Reference indicator for salespeople, LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index (SSI) measures the potential of the professional profile, whether in job searching, developing one’s network, or in the ability to establish oneself in one’s industry sector.
Are you sure you give LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index the importance it deserves? Is it simply a gadget metric or a decisive performance index to succeed in B2B prospecting on LinkedIn? Why and how to increase your LinkedIn SSI? Find all our advice in this practical guide.
The article in brief
LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index (SSI) refers to a score from 0 to 100 measuring your commercial efficiency on the platform, both in terms of visibility and credibility. It evaluates a company’s ability to establish itself and qualify its relationships. This indicator measures the performance of your Social Selling on the LinkedIn social network. It is calculated on 4 major pillars:
The creation of a strong commercial brand (personalized profile, expertise);
The search for qualified prospects (with advanced tools);
Activity on the platform (interactions, shares, relevant content);
The development of the network (maintaining quality relationships).
A good SSI score is generally estimated between 50 and 90. The higher it is, the stronger your influence potential on LinkedIn.
What is the Social Selling Index (SSI)?
Before detailing the definition of LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index and the different levers to activate to optimize it, let’s go back for a moment to the boom of Social Selling, a phenomenon that brought SSI back into fashion after the pandemic.
The enthusiasm for Social Selling
There was a time when a little charisma was enough to chain commercial meetings and multiply contracts. Twenty years later, we are witnessing the emergence of an informed, autonomous, and demanding B2B buyer. He expects an ultra-personalized experience and is increasingly allergic to cold, direct, and frontal prospecting approaches.
In this context, salespeople can no longer afford to skim over their subject. They must give proof of trust (recommendations, mutual connections, quality posts on LinkedIn…), demonstrate sharp expertise, prove their credibility, and personalize their approach to shine. It is therefore natural that Social Selling entered the commercial toolbox, with LinkedIn as the main playground. The Microsoft social network hosts the world’s largest online community of B2B buyers.
As IDC Research explains, 56% of B2B buyers use LinkedIn as part of their purchasing process. And since LinkedIn’s business model is based on premium offers and targeted advertising, the social network has every interest in encouraging user engagement, especially salespeople who form a significant population.
What is LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index (SSI)?
Launched in 2015, the Social Selling Index (SSI) is a score that measures the impact and visibility of your actions on LinkedIn. It is, in a way, a “LinkedIn” version of SEO scores offered by natural referencing platforms on search engines… with one difference: the SSI has an “official” character, since it is LinkedIn that calculates it based on the specifics of its algorithm. To make an analogy, it’s as if Google calculated an SEO score for your website!
The higher your LinkedIn profile’s SSI score, the greater the organic reach of your Social Selling actions on the professional social network of Microsoft.
According to LinkedIn, the Social Selling Index (SSI) evaluates the performance of a company page, a profile, or a group of profiles (10 people or more) with regard to the four pillars of prospecting on the social network. Each of these four variables is assigned a coefficient of 25%, giving a maximum SSI of 100. This breakdown into four variables will allow salespeople to prioritize SSI optimization actions and set priorities.
Before dissecting these four pillars one by one, here are two statistics that should convince you of the importance of LinkedIn SSI for your commercial performance:
LinkedIn profiles with a high SSI score create 45% more opportunities than those with a low SSI (below 50);
78% of these profiles perform better than sellers not using social networks. QED!
To go further, you can consult our article summarizing the importance of social networks for your B2B acquisition.
Why develop your SSI score on LinkedIn?
The SSI score between 0 and 100 is automatically calculated by the social network and is accessible for free to companies. But what does it bring, and what does this number actually mean?
Visibility, credibility, commercial performance: the 3 key benefits
With a high LinkedIn SSI score, all your actions on LinkedIn are amplified. They then benefit from better reach and therefore greater visibility. You start with a strong advantage, whether it is to reach your target audience with your posts, appear better in the search engine of B2B buyers and recruiters, or simply to inspire trust among users viewing your profile.
What are the thresholds of a good SSI score?
The SSI score is generally associated with the level of organic visibility of your profile:
With an SSI score between 45 and 60, your organic visibility will be around 75;
With an SSI between 75 and 90, your organic visibility is estimated at 125;
If your SSI exceeds 90, your organic visibility hovers around 150.
To perform Social Selling on LinkedIn, you can perfectly settle for an SSI between 75 and 90. It is indeed the best compromise to have strong visibility without spending your days working on the four pillars of the SSI.
How to check my SSI score on LinkedIn?
Calculate your Social Selling Index Score from your professional LinkedIn account or your Sales Navigator tool.
The official link to access your SSI dashboard
To check your current LinkedIn SSI score, follow these steps:
Log into your LinkedIn profile;
Go to the LinkedIn page dedicated to SSI;
Explore your overall SSI score out of 100 as well as the 4 sub-scores out of 25;
Discover your ranking in your industry sector and among the users that compose your professional network (and your progression week by week).
Attention: for LinkedIn’s benchmarks to be relevant, you must ensure that the industry sector indicated on your profile corresponds to reality. Now, I propose we zoom in on the four pillars of SSI.
Go further with LinkedIn Sales Navigator
If you want to prospect professionally and generate results on LinkedIn, you will necessarily need to subscribe to Sales Navigator. This paid tool, with free trial, can increase your SSI by about 20 points in 6 months! It also offers very interesting features, for example:
Prospect recommendations with advanced targeting;
CRM integration;
Sending InMails to send personalized messages to members of your network or reach prospects you are not connected to.
The 4 pillars of LinkedIn SSI: how to improve them?
