SSI is LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index. If it’s still a bit of a mystery to you, you’ve come to the right place. We’re going to step through what it is, how it works and how you can use it to help make sure you’re getting the best out of the platform.
Before we get into all that, though, you might want to know why it could be important for you, so here are a couple of data points.
According to LinkedIn’s own research, people with high SSI create 45% more business opportunities than low scoring social sellers are 51% more likely to hit their sales targets and 78% outsell competitors who don’t use social media.
SSI Explained
Simply put, LinkedIn calculates your Social Selling Index using just four equally weighted key factors, each worth 25 points:
Establishing a professional brand
Finding the right people
Engaging with insights
Building relationships
The LinkedIn algorithm likes a high total SSI score so it will tend to increase your reach on the platform. Even if the algorithm doesn’t specifically do that in your case, the effect of doing well on each of these measures will improve your performance on LinkedIn anyway.
Where do I find my SSI score?
Great – we expected that would be your next question. It’s quite easy. Are you logged into LinkedIn right now? If so, just click here to find your SSI then click on “Get your score free”
Here’s an example of the SSI dashboard you will see.
You can see in an instant how your SSI ranks against those of other LinkedIn members in your industry and also against the scores of your own network connections.
Just below that is your own current SSI score, the breakdown of how your score has been calculated and indicators of the average SSI scores of people in your industry and network.
In this example you can clearly see that the profile owner is doing quite well on two of the four measures but has a big opportunity to lift their game in the other two. That would quickly boost their overall score by focusing their effort where there will be the greatest positive impact.
To see more about each of the metrics, simply click on the little icon next to them and read the pop-up information. And this checklist may help as well.
Personal Brand
- Banner image
- Professional photo
- Complete work history
- Recommendations
- Regular posts that attract high numbers of views and comments
Right People
- Mostly for Sales Navigator subscribers (i.e. serious business builders)
- Using the tools to research and find relevant potential contacts
- Success in reaching out and securing new connections
Insights
- Regularly sharing content
- Your content gets viewed
- Your content generates comments and sharing
- Your content is followed
Relationships
- You are frequently successful in reaching people
- Your messages get opened
- Your messages get a response
If you are doing well on all of these metrics your SSI score will be high. So does it even matter?
Some commentators think it’s purely a vanity measure which isn’t really the point on LinkedIn. They also suspect it’s mainly a means of promoting the Sales Navigator product.
Those may be fair points, but either way we think occasionally checking your SSI score can be a useful indicator as to whether you need to sharpen up your presence and activity on the platform. Just don’t obsess over trying to shift the metrics every month!
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