By The PhantomBuster TeamWhat is a LinkedIn SSI score?
Ultimately, LinkedIn is a great platform for growing your business network, scaling your outreach, and becoming an industry leader. With a high SSI score, reaching the right people becomes easier than ever.
In this guide, you'll learn how to increase your SSI score to stand out in your industry.
TL;DR
The SSI score reveals your selling capabilities on LinkedIn based on four criteria: your professional brand, your professional network, how you engage with insights, and how you're building relationships.
Once you are logged into your LinkedIn account, visit the Social Selling Index page to view your score.
With a high SSI score, you'll generate more trust from LinkedIn, which will improve the reach of your posts and, in turn, attract more prospects.
Considering LinkedIn is constantly comparing your profile to your peers, rather than targeting a specific SSI score, it's better to make a consistent effort to improve your own metrics
To improve your SSI score, you need to work on the four criteria that impact it. You should constantly search for relevant people to engage with, connect with, and share meaningful insights with to boost your authority.
For example, you can leverage LinkedIn automation tools to auto-follow and connect with relevant LinkedIn profiles.
Want to automate your LinkedIn outreach and boost your SSI score? Try PhantomBuster free for 14 days.
How to check your LinkedIn SSI score?
Log into your LinkedIn account.
Visit the Social Selling Index page to view your score.
The higher your score, the better your LinkedIn presence and sales opportunities will be.
SSI Social Selling Index | LinkedInHow is LinkedIn's Social Selling Index (SSI) score calculated?
LinkedIn's Social Selling Index score reflects someone's capacity to sell and promote their brand, measured between 0-100. It's calculated based on four key elements, each worth 25 points:
Your professional brand: Are you a thought leader? Does your LinkedIn profile appeal to your target audience?
Your professional network: Are you building meaningful connections with the right people?
How you engage with insights: Are you sharing LinkedIn posts that spark conversations and build relationships? Does your data reflect this?
How you're building relationships: Are you sending connection requests and engaging with social selling leaders and decision makers?
The higher your score, the better your sales results and overall LinkedIn presence will be. Let's break down the LinkedIn Social Selling Index in more detail.
SSI score calculation criteria | LinkedIn1. How strong your professional brand is
Your professional brand is all about your LinkedIn profile and the value of your content. Here's a quick checklist to reinforce your professional brand:
Complete profile: Your profile should be complete and up to date and designed with your customer in mind.
Multimedia: Your profile should feature a range of media, such as blog extracts or featured videos.
Cover photo: You should use a cover photo that promotes your personal brand in some way.
Endorsements: You should have endorsements to showcase the value you're offering.
Long-form posts and followers: You should be creating long-form posts that add real value to your niche and bring in followers.
2. How well do you leverage your LinkedIn account to find the right people
Leveraging LinkedIn is a value calculated based on how you search for and engage with potential prospects.
Tip: Remember that effectively identifying prospects is easier with a Sales Navigator account, as it allows you to refine your search with multiple advanced filters.
Finding the right people involves:
Advanced lead and account searches: Find new contacts and prospects by using the right filters to narrow down a list of relevant people you want to engage with. It's not about quantity but quality.
Prospecting and inbound profile views: How many prospects have viewed your profile? The more people find you and are interested in what you do, the better. This signals that you have an authoritative voice.
Leads saved: The quality and quantity of the prospects you're saving. You don't want to be connecting with people who are not a potential match for what your business does.
Days Active: How often you're online and connect with the right people.
3. How well you engage with insights
Engaging with insights will show you which key activities to prioritize or improve on LinkedIn. For example, you should be regularly checking:
Engagements given and received: Engage with insights that reflect your post quality, such as shares and comments, and use this to influence your future content.
Message response rates: Review your messages and InMails to see whether you're sparking meaningful conversations. It's also important to respond and engage in a timely manner.
Groups joined: See how well you're engaging with groups in your niche. You want to be active across relevant ones to enhance your authority.
Research views: See how often your profile appears in search results and continuously update it to avoid unrelated search matches. This is a good indication of a well-optimized profile.
4. The strength of your network and how you build relationships
This reveals how you're building relationships within your niche. There are several criteria which contribute to this:
Connections and VP+ connections: The quality of your connections, such as business leaders, decision-makers, and account executive profiles. Keep in mind that these need to be in the right industry.
Internal connections: People you're connected to within your company.
Connection request acceptance rates: The degree to which people accept your connection requests. This signals that you are looking to engage with meaningful people instead of just growing your network.
How important is it to have a high Social Selling Index score?
Having a high social selling index score will set you apart on LinkedIn by building relationships and establishing a professional brand.
With a high SSI score, you'll generate more trust from LinkedIn, bringing better reach for your posts, and this, in turn, can attract more prospects. In fact, social selling leaders are 51% more likely to reach their quotas.
Impact of a high LinkedIn SSI score | LinkedInWhat is a good LinkedIn Social Selling Index for sales professionals?
Rather than focusing on a particular social selling index (SSI), you should benchmark their current score and then aim to improve it over time.
This is because LinkedIn is constantly comparing your profile to your peers. So, rather than targeting a specific SSI score, it's better to make a consistent effort to improve your own metrics.
In an SSI guide, Dr. Michael Thiemann said, "... my SSI score is only 64/100 (a month later, it is 69). Like entrepreneurship, the journey to mastering LinkedIn is one of continuous learning and growth."
In the long run, having a high LinkedIn SSI score pays off.
For example, you can see the engagement that thought leader Melonie Dodaro enjoys by starting valuable conversations and nurturing strong relationships in her industry.
How to leverage automation to grow your professional network and improve your SSI score?
Improving your LinkedIn Social Selling Index (SSI) requires consistent effort. Finding the time to nurture relationships and other social selling activities can be a challenge—but automation tools can help.
Here are two social selling index measures you can automate at scale.
Auto-follow relevant LinkedIn profiles
Firstly, you can boost your personal branding by following relevant profiles. Simply run advanced network searches using Sales Navigator, such as by group membership or company size. You can also look at industry leaders and follow their connections.
Then, rather than manually following them, you can use a tool like PhantomBuster to follow those people automatically. With a bunch of pre-build automations called Phantoms, you can easily scale your efforts across LinkedIn.
Try the LinkedIn Auto Follow Phantom to follow prospects on autopilot.
Connect and follow up with relevant LinkedIn profiles
Once you've engaged with a profile, such as by following them, then they're much more likely to connect with you. This, in return, will help boost your social selling index.
This, too, can be automated.
You can set up an automation that will send connection requests on your behalf with a personalized connection request message.
Try the Sales Navigator Search to Lead Outreach Flow to send connection requests to your Sales Navigator leads.
If you're using automation to boost your social selling, just remember to respect the LinkedIn limits. These will vary depending on whether you have a free, Premium, or Business Sales Navigator account.
A good LinkedIn automation tool will give you recommendations and allow you to gradually scale your automated actions so you don't exceed the recommended limits.
Conclusion
Increasing your social selling index score doesn't happen overnight. But if you consistently engage with insights, build your industry network, and share compelling posts, you can become one of LinkedIn's social selling leaders and skyrocket your sales pipeline over time.
Want to automate your LinkedIn outreach and boost your SSI score? Try PhantomBuster free for 14 days.
