“Your Social Selling Index (SSI) measures how effective you are at establishing your professional brand, finding the right people, engaging with insights, and building relationships. It is updated daily.” Source

The Digital Transformation Journey for companies has been one of the main talking points in business thus far in 2016.

Sales and Marketing teams have seen the benefits of alignment and companies are starting to see a return from their investment in digital demand generation.

LinkedIn is one of the key social media tools for B2B with over 350 million members and the term Social Selling is synonymous with the platform.

If you would like to check your Social Selling Index (SSI): Click Here

Your score is calculated weekly and there is a dashboard view of your rank among your connections and people in your industry.

As stated above your SSI is based on 4 key pillars (all 25%):

1. Establishing Your Professional Brand

Personal branding can no longer be seen as vanity, but as a means to engage with connections and showing that you can offer real value.

Aim to have your profile 100% complete; excellent guide here

Posting, interacting with content and including examples of projects you have completed on your profile all contribute to this score.

2. Finding The Right People

Business is about contacts, or in LinkedIn speak, connections. Having the right connections, particularly for sales people, is vitally important. LinkedIn has a great search function that allows you to leverage your own connections to facilitate warm introductions to prospective leads.

Reaching 500+ connections shows that you are a connected professional but do not add people for the sake of hitting this number.

3. Engaging With Insights

“Nearly 64% of B2B buyers report that they appreciate hearing from a salesperson who provides knowledge and insight into their business.” Source

Sharing timely and relevant content that is of value to your connections will boost this score.

4. Building Relationships

It is not enough to just be connected with your network but to build trust and, where applicable, reach out to the key decision makers in a timely fashion.

“73% of executives prefer to work with sales professionals referred by someone they know” Source

Following the above steps will increase your SSI and improve your overall presence on LinkedIn.

Connect with me:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamhblack 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/WBlack_Mktg