Are you monitoring your SSI?

This may sound like the beginning of a bad corporate joke, but sorry to disappoint, I’m not Corporate Bro and I don’t have a good punchline. I’m just here to share that I had not seen my LinkedIn Social Selling Index (SSI) in over 3 years. I don’t know what inspired me to look, but I was surprised when I saw that I was ranked 77th out of 31,000+, Top 1% in my industry, and Top 2% in my network. Clearly, there are some social selling masters in my network of ~5,000!

To be clear, when I say that I haven’t looked at my SSI in 3 years, that doesn’t mean that I have been completely inactive or absent on LinkedIn. I just haven’t viewed this specific metric in a while, and honestly forgot about it. I believe that metrics are both good and bad. They can be a wonderful tool used to provide insights into where you are and a way of tracking progression or regression in specific areas. But I also believe that if you focus solely on metrics, it can take the fun out of the learning journey and experimenting with different approaches. It can also be disappointing when you don’t achieve your desired outcomes and lead to discouragement from continuing your path.

To avoid this pitfall, I have a few pieces of advice that I hope will be helpful and valuable. If you decide to act and post something, please do it first and foremost for yourself! Of course, there are countless reasons for sharing something with your network on LinkedIn. Maybe you want to share an accomplishment and celebrate, or you want to share a learning experience so that others can benefit alongside you, or any number of reasons. But the best advice I can give you when sharing is to do it for yourself first, then for everyone else.

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The second piece of advice is to be authentically you. It may sound cliché, but there is no one else on this planet that has had your exact experiences and thinks in the exact same way as you. You are one of one, embrace it, it’s your superpower! I’m writing this post and sharing it because I think it has value and it makes me happy to create and write it. You may disagree, I’m sure many will, and I’m okay with that. If my LinkedIn network sees this article and enjoys it, then great. If they don’t, then I had fun writing it. Either way, I’m feeling great about putting my thoughts into written words and creating!

The last thing I’ll say is thank you. Thank you to the countless professionals who share and create consistently. They keep me (and I’m certain many of us) laughing, entertained, and informed me on LinkedIn. A few individuals who come to mind are Carson V. Heady , John Savill , Tracy Galloway , Stephen Oommen , Rob Ashe , Sheena Wildenhaus , and Stefani Quarles thank you! If you aren’t connected/follow them already, I highly recommend it, you’ll become a stronger professional as a result, at the very least you'll get a laugh or two.

All in all, I’m not planning to track my SSI daily, weekly, or even monthly. Maybe out of curiosity I’ll check it once or twice a year if I remember to do so. To me, it’s not about tracking my SSI metric to see if it went up or down. I post because I want to pay it forward by sharing information, the lessons learned from my experiences, and every once in a while, celebrate an accomplishment or two.

At the end of the day, the best-case scenario is that I get to inform and inspire people, like countless others have done for me. At worst, no one sees this or likes it. Honestly, that’s not that bad. What is important to me is that I had fun writing this article and enjoyed the creation process.

Talk about burying the lead?! If I haven’t deterred/lost you yet and you’re interested in viewing your Social Selling Index, you can view it here: Social Selling Index | Sales Navigator.

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