Social selling has become an essential method of selling, and LinkedIn is the premier platform for conducting social selling. LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index is a gauge used by the platform to measure your performance as a social seller. 

LinkedIn has fast elevated into a premium platform for B2B social selling. This means selling using social media as opposed to earned media. It is more attractive as a social selling platform because it has a reputation for being all about business.

After all, LinkedIn started as an employment platform. So the people on there are looking to hire and spend the big bucks in promoting their business. In this article, we discuss the steps to take to ensure that you boost your social selling index and have clients flock to you consistently. 

What is your Social Selling Index?

With LinkedIn, it’s relatively easy to find out what your SSI score is. You simply need to click the Sales Navigator link to find out what it is. The score is dynamic and changes about every twelve to twenty-four hours or so. 

It is divided into three components. It gives you your score over all, and it also compares you to peers in both your network and industry. Seventy percent and higher means you’re leading in the pack of LinkedIn thought leaders.

How to read your SSI score

Each of the four components are all weighted equally. Each isworth twenty-five points. They include: 1. Establish your professional brand, 2. Find the right people, 3. Engage with insights, and 4. Build relationships.

The picture above shows my personal SSI score. The score is exactly 51%. However, remarkably, I still rank among the top 4% of professionals in my field. You might wonder what that means. It can be interpreted as the competition being relatively low within the industry — that is, the professional writing and editing industry. 

This is unsurprising. Reports have claimed that only 1% of LinkedIn's 260 million active users post on the platform. Your SSI score page can be divided into five sections that you should pay close attention to.

1. Your Industry SSI rank. This is located on the top left section of your SSI page.  It tracks your ranking in relation to the peers of your industry. In my case, I rank in the top 6% of professionals in the Writing and Editing industry.

2. Your Network SSI rank. This is located on the top left section. It measures your rank among your network, that is your connections and followers.

3. Your Current Social Selling Index. This is the heart of the SSI score page. It provides your overall SSI score on the left. And on the right, it shows what you score for each one of the four individual components that make up the SSI score. 

4. Average scores for people in your industry. This shows the average SSI score for professionals in your industry. 

5. Average scores for people in your network. This refers to exactly what it suggests — the average SSI scores of those who make up your LinkedIn network.

How to improve your Social Selling Index

Improving your Social Selling Index is a matter of being active on LinkedIn, connecting with the right people, and posting content that is relevant to both your industry and potential clientele. So how do you go about taking actional steps to do so? 

1. Get your name right

A good LinkedIn profile begins with a name. The name on your LinkedIn profile should be the same as the name on official documents and your business card. 

This is for various reasons. First, having deviations between your LinkedIn name and the name that you are known by in the non-virtual world means that it will be difficult for people to find you on LinkedIn using the native search function. 

Also, LinkedIn has a new verification method that uses your passport. So, it would be best that the name on your profile is the same as the name on your passport. 

2. Complete your profile

Your LinkedIn profile should be completed. The more components of your LinkedIn profile you build up, the more credibility you have both in the eyes of the LinkedIn algorithm and potential clients on LinkedIn.

So what does completing your profile entail? This means filling out each section: 

• Education

• Work history

• Skills

• Summary

• Headline

This is useful, as the LinkedIn algorithm uses it to suggest “People You May Know.” For example, if you attended a certain university, then your friends or connection suggestions will be full of people who attended that university. 

The same is true of your past jobs or related industries. This can help you locate colleagues or friends that you had thought were lost. Or it can help you connect with people that have similar backgrounds and interests as you. 

3. Write a professional headline

Your LinkedIn professional profile must be short and to the point. This describes the short description (i.e., 220 characters) that shows beneath your name on your profile. In social selling, a profile is like a banner ad that’s on 24-7. 

Remember LinkedIn has a search function. That means your name and your job/services are searchable. This provides an opportunity for your name to rank high in the LinkedIn search results. 

You should pay attention to the keywords being used in your profile headline.  Make sure your headline say clearly who you are, what you do, and how you can help your ICP. 

For example, here is a headline for a grant writer.

“I’m Doug, a professional grant writer who increases the chances of you winning that grant.”

It says your name, what you do, and how you can help your ideal ICP. 

4. Include a professional headshot

Everyone says you should have a professional profile pic for your LinkedIn. Preferably, you should be dressed in business attire, looking straight ahead and smiling, but not too big. However, this is not necessarily the case.

Inbound social selling is based on targeting and attracting your target customer. You should portray yourself in a way that this ICP finds appealing. 

