5 ways to increase your LinkedIn SSI score 2024

Everyone is talking about the Social Selling Index and with good reason. LinkedIn SSI score came into our lives to explain and answer our questions like why my posts have fewer impressions, what I am doing wrong in my outreach, and how my LinkedIn profile can get more integrity in the eyes of the algorithm. Moreover, social selling leaders have 45% more sales opportunities than the ones with a lower LinkedIn SSI score.

That said, if you haven’t already, it’s best to jump into this story and boost your LinkedIn SSI score immediately. However, if you don’t know where to start or what to improve first, don’t despair. We are here to give you tips and pointers from our first-hand experience on improving your LinkedIn SSI score and making this platform work to your advantage.

What is the LinkedIn SSI score? 

Social Selling Index is LinkedIn’s measurement of how effective you and your profile are at building your brand. In other words, finding the right people, engaging with insights, and establishing relationships.

Users with a higher LinkedIn SSI score are better positioned to become thought leaders, do LinkedIn lead generation and therefore more likely to succeed in closing the deal. This is LinkedIn’s way of awarding those with high social selling skills.

Where to find LinkedIn SSI score? 

SSI is available to everyone, whether using a free or paid LinkedIn account. (If you are not sure where to find it, copy and paste this 👉 www.linkedin.com/sales/ssi in your browser’s search engine. Go ahead and check it. This is your first step towards knowing what you are doing right and what needs a little extra push. 

This is what you can expect. 

Founded on the above four sections, LinkedIn SSI score shows your success as a salesperson and how effectively you are using the platform. 

Each of the segments can grow up to 25 points, with the total score anywhere between 0 and 100. This implies that all four sections are equally valued when measuring your Social Selling Index on LinkedIn.

Tips to increase LinkedIn SSI score

Tip #1: Complete your LinkedIn profile

If you want to boost your personal brand and Social Selling Index, you need to first complete your LinkedIn profile.

Yes, your personal brand starts with a neat and complete LinkedIn profile. The way you communicate with your leads, the way you nurture them, the type of content you post, they all add up. But first and foremost, your profile. 

It’s just like in the real world. It takes only a few seconds for someone to form the first impression. And they get attracted or rejected by your looks, not your brains. Sorry, it’s just the way it works. 

That said, there are many steps that you can follow to improve the Social Selling Index pillar #1 “Establish your professional brand”. Here is what we did and saw an immediate increase in SSI:

• Upload a professional profile picture that gives the impression of you being a reliable, yet approachable expert in the field.
• Write a catchy LinkedIn headline that sums up what your career is all about.
• Dedicate time to a summary that will make your profile stand out and grab the visitors’ attention. 
• Fill out your professional achievements, but don’t overwhelm us. It’s like sending a CV to a recruiter. Only career highlights, please. 
• List your fortes. 
• Ask for recommendations (from people you worked and had a close bond with). 
• Endorse others and others will endorse you. The law of reciprocity rocks.  

While striving to fully complete your LinkedIn profile, always have in mind the keywords you would like to be connected with and searched by. Just like you are optimizing your content to show up on Google, you are optimizing yourself to show up in your leads’ search engines. 

If you’re still unsure how to set up your entire profile, check out our masterclass. 👇

Tip #2 Find the right people

Speaking of search engines, who is showing up in yours? 

As mentioned above, LinkedIn was created to suit business needs. Not personal. Read that again. 

Don’t invite people to connect because you like their looks. There are other platforms designed for that. 

For you to improve the LinkedIn SSI score pillar #2 “Find the right people”, focus on expanding your network according to the following parameters: 

• People you already know in person.
• Users that are from the same industry, are industry thought-leaders, or share an interest in the same industry as you. 
• LinkedIn members from adjacent industries.
• Audiences that you think (or even better: you researched) would be interested in your product or service. 

Fortunately for all of us, LinkedIn has developed plans, each of them with different perks, depending on what you’re expecting from the platform. 

LinkedIn Premium Business, for example, has the same filtering options as LinkedIn basic. However, it does give you unlimited profile search and views, together with 15 Paid and 800 free monthly LinkedIn InMail credits. 

On the other hand, Sales Navigator, designed in particular for salespeople, has numerous other options that will make your life easier while searching for that perfect lead. Aside from Sales Navigator advanced filters, it has Lead Lists, Saved Searches, and 20 Paid and 800 free monthly InMail credits. 

You can improve the quality of your network and leads by: 

• Checking out LinkedIn groups of your interest.
• Reaching out to people attending a certain LinkedIn event.
• Using the Boolean Search to narrow down your audience with more precision. 

