SSI is LinkedIn's metric that assesses your social selling ability by ranking you against other sales professionals in your industry. It takes into account your activity on LinkedIn, the people you communicate with and the content you share. This is a valuable tool for those who are looking to improve their LinkedIn profile and become a thought leader in their industry.
The four key elements of your SSI score are: establishing a professional brand, finding the right people, having meaningful conversations and building relationships. You'll need to invest some time and energy into each of these to grow your score. However, it's important to not get too attached or fixated on your SSI score. Instead, use it as a barometer and motivation to make sure you're focusing on the most important activities in your social selling strategy.
For example, if you don't spend enough time sharing and discussing relevant news articles or posts on LinkedIn you may not see the highest increases in your "finding the right people" or "building relationships" categories. Conversely, if you don't connect with satisfied customers or ask them for sales referrals your "establishing a professional brand" or "professional network reach" scores might decrease.
LinkedIn has moved the SSI score behind its paid Sales Navigator product, but it's still available for free to those who don't subscribe to the service. However, for those who want to be able to access their SSI score more regularly and compare it against their peers, the platform offers this feature as part of the paid subscription.