Maybe you’re a tattoo artist on LinkedIn. Maybe you’re a social media manager for TikTok content creators. What image would your ideal prospects want you to project? Think about this question when deciding whether or not to be a little unconventional with your profile pic. 

5. Write an effective About Section

The About Section is where you go into details about what you offer. Think of it as an expanded version of your professional headline. In social selling, it’s both an ad and a vehicle for organic traffic through SEO. You should clearly state the following:

• What you do

• How what you do is differentiated from the hundreds of professionals doing something similar

• How your ICP could benefit specifically from the service you offer

• A method of contact such as telephone or email

6. Employ LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator

 Sales Navigator is a premium tool offered by LinkedIn. That means you have to pay for it. Non-premium LinkedIn accounts usually have limits on the number of people who can be searched every month using LinkedIn’s search function. 

To put it bluntly, LinkedIn wants you to buy their software. And they are willing to reward you for doing so by boosting your SSI. 

Apart from the automatic SSI boost you get from using the Sales Navigator, is there any benefit to using it? On the Sales Navigator page, LinkedIn mentions the three main benefits of using the Sales Navigator:

• Discover warm channels leading to influential connections

• Prioritize accounts most likely to result in the biggest sales wins

• Follow signals to help identify warm or qualified buyers

In short, Sales Navigator makes the sales process more efficient. It helps you find leads and prioritize accounts most likely to yield the most value in terms of opportunities. Lastly,  it can assist you in identifying buyers who signal a willingness to buy. 

7. Post consistently 

LinkedIn is a social media platform. They exist for posting and social engagement. After all, the point of any social media is to share and like content. So on LinkedIn, you should post regularly. Now, opinions vary about how often you should post on the social media platform.

Some people say post every day or even twice a day. Others say to post three times a week. The LinkedIn algorithm is a little difficult to understand or to always stay on top of. But regularly posting is a must to stay relevant for the LinkedIn algo.

LinkedIn provides a variety of options for posting. This includes:

• Regular posts with texts

• Carousels

• Posts with pictures

• Posts with videos

It’s best to try a variety of these posts and see which one lands or resonates the best with your followers. LinkedIn provides the option of seeing which posts get the best engagement or views in terms of impressions. You should make it your business to keep a close eye on the posts that get the most views or engagement. 

8. Publish articles and newsletters 

Besides regular posting options, LinkedIn provides teh option of blogging. This blogging can take one of two forms:

• LinkedIn Articles

• LinkedIn Newsletters

LinkedIn Articles are regular blogs about any issues that you want to discuss. The way LinkedIn Articles work is that each time you publish an article, it is automatically posted on the LinkedIn feed. LinkedIn Newsletters are more or less articles; however, they have the features of a newsletter. Each time you publish a newsletter, there is an automatic notification sent to all your followers to subscribe to your newsletter. 

LinkedIn Newsletters and Articles can be an excellent pillar in building your thought leadership strategy. They are more permanent than posts, and they represent evergreen content, which is a necessary component in a thought leadership strategy. 

9. Consistently connect with and nurture prospects

Social selling the Inbound way is ideal. What could be better than having leads flock to you instead of having to do the heavy lifting direct selling to prospects who are most likely to ignore you? However, it’s not as easy as it sounds. 

Sometimes, you need to slide into the DMs. You should first wait for warm signals from your prospects. For example, people who like or comment under your posts. You can also regularly send friend requests to constantly grow your number of first-level connections. 

It’s never a good idea to begin communication by getting straight to business. That is, instead of immediately trying to sell to your prospects, you try to introduce yourself and build rapport. Trying to sell immediately in a first DM might give the impression that you’re desperate and insincere — which you do not want to be broadcasting. 

Final thoughts on improving your Social Selling Index

Your Social Selling Index isn’t just a number. Instead, it’s a metric that shows you just how well you are performing in terms of social selling on LinkedIn. You should constantly pay attention to it without obsessing over it. 

It’s a matter of always remaining current or relevant. The LinkedIn algo is relatively difficult to read. So, the only guarantee to stay relevant is constantly posting and seeing what works. Always be ready to pivot or adjust your methods to ensure that you stay on top of the Algorithm.

However, this doesn't mean that you should be obsessed with vanity metrics. The ultimate point of social selling is, well, you know, selling. So, this is what you should keep an eye on. Ask yourself: How many warm leads result from your post? How much engagement? How many more sales?