Tip #3 Engage with insights

Don’t just stand there looking good. Say something. Post on LinkedIn and share your vision with the community. Don’t be afraid to speak up, as the world is full of people thinking differently. Luckily for you, there is plenty of fish in the sea and you will for sure find like-minded users. If that’s what’s worrying you. 

For the LinkedIn algorithm to like you and for your Social Selling Index pillar #3 “Engage with insights” to grow, you need to: 

• Post engaging and valuable content.
• React and comment on other people’s posts.
• Reshare what you find worthy of resharing. 

LinkedIn SSI score is not the only one benefiting from your engagement with insights. 

LinkedIn pushes people who give value to the platform by sharing their insights, encouraging constructive criticism, and starting meaningful conversations. These users come up in the search results more often and get more exposure in comparison to inactive users. 

That said, make every post count. From our experience, here is what made a difference:

• Providing value, 
• And offer a solution to a pain point our network is struggling with.

By engaging with insights, you are telling people who you are and what you stand for. Consequently, you will start being surrounded by like-minded people. 

A LinkedIn post can be an excellent source of leads. People who react and comment on a certain topic from your or your target industry are apparently interested in the subject. And are all gathered at one place. Whether picking them manually or scraping all of them by using a Sales Solutions, such as Skylead, making a reference to a certain post is a serious game-changer when it comes to acceptance rates. 

Tip #4 Expand network and create relationships

You can have 500+ connections and not stand for a particularly “engaging” member of the LinkedIn community. 

If you just had a LinkedIn profile long enough and behaved professionally you are likely to have gathered quite a lot of connections. There you go. But that doesn’t help the LinkedIn algorithm nor it grows your LinkedIn SSI score. 

For you to improve pillar #4 “Establish relationships”, do the following: 

• Approach other users with a valid reason, be genuinely curious about their career path, ask business-related questions, be ready to reciprocate, and know when to stop (read: don’t spam them).  You can use the following LinkedIn connection message template:

Hey {{firstName}}, 

I loved your {{topic}} post and followed every advice. So far, I have achieved {{achievedResult}}. Thank you so much! I would love to connect and exchange some experiences! 

• Comment on other people’s posts or on the comment someone else left. The only way to provide value and show integrity is to give your honest opinion instead of repeating what others said. 
• Introduce your connections. If you see that someone works in the same or adjacent industry, or they might benefit from each other, speak up. Not only will your connections appreciate it but they are more likely to return the favor. 
• Be responsive. Answer to messages, Invites to Connect, and post comments in a timely (and respectful) manner. 

Briefly, you cannot go wrong with making a pleasant social interaction. In addition, what we found worked like magic was incorporating personalized images & GIFs in the outreach. It even increased our response rate to 63%.

Tip #5 Analyze LinkedIn SSI score and improve

Once you start improving your SSI, the job is not done. You need to keep track of your Social Selling Index score, analyze it and see what area you need to improve. From our experience, experimenting with different social selling strategies and monitoring your SSI changes usually does the trick. 

Frequently asked questions

How frequently does LinkedIn update the SSI score, and can changes in my activities impact my score immediately?

LinkedIn updates the Social Selling Index (SSI) score daily, reflecting changes in user activities almost in real time. Engaging consistently in recommended activities—like making connections, sharing content, and interacting on the platform—can positively impact your score, demonstrating the dynamic nature of SSI.

Are there any known limitations or criticisms of the LinkedIn SSI score as a metric for evaluating social selling effectiveness?

The LinkedIn SSI score, while useful, is not without criticisms. Some argue it may not fully capture the quality of social selling efforts or the depth of relationships built. It's a quantitative metric that might overlook the qualitative aspects of networking and sales effectiveness.

How can companies or teams collectively improve their LinkedIn SSI scores, and does LinkedIn offer insights or tools for group performance enhancement?

Companies can improve their collective LinkedIn SSI scores by encouraging consistent, strategic activity on the platform, including content sharing, engaging with connections, and endorsing skills. LinkedIn does offer analytics and insights for company pages, which can guide teams in enhancing their overall social selling performance.

To sum up

In real life, you make sure you look professional, your network at events, you are kind and genuinely interested in other people, and you stand behind your values and opinions. Hopefully. 

That’s LinkedIn in a nutshell. Just online. 

If finding the right people and nurturing relationships is something you would like to take to another level, then start a 7-day Free Trial and see how Skylead can save you 11+ hours a day while generating 10 times more leads.