Do You Know Your LinkedIn Social Selling Index?

Ah hah, gotcha!

Well, generally folks who don’t use LinkedIn’s CRM product, Sales Navigator, generally don’t know what LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index (SSI) is or what to do about it.

SSI is a feature of Sales Navigator and, contrary to a belief in some quarters, even LinkedIn users with a free account can view their SSI.

Before we go any further, here’s how to find your SSI:

1. From your desktop or laptop (I work from the latter as I find fewer surprises from LinkedIn that way.) with LinkedIn open go to a new tab
2. Enter https://www.linkedincom/sales /ssi and voila, you’ll see your SSI!

OK, you’re probably thinking what is this and why should I care because I’m never going to pay for Sales Navigator anyway?

Allow me to talk you about this…

SSI measures “measures how effective you are at establishing your professional brand, finding the right people, engaging with insights, and building relationships. It is updated daily.” (Cited from LinkedIn.)

As an FYI, SSI is also updated on a daily basis.

The score is based on 100.

Obviously, the higher the SSI score the better.

The SSI score is the sum of four subtotals each worth a maximum of 25. These are:

1. Establishing your professional brand
2. Find the right people
3. Engage with insights
4. Build relationships.

There are also what I call two bonus metrics:

1. How your SSI score compares to people in your industry
2. How your SSI score compares to people in your network.

Your SSI score is a useful tool to measure your progress on LinkedIn even if you don’t have a Premium account or use Sales Navigator.

What you need to do once you find your SSI score is to start a baseline and keep metrics going forward.

(BTW You won’t be able to see others’ SSI scores. In fact, even Sales Navigator users can only see their own scores and those of their team.)

Please note that my comments are for free LinkedIn account users such as myself. (Check here for my views on when or whether a Premium account is worth the expense.)

SSI is at worse a trailing indicator of your performance on LinkedIn or, at best, a coincidental indicator.

There is nothing wrong with either of these.

Ally your SSI score with your Klout score, the measure of your social media influence, and you have a reasonable idea of where you stand with social media and how you’re doing over time.

My recommendations are the following:

1. Check and follow your SSI score regularly. (Your Klout score too.)
2. Develop programs for each of the four components of your SSI score and track your progress here. What works, what doesn’t? Track the results of your activities here as well.

In future articles, I’ll be discussing how to do these activities and improve your SSI score by doing them.

Oh, my SSI score?

These days, I typically am in the low 70s!

That’s it for now!

Please check-out my 8 step approach for developing a social media program to get some more ideas on how to use social media.

Also, never forget to reach out to either ask questions or to ask for help from someone like myself!

In the meantime, thank you for following and reading my blog!

I look forward to any and all comments that you may have. I will reply to any comments made to this blog post as promptly as I can.

And, remember!

I do this for a living and if I can be of any assistance to either you or your organization, please feel free to call on me. Our initial discussion will be of no charge to you.