Do you care about your Social Selling Index on LinkedIn ? Or do you think it’s just a self-centered metric? Indeed it is often either one or the other in the minds of people. So, simple tool for “ self-satisfy “? Or useful measuring tool for analyze your performance on LinkedIn ?
In this article, I’ll give you a first look at what is ssi on LinkedIn, how to improve it and especially his importance for your B2B prospecting on LinkedIn.
What is the Social Selling Index?
The LinkedIn Social Selling Index , or SSI for short, is a unique measure of the pro social network determining the place of your profile in the LinkedIn ranking . In summary, if your LinkedIn profile is well worked, optimized and your activity on this network is of good quality, you should logically have better results and therefore a good SSI score .
LinkedIn itself describes this index as a “ Unique measure of how well a business or individual adapts the 4 pillars of prospecting on LinkedIn, on a scale of 0 to 100. “
For each pillar, the maximum achievable score is 25 thus allowing LinkedIn to “affirm” or not via this your SSI note if v ou have good sales skills and good execution ability on LinkedIn .
Small apparté: As mentioned in the introduction, among marketing and digital experts, this Social Selling Index is debating its real usefulness.
End of the parenthesis, you can use the SSI as a criterion for optimize your LinkedIn profile and your marketing and prospecting activities. If any of your Social Selling Index pillars are weak, you will know what to focus on in order to boost your personal brand on LinkedIn . (Personal Branding)
We will cover these 4 pillars one by one , their benefits, and how to boost them. However, according to LinkedIn and many marketing gurus claim that profiles with a high SSI score score high. best results on LinkedIn. (Does LinkedIn showcase their profiles more? 🤭)
Indeed, according to LinkedIn:
- Profiles with a high SSI score create 45% of opportunities more than those with low SSI. (< 50)
- 78% of these profiles perform better than salespeople who do not use social media.
Moreover, you will find more information on the importance of social networks for your B2B acquisition here .
Within this article we will:
- Break down the ISS with its 4 pillars
- Describe the advantages of having a high score
- How to boost your Social Selling Index in a few minutes a day?
Structure of the LinkedIn ISS: The 4 pillars
Your SSI score is divided into 4 pillars:
- Establish your professional brand
- Find the right people
- Exchange information
- Building relationships
Before getting to the heart of the matter, if you want to calculate your Social Selling Index for free , it’s this way.
According to LinkedIn, when your SSI score increases, so does your business success!
Where the platform is smart is that the fastest way to increase your SSI is to buy Sales Navigator which should increase your SSI of about 20% in 6 months .
Anyway, if you really want to prospect and get results on LinkedIn , you must subscribe to Sales Navigator.
Now let’s move on to the 4 pillars and how you can start improving them today.
1. make your own professional brand
To establish a good professional brand, you have to start with the basics, so optimize your LinkedIn profile for the target you want to reach through this social network.
You will get excellent results if you have a professional profile picture, a banner corresponding to your business, a catchy slogan, a personalized summary, your background, recommendations, etc…
For all tips on how to build an optimized LinkedIn profile, it’s here .
After setting up a good profile, you will have to create a content strategy and stick to it by regularly posting relevant content in your sector and for your audience and participating in the “life” of this community.
The goal here? It is to show that you are an expert in your field , when your audience has a problem in your field, they should come to YOU and not another!
Some quick tips of the essential steps before launching your LinkedIn campaigns:
- Optimized your profile
- Use different visual aids : Images / Infographics / article / video / presentations ..
- Get of recommendations and “endorsements “in order to increase your chance of being found in the search engine.
- Publish posts with Native content ! (For a video for example, do not put a You Tube link but a video via a native file)
This topic is further developed here, “ Social Selling Strategy in B2B? “
2. Find the right people
Finding the right people to build a good relationship is a key parameter in obtaining convincing results in your campaign quality lead generation on LinkedIn.
This of course comes down to defining your target audience, therefore your personas in order to be successful at you “ connect “and start a conversation with them .
To find quality leads that match your target, you can use:
- LinkedIn groups
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator to find your prospects via job change alerts, prospects similar to your customers, search filter, etc. ( A MUST HAVE )
- Via regular and advanced searches on LinkedIn
- Automated and personalized campaigns on LinkedIn via tools like LeadIn .
Once these “targets” have been defined, they must be reach , for that it is necessary to establish good methods of approaches.
First, to avoid getting banned from LinkedIn, use a secure automation tool acting in accordance with the rules of social networks! Via this tool, you will not have to connect to your prospects one by one and will not have to write a unique message for each connection for each prospect. Here, you will have to create a “different” message via a personalized approach , with a personalized icebreaker for example.
