Do you know your LinkedIn SSI score? The Social Selling Index (SSI) is another metric you can use to assess how well you are managing your professional brand, connecting with the right people, and gaining insight. But what does it actually mean?
What is the Social Selling Index?
LinkedIn SSI is a measure of individuals' adaptation of the four pillars of selling on LinkedIn based on a scale of 0 to 100 and ranks its users in 4 key areas:
- Establish your professional brand
- Find the right people
- Engage with insights
- Build relationships
According to LinkedIn, social selling experts with higher scores closed 45% more deals over the course of a year than those with lower scores, 51% closer to their sales quotas than those with lower scores, and 78% of them did better than their peers who did not use social media in their sales process.
Why is it important?
When salespeople achieve a high score, they become significantly more effective because they gain more organic exposure than those who have a lower score. Taking advantage of social media's ability to connect with new potential customers is a great way to engage them in conversations. You want to connect with customers who are already interested in what you're offering and authentically connect with them, offering information when the time is right.
In addition, a better social score helps a variety of LinkedIn users with their social agenda. Salespeople gain credibility, recruiters increase their network of opportunities, and Influencers build their audiences and strengthen their brands.
Social selling is all about telling your story to your audience. Before starting your sales cycle, educate and provide value through social media. The more value you can add to your market, the better your chances will be of building an audience of people who trust your brand.
How to boost your score?
- Establish your professional brand - Boosting your score starts with your profile. You will be scrutinized for everything you do in relation to what you're trying to rank for or identify yourself as in your profile. Cover images, profile photos, titles, and summaries, but also the groups you're a part of, which are related to how many fans and followers you have, who you follow, and what keywords you use in your profile. LinkedIn wants you to be as engaged with your profile as possible and make it more. useful to others. So, make sure you complete your profile fully. Provide as much information as you can.
- Find the right people - Identify the right people and connect with them. People sometimes add as many connections as possible to their network on LinkedIn for the purpose of reaching more people but, LinkedIn is looking for relevant connections so they’re looking at that too if your connections are from different industries they can dock your points for that. Using LinkedIn's advanced search setting and built-in search feature is an effective way to locate relevant people.
- Engage with insights - This section is all about starting a conversation, and engaging with others by sharing other people's content, liking/commenting, re-posting their content. Another thing is joining some relevant groups, and actually, if you remove yourself from non-relevant groups it is even better. Focus on small, relevant groups that are in your target market, post relevant content in the groups, and engage in discussions.
- Build relationships - In conclusion, the first three key factors result in these four key measures of your success at expanding your network beyond your prospects. The task that you need to accomplish is using the Inmail product in this part is customizing and personalize the emails. They are looking at the messaging platform, when did you connect to people? Did you connect to people on personal bases? You get extra points by using all your Inmail credits every month and using them personally for staying connected with people.
You can learn more about your own LinkedIn SSI Score here