful:
- Advanced search: Sales Navigator provides a more powerful search function that allows you to filter leads based on a broader range of criteria, such as industry, company size, job title, and seniority level. This can help you identify your ideal prospects more efficiently.
- Higher invite limits: Sales Navigator allows you to send more connection requests per month than the standard LinkedIn account. This can help you expand your network and reach more potential clients.
- InMail templates: Create pre-written InMail templates to save time and ensure consistency in your outreach.
- Lead recommendations: Sales Navigator suggests potential leads based on your network and search criteria.
- Sales analytics: Track your sales activity and performance metrics to identify areas for improvement.
How Can We-Connect Improve Your SSI?
We understand the importance of LinkedIn SSI. That’s why we’ve redesigned our dashboard to highlight your SSI front and center.
Here’s how We-Connect can directly improve your SSI:
- Scale your network faster: Our automation streamlines your outreach efforts to engage with more leads in less time.
- Automated engagement: Liking posts on LinkedIn can be a time suck. You can automate it using We-Connect.
- Build rapport with personalization: Respond to contacts via LinkedIn through We-Connect. You can automate messaging sequences or use AI to draft a personalized message based on a contact’s profile or their latest message.
Conclusion
Your LinkedIn SSI is a valuable indicator of your social selling success. By following the tips outlined in this guide and leveraging tools like We-Connect, you can boost your SSI, enhance your visibility, and drive more sales. Remember, consistent effort and a commitment to building authentic relationships are key to achieving lasting success on LinkedIn.
If you haven’t yet, start your 14-day free trial of We-Connect today!