To help you on this part, here is some tips for writing an effective message during a sales approach .
Key word to conclude on this pillar, be proactive , find the relevant leads for your activity via associated filters, ensure a follow-up, maintain the relationships created and above all use an automation tool to save time and efficiency !
3. Exchange information
Once you’ve built your professional brand and started connecting with the right prospects, the next step is to develop your network by adding your imprint within the targeted community!
How to do this ? Once again by being proactive! This pillar of Social Selling Index LinkedIn measures your engagement by analyzing your “shares”, “reactions”, “comments” on member posts relevant to your business. As well as these same metrics associated with your own posts , whether your content is engaging or not.
Create engagement via high value-added information exchange for a certain audience is a great way to organically attract industry professionals you want to connect with.
To generate engagement, there is a classic “clickbait” , a call to clicks or a call to comment in order to receive a “private resource”, here is one of my examples:
By offering free some form of value, you will increase your reach on LinkedIn and attract more people to engage with your content. So you understood, via this technique inbound marketing , the prospects sought come to you, once engaged, it’s up to you to play and start the conversation and why not by bouncing off their reaction to your content that caught their attention?
4. Build relationships
The last pillar of the ISS, the latter concerns the strengthening your network by establishing relationships of trust with decision-makers and opinion leaders in your sector who are present on LinkedIn.
So one last point that will measure whether you manage to achieve pillars 2 & 3 by expanding your network with always relevant prospects.
In conclusion, to improve the awareness of your own professional brand and that of your activity and create relationships, the best way to approach remains c to offer high value-added content for free in order to attract your target. Then contact him via LinkedIn messaging and phone him to strengthen your relationship.
What is the importance of the LinkedIn Social Selling Index score?
As mentioned in the introduction, although the SSI LinkedIn score is not a guarantee of sales increases, according to LinkeIn, it turns out that there is a close bond between your requests to be put in touch with your target and the increase in your sales via LinkedIn.
I repeat again, it is important to note that your SSI is not a guaranteed increased increase of your business success.
To analyze this, you must follow the evolution of it in relation to the evolution of the number of qualified prospects, your sales and calculate your KING .
What is certain is that your Social Selling Index establishes a strong bond between your targeted networking activities and increasing sales opportunities to qualified prospects.
For example, if you are prospecting on LinkedIn and your conversion goal is to get appointment for demos , then you meet the definitions of the 4 pillars of ISS.
Therefore, it is relevant to use the SSI LinkedIn index as benchmark to assess the health of your profile.
How much is a “good SSI score”? Unfortunately, I don’t have the answer because it will depend a lot on your sector of activity. The more competitive it is, the more it takes a high score to stand out for LinkedIn, conversely the less competitive the sector, an average SSI score could already be very good.
Hence the interest of the “people in your sector / network” sections.
In short, the higher your SSI, the better . (Thanks Captain Obvious)
Therefore, you should strive to increase it steadily.
Depending on the weakest pillar, you will adapt your focus to increase it, for example if the pillar “ Find the right people “is your lowest score. You should focus on increasing your network connections.
As you focus on action campaigns to improve each pillar, the more your SSI will increase accordingly and the more LinkedIn will make your profile stand out!
And so according to LinkedIn theory, with a higher SSI score, you will get more opportunities to generate leads .
In short, LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index is a metric used by the network to track your business success and the overall health of your profile.
Based on 4 pillars :
- Establish your professional brand : Have a complete profile and show your network that you are the expert they need to solve their problem.
- Find the right people : Identify prospects in less time thanks to advanced research tools and a clearly defined target upstream.
- Exchange information : Participate in the public debate on your sector in order to create new relationships
- Building relationships : Strengthen your network by building relationships of trust with your qualified leads.
As long as you are doing active LinkedIn prospecting and lead generation, you can expect your LinkedIn SSI to increase accordingly.
And if you want to increase your SSI more efficiently, you can turn to tools like Sales Navigator and secure LinkedIn automation tools like LeadIn .
By automating certain outreach tasks on LinkedIn (sending connection requests, follow-up messages, engaging with prospects, etc.), you will increase your SSI much faster while generating leads on autopilot. That is, you can increase your SSI steadily in just a few minutes a day . Just like any commercial action on LinkedIn, be regular and disciplined !
Moreover, to learn more about the Baba of B2B prospecting on LinkedIn, here is the ultimate guide version 2022 . (It’s free)
