How To Audit Your Online Experience

Marketing is all about connecting with the people who need what your company offers. About creating enough influence in your industry that people come to you for answers.

But most marketing DOESN'T do this.

For examples of how this is true, check out some of my previous articles ??

For today, I want to focus on how you can audit your marketing efforts to see how influential you are on LinkedIn.

Your LinkedIn SSI Score

LinkedIn measures what they call the Social Selling Index (or SSI) for every user. The measurement is based on how effective you are at establishing your professional brand, finding the right people, engaging with insights and building relationships (the things that directly contribute to influence).

Find yours HERE by clicking on the Get Your Score link.

Now, this score is based on your activity to date. Which means, if your activities have you ranked low right now, there's an opportunity to change your activities. This article isn't specifically about that, but feel free to reach out and schedule a Discovery Call if you're interested in how to grow your score ??

NOTE: This is not about getting to 100. This is about understanding how your activities create digital influence based on the LinkedIn algorithm. For example, my SSI score is 77, which is the Top 1% of people in my industry (the industry average is 38). If you're in the Top 1%...you're standing out ??

Search Results

Quick example...if I search LinkedIn for Business Consultants, I get 9,240,000 People Results. My brain can't even begin to process that many options.

Luckily for me, the first thing LinkedIn tells me is that 119 of my connections are in that category. That's a great place for me to start. Sorry to all of the 2nd or 3+ connections. You might be awesome, but there's too many to choose from.

There are also 113,000 Company Results. But I don't know anyone at most of those companies, so I don't have anyone to trust there. So, I revert back to my original search and start with the people I know.

Starting with the people I have the closest relationship with first ??Because 119 people is still a LOT.

At the end of the day, while digital influence is about people searching specifically for you, until you reach that point, it's important to know how you and your company rank in a digital search.

I'm going to keep this focused on LinkedIn search performance specifically, because your Google ranking does NOT impact your search ranking on LinkedIn.

Here are the Top 5 Things that contribute to you ranking higher on LI:

1. Completeness of Your Profile - check all the LinkedIn profile boxes with authentic content. The more generic your profile, the less likely you are to stand out in a search.
2. Size of Your Network - it's not ONLY size that matters, more so this is measuring your level of connected-ness. How well connected are your employees? The more well-connected, the higher you will rank.
3. Activity & Engagement Level - this measures how ACTIVE you are on the platform. Accounts that are more active, rank higher.
4. Endorsed Skills & Recommendations - all above factors being equal, a LinkedIn member with skills that are aligned with their keywords, and who is endorsed for those skills, will outrank a LinkedIn member without endorsed skills. And if your recommendations include the searched keywords, you rank even higher ??
5. Keywords - yes, keywords come into play, but they aren't the ONLY thing that comes into play. So if you're focusing all your attention on SEO, you are leaving a LOT on the table.

Number of Digital Conversations

LinkedIn doesn't make this one quite as easy to measure, but then again, if you have any sort of CRM software (including an excel spreadsheet or an Asana project where you manage your leads), then you can pretty easily keep track of it.

This ISN'T about measuring in-person or phone conversations.

It's about the digital conversations ONLY and includes direct messages AND comments.

Honestly, this is more of a PRACTICE development than a hard metric, as once you start to get good at getting into conversations, you'll likely be having a lot of them ??

An easy was I measure this by:

1. Sending a message with every connection request (the intention of which is to immediately start a conversation with a new connection)
2. Setting the intention of replying to every message or comment I receive (your Notifications list is great at reminding you of comments, and I flag all unanswered DM's as "unread" so I know what I have to come back to).
3. Offering my Tea Chat link to anyone who gets into a legitimate conversation with me (who I think I'll enjoy speaking to "in person").
4. Logging a follow-up if the conversation goes well.

In my version, if my virtual chat calendar is full, the digital conversations are doing their job??

At the end of the day...

This is about being a HUMAN on LinkedIn. And about measuring how well your human connection activities are contributing to you being found and moving people into a conversation (aka your funnel).

So give yourself (and your team) a Digital Influence Audit this week. Or if you don't have the time to put in yourself, I can do one for you .

Because if these things don't add up...

You're NOT building your Digital Influence.

Here's to meaningful #marketing and #sales activities in 2023 ??