The Social Selling Index on LinkedIn, or SSI, is a measure of a marketer’s social selling skills and execution. In other words, the Social Selling Index (SSI) is a tool that measures our ability with respect to selling a brand or product through social channels. Statistics show that as a marketer’s SSI or Social Selling Index increases, so does their sales success.
Knowing our Social Selling Index on Linkedin allows us to become better salespeople and observe how successful we are with engagement on this social network.
In this article you will see the Social Selling Index explained, its description and how it works, how to calculate your score and how to improve it.
What is the Social Selling Index on Linkedin?
The Social Selling Index (SSI) on LinkedIn is a metric that LinkedIn uses to evaluate and measure a user’s effectiveness in using the platform for sales and business relationship development purposes. The SSI is used to provide feedback to sales and marketing professionals on how they are using LinkedIn as a sales tool and how they can improve their approach on the platform. This is the Social Selling Index definition.
How to view my Social Selling Index on Linkedin
Now let’s focus on how to see my Social Selling Index on Linkedin. Below, we have described the steps you should follow to find this crucial piece of information. Doing so will let you know how effective your current efforts are, whether you are looking for new connections or starting to export leads.
- Log in to your LinkedIn account.
- Navigate to https://www.linkedin.com/sales/ssi.
- You should get a full dashboard view of all key metrics, as well as your SSI.
It’s that easy, and your score is automatically calculated by LinkedIn. So, if you’re looking for how to find out your LinkedIn SSI information, it’s as simple as that.
In short: Checking your Social Selling Index score on LinkedIn is easy: all you have to do is log in and navigate to https://www.linkedin.com/sales/ssi. You’ll instantly see your results.
Improve my Social Selling Index score on LinkedIn
Once you have found your score, you can begin to improve it based on the areas in which you are lacking. Some good ideas for improving your SSI are:
- Create and engage with content.
- Spend at least 10 minutes a day interacting with the platform and Sales Navigator.
- Spending time finding the right people and building relationships
- Establish your professional brand by participating in groups
Although these steps are simple, too many people ignore them. Likewise, if you don’t engage with the insights, you won’t be able to improve your score and, by extension, your sales.
The score is updated daily, you can start today to increase your relationship in this social space. Because, as you can see, many people are missing out on this opportunity and, in turn, are leaving money, relationships and personal influence on the table by turning their attention away from where their audience actually spends online.
Improve my social selling index linkedin
As I said earlier, your LinkedIn SSI is compared to other people in your industry. Keep in mind that it will always assume you’re in sales, so people who don’t use LinkedIn to search for jobs will likely have a lower score. That said, there is no “cut score” that determines whether your ISS is good or bad. Rather, the goal is to always be in the top 10% of your industry.
The Social Selling Index on LinkedIn is measured by 4 key things.
1 Establishing a personal brand
The best thing to do is to optimize your profile with the end user, the client, the customer, the clientess in mind. This is where you publish relevant articles that correspond to your industry and the type of professionals you want to attract. This content can be a curation of trusted sources or an original blog post using the “publish an article” feature. In either case, the goal is to start establishing yourself as a thought leader.
Becoming a thought leader can be easily accomplished by using LinkedIn as a blogging platform. Your best bet is to post a few things on LinkedIn Pulse as appropriate. This will not only make people aware of you as a knowledgeable person, but it will also encourage them to check out your profile.
2 Finding the right people
Know who you are looking for and the keywords that relate to them. LinkedIn has robust search tools that will help you find your ideal client to make better connections. If you have LinkedIn’s sales navigator, you’ll want to use the saved search feature.
This way, you won’t have to put the same variables into the search form all the time. Just select the search you want to perform. For even better results, use Sales Navigator’s Lead Builder. This functionality allows you to find people based on an account, a company that fits certain criteria or key decision makers.
3 Participate with opinions
It’s all about connections. Engaging with insights is a great way to find similar people in both your industry and your ideal client’s industry. Another way to engage is to join relevant and active groups (that’s the key) that can help you share your expertise in a non-commercial way.
Finally, it’s always a good idea to follow relevant hashtags. This allows you to see content from outside your network. As long as you choose topics that are relevant to your profession, interacting with that content helps increase your LinkedIn SSI and exposure.
4 Building relationships
Sure you want to build relationships with the top leader of the company you want to have as a client, but the important thing is not to rule out other members of the company’s staff, because according to LinkedIn, 73% of B2B buyers prefer sales professionals who have been recommended by someone they know, and the percentage increases to 87% when the introduction was made through someone in their professional network.
Unless you’ve been in sales for a while, you may not know much about the Social Selling Index on LinkedIn. Social selling, both on LinkedIn and elsewhere, is a relatively new phenomenon. Fortunately, by using the SSI tool you can excel at sales and marketing activities on this network. At the same time, you will develop the kind of good habits that can be adapted to other lead generation forums.
Why is LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index important?
Recently, it has become apparent that LinkedIn’s SSI is more than just a tool for selling your services. You can sell through LinkedIn. Rather, LinkedIn studies have shown that among social sellers on their site, having a higher SSI equates to 45% more sales opportunities than among lower-ranking peers. They are also 51% more likely to hit their quotas. And, their estimates conclude that, among leading social sellers, 78% do better than their peers who are not on social networks.