What is the social selling index in LinkedIn?

Sep 19

Time for another LinkedIn tip.

Hopefully you have had the time and consistency to make all the earlier tips happen on your profile. If so, kudos! If not yet, well, what are you waiting for?

First, what is the social selling index? You might think that you have nothing to do with sales so this is not relevant to you. Stop. It is relevant to anyone aiming to build their personal brand on LinkedIn. Why? Social selling index is an indicator that helps to track your progress.

Social selling index (also known as the SSI) has an impact on how well your content spreads on LinkedIn. It doesn't matter if you are sharing about the position that you are trying to fill, promoting your employer branding activities or simply sharing your thoughts on a specific topic. LinkedIn’s algorithm takes a look at your social selling index and decides if it would be wise to help you boost your post or stop it's spread. 🚀

SSI contains of four indicators:

building your personal brand
connecting with right people
engaging with others content
using LinkedIn to keep you connections warm

The higher your score, the better for your reach.

But how can you increase your score? Let me share some ideas.

Make sure to complete your profile. I have shared plenty of tips for you to do so. PS! Recommendations work really well.
Start growing your network. Think about who you might want to add to your network. If your network is not that big yet in real life either, then join our EHRS events to meet new people.
Then start engaging with your network. You know the saying “Sharing is caring”? Well, not on LinkedIn. The best thing you can do is comment. This will help to boost the post. So engage with what your network is sharing with you.
Once you feel brave enough, start sharing content yourself. I’ll give you tips on that in the upcoming newsletters.
Use LinkedIn advanced search opportunities to find potential candidates, clients etc and add them to your network. Make sure to personalize your outreach messages.
Use LinkedIn as a professional chat. Keep in touch with your network.

You can see my SSI score on the pic here. Not as high as I would love it to be, but my content creation has been too low for several months now. 👇🏼