What is Your LinkedIn SSI & Why Should You Care Ep 152

• What is the LinkedIn SSI (Social Selling Index)?
• Why should I care about my LinkedIn SSI?
• How is the LinkedIn SSI score calculated?
• What are the four categories that make up the LinkedIn SSI, and how many points are possible in each?
• What does "Establish your Professional Brand" mean in the context of LinkedIn SSI?
• How can I "Find the Right People" on LinkedIn to improve my SSI?
• What does "Engage with Insights" mean for LinkedIn SSI, and how can I improve in this area?
• How can I "Build Relationships" on LinkedIn to increase my SSI?
• How does the LinkedIn SSI relate to sales performance and opportunities?
• How can I find my LinkedIn SSI score?
• What is a good LinkedIn SSI score?
• How can I use my LinkedIn SSI score as a benchmark?

Understanding LinkedIn's Social Selling Index (SSI)

In this episode, I focus on LinkedIn's Social Selling Index (SSI). I break down what SSI is, why it's important, and how it can benefit you, especially if you're self-employed. 

The SSI is a score ranging from 0 to 100, reflecting your ability to sell on LinkedIn through relationship building and effective conversations. I explore the four categories that make up the SSI score: Establish Your Professional Brand, Find the Right People, Engage with Insights, and Build Relationships. 

I provide tips on how to improve in each area and share real-life examples of scores and industry comparisons to illustrate the importance of tracking your SSI. I encourage you to look up your own SSI scores and reach out to me for further discussion.

https://www.mellermarketing.com/mylinkedinssi

00:00 Introduction to LinkedIn SSI

00:35 Understanding the Social Selling Index

01:50 Breaking Down the Four Categories of SSI

01:58 Establish Your Professional Brand

02:34 Find the Right People

03:40 Engage with Insights

04:37 Build Relationships

05:29 Why SSI Matters

06:29 How to Check Your SSI Score

07:11 Personal SSI Insights and Conclusion

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My name is Brenda Meller. I'm a LinkedIn coach, consultant, speaker, and author. My company is Meller Marketing and I help business professionals get a bigger slice of the LinkedIn pie.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:46

Have you heard of the LinkedIn SSI or Social Selling Index? In today's episode, I want to break down what is your LinkedIn SSI and why should you even care? Honestly, Now, if you're self-employed, there's a really good chance. It's just you and your business. You might have a couple people helping assistants, VAs, things like that but it might just be you and your business and maybe you just don't have time to look at evaluating every single little thing. But if you're listening to this podcast, there's a really good chance that you're looking for some LinkedIn insights. So today I want to walk you through what this SSI is and, spoiler alert, you should care at least a little bit.

Speaker 1: 1:21

So, essentially, what the social selling index is, it's a score that LinkedIn gives every LinkedIn member on a scale of zero to 100. And it's assigned to you on LinkedIn based on your activities, your profile, your overall presence. An index means that a score of 50 means that you're average for all LinkedIn members. If you have a score that's better than 50, you're doing better than the average person on LinkedIn. If it's lower than 50, you have some opportunities for improvement. And essentially, what your SSI is a score that helps to measure your ability at least what LinkedIn thinks is your ability to sell on LinkedIn through a conversational approach, according to their magical formula. Now, they don't really give you too many details on how to improve your score in each area, but that's where I come in. I can help you out with this and this approach of social selling. It's not based on a heavy sales pitch or mass emails, or even email messages, for that matter. Instead, it's based on relationship building. It's based on conversations and a more targeted approach that you're using. Now you could still be achieving these goals without knowing your score, but if you see your score, you're going to be able to quickly identify opportunities for improvement and gaps in your approach and areas that you need to focus on. So let me break this down for you and I will put the link below if you want to check out your SSI.

Speaker 1: 2:35

By the way, LinkedIn gives you a maximum of 25 points in each of four categories. The first one is called establish your professional brand. Now, according to LinkedIn, this means that you complete your profile with the customer in mind and you become a thought leader by publishing meaningful posts. Now my own take on this when we say establishing your professional brand, you need to have a fully complete and accurate current profile that's been optimized for your ideal target audience, and it should be regularly at least once a year, you should be reviewing your profile to make sure that it's up to date. Linkedin's always adding in new features, sometimes adding in new areas of your profile and changing things around, so making sure that your profile is built for your ideal target audience is really important here.

Speaker 1: 3:21

The second area is called find the right people. You can earn up to 25 points there. Linkedin says identify better prospects in less time using efficient search and research tools. Now, by the way, I have heard that if you don't pay for LinkedIn Sales Navigator, which is a paid membership, you can't get an SSI above 90. And this is one of the areas that if you this is a crazy thing if you upgrade to Sales Navigator, finding the right people will instantly improve, even if you haven't used the tools yet. So that should tell you something right there.

Speaker 1: 3:53

Now, finding the right people. You can use this with the free basic version of LinkedIn, or even LinkedIn Premium or Premium Career, Premium Business, but what you should be doing is spending some time each week searching for and inviting people that are your ideal target audience to connect with you. Now on LinkedIn, you can actually apply filters, you can look up people by geography, by job title, by features that exist within your profile. That we really can't do on Facebook and Instagram and in other networks and it can help you to reach your ideal target audience faster. So that's the area number two.

