The One Metric PhDs Should Use To Increase Their LinkedIn Visibility

Have you ever heard of SSI? 

This is your social selling index and if you have a LinkedIn, believe it or not, you have one. Before we go deep into what this is and how to improve it, I encourage you to find out how you rank; find out here. 

Now, that you know your SSI score, we can discuss why it’s important. 

The pandemic has shifted everything to virtual, including networking and the entire hiring process. And it doesn’t look like this trend is going away anytime soon. LinkedIn has seen a huge influx of engagement and content creation over the past 6 months. Even before the pandemic, 90% of recruiters were using social media to narrow down the top candidates.

Before the pandemic it was important to have a LinkedIn profile, now it's crucial to have an optimized profile and a strategic networking plan. 

As everyone flocks to LinkedIn as their go to hiring and networking tool, it’s easy to go unnoticed in the growing virtual crowds. You need to be able to assess if your efforts are supercharging your SSI score or if you are wasting your time on unnecessary or irrelevant tasks. 

In the past, I’ve discussed some of the best ways of optimizing your LinkedIn from getting noticed to keyword optimization to basic profile perfection. So, today I would like to discuss how you can use LinkedIn’s SSI metric to assess how well your profile stacks up against your competitors. 

What Is SSI?

The social selling index (SSI) is LinkedIn’s metric of how optimized your profile is compared to the 700+ million users on the platform. A high SSI score means your profile is optimized and your efforts will make you more noticeable in the growing crowds. A low SSI score means you are not engaging properly, or not engaging with the right people. 

So, how does LinkedIn compute your SSI score? It looks at 4 distinct criteria: Establish your professional brand, find the right people, engage with insights, and build relationships. You are given a score between 0 and 25 in each of these categories. The sum of these four scores is your overall SSI. So, SSIs go from 0-100; the higher the better. 

In addition to an overall score, LinkedIn gives you data to see how you rank among your competitors and to the rest of your network. This can help you gauge where you stand in your target industry and how you stack up within your network. 

If your SSI score is in the top 20% of your industry, congrats!

That’s a great score and your profile is very well optimized. If, however; your score is in the bottom 50% of your industry, I strongly urge you to read on to discover the best and fastest ways to supercharge your SSI. 

1. Establish your professional brand

Two things I cannot stress enough: you need a professional headshot and a complete profile. All the sections should be filled out; leave no section blank. These are the two simplest but most effective ways of establishing your professional brand. A good headshot conveys your professionalism, while a complete profile shows your commitment. 

When someone visits your profile, they will see your headshot and your headline before deciding to scroll down and look at the remaining sections. So, your headline needs to be unique, succinct, and clear.

Here, you should use The “4-answer headline,” which quickly answers the 4 questions that hiring managers care most about: Who are you professionally? Who are you personally? What do you want to do? Where do you want to work? 

Once your profile is complete, you have a professional headshot, and a perfect “4-answer headline,” it’s time to start marketing your professional brand. If you are in a writing or content creation focused industry, you can do this by publishing original articles on LinkedIn. What do you care most about in your industry? What gaps do you think still need to be filled? Put these answers into an article and publish it on LinkedIn. If you are not a writer, you can still promote your professional brand by supporting and posting other articles that align with your target industry trends and philosophies. Aim to become a thought leader of your industry.

2. Find the right people

LinkedIn is a great platform to expand your network and increase  your connections. However, you want to increase the right connections, which are those that put you in contact with the decision makers of your industry. This is both a game of quantity and quality. With too few connections, you look unapproachable. However, having too many people irrelevant to your industry does not promote you as someone who belongs in the inner circles. 

LinkedIn has three clever ways to help you connect with the right people. The first is the search bar; type in some keywords within the search bar and search for people, check out a few profiles, and decide who you want to connect with. At the very minimum, viewing someone else’s profile will give you new ideas of how to improve your own profile. 

The second way is to look at the “people you may know” section and search for 2nd degree connections. These are people with whom you already share at least one connection, so you can ask for an introduction. 

The final way is to look at who’s looking at your profile. This can tell you two things, the first is the kind of people you are attracted to your profile and the second are people who may be willing to connect with you. 

For instance, if you notice that all the people who viewed your profile are academics, your profile may not be optimized for an industry transition. If you’d like to transition into a project manager role, maybe it’s time to post an article about agile vs. waterfall or showcase your business acumen by adjusting the keywords within your profile. Therefore, looking at who viewed your profile can help you both to improve your professional brand and to find the right people. 

3. Engage with insights 

A key aspect of social media is to engage. You want to not only provoke conversations around what is meaningful to you but also engage in these conversations; showing your passion and relevancy to the field.

Engagement happens at two levels. You can leave a reaction; from the simple “like,” “celebrate,” and “love” to the more sophisticated “curious,” “support,” and “insightful.”  Or you can leave a comment. A thoughtful, constructive comment will add value to your network and promote you as a thought leader in the field.

Following hashtags and joining groups will help you find the right post to comment on. 

When trying to enhance your network, you also want to engage with insights. Always add a thoughtful note to the person, explaining who you are and why you’d like to connect. Remember, you only have 300 characters, so make sure your message is succinct and unique. 

4. Build relationships

The final piece of your social selling index is building relationships. The larger your network, the more leveraging power you have. Your network can easily grow exponentially. 

Be strategic when building your network. Focus on the leaders in your industry, the decisions makers and the stakeholders. Maybe you aren’t in a position to connect with these people yet. However, if you make meaningful and strategic connections, you will be able to connect with them in the future. Always look for ways to leverage your current network to make meaningful future connections. 

Make sure that you are actually building and fostering these relationships, which will take time and dedication.

You need to engage with all your connections periodically to continue to build relationships. 

In Summary

Being mindful of your SSI score will help you come up with a strategic plan to supercharge it. Aim to be within the top 20% of your industry by establishing your professional brand, finding the right people, building your relationships, and engaging with insights. By following the tips above in each category, you should see your SSI score improve and you will be framed as a thought-leader and decision maker within your industry.

Are you a PhD?

If so, what have you done to improve your SSI?

Tell me in a comment below.

To learn more about transitioning into industry, including how to gain instant access to industry career training videos, case studies, industry insider documents, a complete industry transition plan, and a private online job referral network for PhDs only, get on the waitlist for the Cheeky Scientist Association.