As explained above, the LinkedIn SSI Score is structured around four large variables:
Establish your professional brand;
Find the right people;
Exchange information;
Build relationships
Pillar 1: Establish your own professional brand
This is by far the most time-consuming variable for professionals wishing to boost their SSI on LinkedIn, particularly on the “content” part which requires time, regularity, reflection and a certain talent.
Optimize your profile to inspire trust
Let’s start with the basics, with the optimization of your LinkedIn profile according to your target. On the agenda:
A professional profile photo;
A cover photo or banner, aligned with your activity and the graphic charter of your brand;
An impactful introduction, a relevant summary of your expertise;
“Experience” and “Education” sections adapted to the target you are trying to engage.
Make your profile a beautiful showcase that reflects your expertise, your added value and your personality!
Also discover in our Leadin blog personalized prospecting with attractive images and GIFs!
Publish useful content regularly
It is time to take care of the content strategy and the “Thought Leadership” approach. Objective: bring out your expertise and improve the image you project to your audience.
Over time, you will participate in community life to boost your notoriety or, at a minimum, bring reassurance factors to the prospects you will approach as part of your Social Selling strategy. Human beings are curious by nature. Through quality posts, relevant comments and interesting exchanges, you bring social and professional proof to your target… encouraging them to engage in a buying journey. Reveal your power of influence as a credible and trustworthy advisor.
Here are some tips to succeed in your content strategy on Microsoft’s social network and improve your SSI score:
Draw inspiration from your prospects’ interests, expectations, business issues, fears and aspirations to determine the topics to address;
Posts that deviate from corporate, institutional and cold discourse generate more engagement;
Visual supports generate more engagement than text-only posts (infographics, videos, carousels…);
To do Thought Leadership on LinkedIn, you must also be interested in your community’s publications. Don’t hesitate to interact with posts from your professional connections;
Try to obtain recommendations and “endorsements” to increase your chances of being found in LinkedIn’s search engine;
Publish posts with native content. For a video, for example, prefer an uploaded native file rather than an external link to YouTube.
LinkedIn practices to avoid
Here is what you must NOT do:
Beware of plagiarism! Not only do you expose yourself to legal action for copyright infringement, but you risk ruining your e-reputation;
If punchlines are your ally, be careful not to make offensive statements;
“Poll” type posts are no longer favored by the algorithm.
This topic is further developed in our article B2B Social Selling Strategy.
Pillar 2: Find the right people
On this point, LinkedIn evaluates your active search and networking activity. You will need to log into the social network at least once a day, regularly use the search engine to explore potential partners sharing the same interests as you, consult the activity of level 2 and 3 connections…
Use advanced search filters or LinkedIn Navigator
To find quality leads matching your target, you can use:
LinkedIn groups;
LinkedIn Sales Navigator to find your prospects using job-change alerts, prospects similar to your clients, the search filter…;
Do regular and advanced searches on LinkedIn;
Launch automated and personalized campaigns on LinkedIn via tools like Leadin.
Build a targeted and qualified network
Once these targets are defined, you must reach and engage them.
First, to avoid being banned from LinkedIn, use a secure automation tool acting in compliance with the rules of the professional social network. Through this tool, you will not have to connect to prospects one by one. You will also not have to write a unique message for each connection for each prospect.
To gain productivity and cover more ground, you can create a “different” message via a personalized approach, with a tailored Icebreaker for example. Be curious, proactive and regular.
Need to find qualified prospects? Learn how to use LinkedIn Ads to generate B2B leads!
Pillar 3: Exchange information
Once you have built the foundation of your professional brand and have begun to connect and engage the right prospects, the next step is to bring your professional contribution to the target community.
This pillar of LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index focuses mainly on interaction, exchange and sharing. More prosaically, SSI evaluates engagement through KPIs such as your “shares”, your “reactions” and your “comments” on posts from members with whom you share common interests.
By sharing and consuming high-value information, you prove your contribution to your community and show your willingness to enrich the content shared by your circle. It is an excellent way to organically attract the industry professionals you want to collaborate with!
Pillar 4: Build relationships
Besides content creation and interaction on user posts, the platform offers you the possibility to exchange through numerous tools: instant messaging, InMail, newsletter…
This last pillar must no longer initiate contact, but convert a prospect into a client. This is the moment when you propose your solutions and offer personalized B2B prospecting experiences. You have shown your audience that you are interested in them; now respond to their needs. Don’t forget that relationships are built over time, and that LinkedIn is based on reciprocity.
Best practices to quickly increase your SSI
On average, an inactive account obtains an SSI score between 5 and 10, while a truly engaging profile exceeds 80. To reach this goal and develop your professional network, implement strategic actions in the short and medium term:
Establish your professional presence on LinkedIn: complete your profile, obtain recommendations and post valuable content;
Use LinkedIn’s search features to find prospects: via Sales Navigator for better results;
Publish relevant content to communicate with your audience: related to the sector and expectations, in LinkedIn groups;
Expand your LinkedIn network: multiplied connections and exchanges via internal messaging tools.
SSI LinkedIn: what you need to remember
A tool highly appreciated by salespeople, the Social Selling Index measures a company’s influence potential on LinkedIn based on the quality of its profile, its relationships, its publications and its interactions. The score between 0 and 100 is automatically calculated by the platform, based on 4 major pillars:
Establish your professional brand;
Find the right people;
Exchange information;
Build relationships.
Improve your LinkedIn SSI with the platform’s features, including the Sales Navigator tool dedicated to prospecting, by interacting regularly and posting relevant content according to your target.
Do you need advice to get started with B2B prospecting on LinkedIn and email prospecting techniques? Try the Leadin demo and boost your commercial performance!