Speaker 1: 4:26

Area number three, according to LinkedIn, is engage with insights. Now, according to LinkedIn, they say discover and share conversation worthy updates to create and grow relationships. I don't know about you, but that doesn't really tell me a whole lot other than they want us to participate in conversation and they're looking for our thoughts on how to further build those relationships with people, for our thoughts on how to further build those relationships with people. Now, what I've noticed with this area is you really have to be spending some time in the LinkedIn homepage feed every day. You should be publishing posts that are generating engagement, both likes and reactions, but also, and perhaps more importantly, comments, and you're replying back to those comments as well. I also recently discovered that if you are commenting on the LinkedIn news stories the trending news stories that they put on the right-hand side of your homepage do that once or twice a week and you'll notice your Engage with Insights score instantly will rise. You also reach some new people by doing that technique. So that's the third area.

Speaker 1: 5:23

The fourth and final area is called build relationships, and you can get up to 25 points in here as well. Linkedin is measuring how we strengthen your network by connecting and establishing trust with decision makers. Now, again, they don't really give me the rules to what do you do here, but my understanding is this is both inviting people to connect with dialogue, responding back when they do connect with you, and it's also when they say establishing trust with decision makers. They're looking for people at a certain job title level or industry category level inside the platform. That shows that these are people who have great buying power on the platform and they're also leading you to further those professional relationships that you're starting with people. So a couple other things to keep in mind, and then I'm going to tell you what my score is, and I want to encourage you to listen to this podcast. After you're done listening to it, look up your score and then maybe message me on LinkedIn and let me know what you are, but I do want to let you know.

Speaker 1: 6:16

According to LinkedIn, the SSI is important for a couple different reasons. First, they say that social selling leaders create 45% more opportunities than their peers with a lower. I'm guessing you're listening to my podcast because you want more business right More than your competition, so your SSI can help you to get there. Linkedin also says that social selling leaders are 51% more likely to reach their quota. That important to you as a self-employed person, Maybe, if you set some goals for yourself. Maybe not if you're no longer working in corporate right. Maybe you don't even like that word quota anymore. Finally, the third factor, they say, is that 78% of social sellers outsell peers who don't use social media.

Speaker 1: 6:56

Now, here we're gonna just talk about the fact that you are using LinkedIn, and if you are focusing on this approach and using LinkedIn social media to sell to, to connect your ideal target audience, you're going to be more effective than those people that are maybe just sending blind emails to you all the time or spamming with robocalls on your phone, right? So now that I've broken this down for you, giving you some things to think about with regards to your SSI, I want to encourage you to look up your score on LinkedIn. I'll include a webpage in the podcast below where I explain the social selling index. And there's a pink button at the top that says see your SSI. When you click on that, it's going to take you to this really long URL businesslinkedincom slash sales solutions. Blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1: 7:40

Anyways, when you get to that page, I want you to click on the get your score. In the middle of the page. It's like a gray box with a white outline, and as long as you're logged into LinkedIn, LinkedIn will automagically populate your score for you. Now your current social selling index on the left hand side of your screen, in the middle, is what you're looking for. My score is currently 80 out of 100.

Speaker 1: 8:00

And I want you to keep in mind that LinkedIn is what I do for a living. Now I've had my score as high as I believe, an 85, 86. And sometimes it dips into the 70s, but those are usually times when I'm so busy I just don't have time to spend on LinkedIn. And as I look through the four categories, I find that establishing your professional brand and building relationships I'm always very close to 25 in both of those categories. It's the middle two where I have some opportunities for improvement. That's probably the case with you as well. Finding the right people and engaging with insights. Okay.

Speaker 1: 8:34

Also, if you poke around this page, you're going to notice they give you some comparison tools to look at. So, within your industry, they'll tell you what your industry SSI rank is. I'm in the top 1% In my network of first level connections. Linkedin will tell you what is your network SSI rank. I'm in the top 1%, and they'll also give you some comparisons lower on in the page and they'll say people in your industry are usually getting a score of 31 out of 100, so my score of 80 is placing me in the top 1%. Similarly, people that are first-level connections in my network have an average score of 44% and I've got an 80, which makes me in the top 1%.

Speaker 1: 9:11

What is your LinkedIn SSI and why should you care? I like to look at this as a benchmark. Essentially, LinkedIn is making the rules and it's their sandbox that we're playing in here. So we should at least understand what the rules of social selling are, at least according to LinkedIn, so that we can identify opportunities for improvement to further reach our ideal target audience and be successful on LinkedIn. So I think it's valuable, but I don't think it's the be all end all. I like to use it as a benchmark and to see some opportunities. What do you think? Look up your score, look at the data that LinkedIn is telling you and reach out to me on LinkedIn. Send me a direct message, Let me know what your score is and whether or not you found value in looking up your score and in today's podcast episode. Until then, my friend, I will see you on LinkedIn. Have a great day.