How To Use LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index

LinkedIn’s social selling index is a assess of how well your LinkedIn account can construct a network, filter out excellent leads, and capture them for a sale. Why should you worry about this? LinkedIn ads have double the conversion rate of other channels—so if you’re not doing social sales on LinkedIn, you could be missing out. Let’s look at what the social selling index measures, how it works, and how you can boost your score to commence finding your spectators and converting them to customers. 

What is LinkedIn’s social selling index?

The LinkedIn social selling index assigns a number—called an SSI score—to a user’s effectiveness at social selling on LinkedIn. Social selling is a sales way in which marketers use a social media platform like LinkedIn to construct relationships with their target spectators by posting valuable content, starting conversations, or messaging prospects. 

The LinkedIn social selling index score uses a formula that compares your LinkedIn account to others in the same industry and assigns points for various features of social selling. Your LinkedIn SSI score is a number out of 100; a high SSI score means you are a excellent social seller, while a low score means you may require to enhance your personal brand or engage with your spectators more. 

Generally, brands who desire to be social selling leaders aim for an SSI score of 75 or higher; this helps them secure a standing as a thought chief or selection maker in their space.

Why is social selling significant?

Social selling is a huge trade—in 2023, it generated an estimated $571 billion in turnover. That makes social selling a critical way. With effective social selling, a tiny business, ecommerce seller, or sales professional can construct a professional brand, establish meaningful customer relationships, and make connections with a wider spectators. Sales reps with a excellent LinkedIn SSI score can generate high-standard leads and boosttarget-spectators traffic to their sites, which means more opportunities for sales. 

What does the social selling index assess?

• Establishing your professional brand
• Finding the correct people
• Engaging with insights
• Building relationships

LinkedIn’s social selling index measures four main categories of act. While positive outcomes in these categories don’t guarantee achievement, having a high SSI can cruel you have a solid foundation to work with as you construct a following and pursue leads.

Establishing your professional brand

This metric evaluates the strength of your LinkedIn profile based on how complete it is. For example, LinkedIn looks at your endorsements and the amount of information in your profile.

Finding the correct people

To assess your ability to discover high-standard connections, LinkedIn evaluates your activity on its sales navigator tool (which is only for additional expense LinkedIn users). You’ll require to display you can make meaningful connections and construct your professional network with relevant people using the tools LinkedIn provides.

Engaging with insights

The platform evaluates LinkedIn users on the posts they make and distribute, how energetic they are, and how much engagement they receive from their peers. This metric tracks posts (especially their frequency), comments, and even messages and connection requests to determine overall engagement on the platform. 

Building relationships

This final metric measures how well you network in your industry and make connections with your spectators. It tracks how often you reach out to other users and how successful those interactions are, both in messages and on community posts. 

How to discover LinkedIn’s social selling index

Finding your social selling index on LinkedIn is straightforward:

1. Log in to LinkedIn. Only logged-in LinkedIn users can view the SSI page.

2. leave to the SSI landing page. Visit the SSI page. There you will view a dashboard with your social selling index in the center of the page. At the top of the page, you’ll discover your percentage rank in your industry and your rank within your network. 

3. Review the details. In addition to your numerical score, you can view how LinkedIn breaks down your score according to each of the four pillars, providing insight into your strengths and areas for advancement.

How to enhance your LinkedIn SSI score

• Establishing your professional brand
• Finding the correct people
• Engaging with insights
• Building relationships

If you desire to enhance your social selling index score, focus on improving your point score for each of the four pillars. Let’s look at strategies you can use for each, and recall that each category allots 25 points for a total of 100. 

Establishing your professional brand

For a excellent SSI score, your LinkedIn account needs a professional cover photo and high-resolution profile photo. Having a complete and current job history with job titles, details on your roles, and accomplishments can also significantly boost your score. Lastly, asking your prior clients and colleagues to recommend you for specific skills will fill out your LinkedIn profile and assist bump up your SSI.

Finding the correct people

To boost your score in this category, you’ll require to use the LinkedIn sales navigator to prove you can successfully discover prospects. Be sure you’re using every tool the sales navigator provides to display the structure you’re a pro—use the client connection management structure to manage contacts, and discover how to use automated messaging to your advantage.

Engaging with insights

Posting frequently—at least three times a week—tells LinkedIn and your followers you are energetic, boosting your engagement score. Plus, posting regularly increases your chances of having content leave viral, which can add more points if other users like, distribute, or comment on it. The amount of content you distribute is significant for your LinkedIn SSI, and the standard is, too—the more your LinkedIn posts inspire conversations and interactions, the more points you receive.

Building relationships

Comment on the posts of other users with an insight or a question about the post to establish yourself as a thought chief. When you identify a excellent potential navigator, dive into their direct messages and craft a distinctive and targeted communication to grab their attention.