Do you remember when all your digital acquisition efforts focused on driving website traffic?
Those days are fading fast.

After analysing recent trends emerging in major digital platforms worldwide, Rand Fishkin and other digital marketing industry thought leaders warned marketers to adapt their strategies and move away from the pressure to generate incoming website traffic. We’re entering the so-called zero-click marketing era (don’t confuse with zeroclick attack, which involves vulnerabilities of some digital platforms and it’s more a matter of cybersecurity specialists rather than marketers).

Look at these recent digital marketing trends

• YouTube is now the 2nd largest search engine worldwide.
• Already in 2020, more than 75% of Google searches ended without a click, and the platform is changing fast, offering immediate website extracts and AI-generated answers on top of SERP (search engine result page), for which users don’t even need to screen results and click one or more websites anymore. Consequently the SEO game must adapt too.
• LinkedIn & Facebook: algorithms favour native content and penalise direct links to external web pages.
• Instagram & TikTok: Video-first (and only). The two platforms are now similar as Instagram has given up its initial and much-loved vocation for photos to chase the Chinese competitor who dominates the market despite Western boycotts with the backing of politics. It is not allowed to click anything outside the profile description, which is often ignored given that the contents are mainly used in the user feed and not in the channel feed (remember that it is not possible to insert links in the description of photos or videos, and the link-in-bio mention, as well as being obsolete and ineffective, risks penalising views).

Growing channel attribution challenges

• Cookieless browsers, due to growing privacy concerns and regulations, limit user data.
• Link sharing via private chats, either individual or group (WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Discord, and more), makes tracking difficult, if not impossible, making analytics data and KPIs unreliable and, often, misleading.
• Last-touch attribution models are outdated and, in most cases, unreliable. Why assuming that credit for a conversion goes the last-click if other touch points contributed too? If you expect effective actionable KPIs to drive your strategic adjustments, don’t trust what’s based on partial data and wrong assumptions, because your future success might suffer big time.

What to do to be effective in a zero-click marketing world?

Rethink your strategy. It’s not about clicks anymore, but attention.

1. Go where your audience is: YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram.
2. Partner with influencers/creators on podcasts and social platforms.
3. Create engaging, inspiring, native content which is worth sharing for each platform, rather than just posting a link.
4. Don’t forget to nurture your email list, a primary owned channel.
5. Keep on building a memorable and trusted brand.

In a few words: stop chasing clicks and start capturing attention on platforms that matter. Adapt your marketing strategy now, or risk falling behind.

Even companies with a limited presence on social media platforms should remember that their marketing goal is reaching their audience.

Any company talks to people, wherever they are. And people are on social media – either through a direct presence or indirectly via testimonials, reviews, and overall word of mouth shared on digital channels by individuals, partners, press, and industry influencers. Therefore, traffic to their websites is a consequence of a positive, growing brand awareness rather than just a sequel of posts merely including boring calls-to-action and direct web links, which, if allowed by platforms, are still penalised by algorithms.

Moving to paid clicks, companies with low brand awareness still need to improve their click-through rate, proving that it’s wiser to move marketing investments towards effective organic inbound strategies.

Social media platforms turned into creator platforms with (social) benefits

Social platforms aim to retain users rather than making them exit to external websites (unless advertising clicks, aka PPC campaigns, compensate for these exits).

In fact, social platforms are greedy for our time: the more time we spend, the more advertising spaces they can sell (paid impressions).

Keep in mind that today social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads) are mostly media distribution platforms, like let’s say like Netflix, embedding social elements such as reactions (likes), comments, sharing. On these platforms, each user is a potential creator (or re-creator), and those who generate content most effective at retaining users are rewarded with greater visibility.

Therefore, it is necessary to minimise the clicks of the user journey, possibly allowing the user to achieve the objective we have set ourselves directly on the first acquisition platform, where, moreover, if what we propose is valid, there are more significant opportunities than visibility (reach ) is multiplied thanks to the actions of the user who reads us. User involvement (engagement) matters most, and measuring our content’s success and increasing its organic visibility (social reach) is essential.

We must always create and share (inspiring, meaningful, valuable, fresh, unique, captivating) content to encourage reactions such as likes and comments to which we can and must respond immediately, reposts to a presumably qualified audience, supported by the fact that the advice comes from a person and not a brand).

• Follow me on LinkedIn
  (yes, sometimes clicks still count!)

If you’re an avid LinkedIn user or just beginning to explore this professional networking platform, you may have encountered the term “LinkedIn Social Selling Index” or SSI.

What is it, and why should you care about it?

In this post, let’s dive into the world of LinkedIn and its SSI to help you understand its importance, how it can benefit you and, of course, how to calculate it.

LinkedIn was launched in 2003 as a professional networking platform designed to connect people with their colleagues, classmates, and industry peers.

Over the years, LinkedIn has evolved into a powerful tool for job seekers, recruiters, businesses, and professionals looking to expand their network and gain valuable insights into their industry.

Today, LinkedIn boasts over 800 million members worldwide. It offers features such as job listings, company pages, online courses like LinkedIn Learning (it used to be called Lynda), and various tools for sales and marketing professionals.

Who uses LinkedIn mainly, and why?

LinkedIn attracts a diverse range of users who can be broadly categorized into:

1. Active readers: These users regularly visit LinkedIn to consume content their connections share, engage with posts through likes, comments, or shares, and stay updated on industry news.
2. Creators: These individuals actively share content on LinkedIn – articles, posts, or updates – showcasing their expertise or sharing valuable insights with their network.
3. Job seekers & recruiters: People looking for new job opportunities or recruiters searching for potential candidates make up a significant portion of LinkedIn users.
4. Inactive users: Some people create a LinkedIn profile but rarely engage with the platform after that – they might occasionally log in to update their work experience or accept connection requests but don’t actively participate in networking activities.

What is the LinkedIn SSI, and how is it calculated?

The LinkedIn Social Selling Index (SSI) is a metric that measures your effectiveness as a social seller on the platform.

In simpler terms, it gauges how well you’re utilizing LinkedIn to build your professional brand, engage with your network, and ultimately generate business opportunities.

While the exact formula for calculating SSI remains undisclosed, LinkedIn has shared that it’s based on four key factors:

1. Establishing your professional brand includes having a complete profile, sharing relevant content, and engaging with your audience.
2. Finding the right people: Utilizing LinkedIn’s search and research tools to identify and connect with potential prospects or partners.
3. Generating engagement via fresh and original insights: Sharing valuable content, commenting on others’ posts, and participating in relevant discussions.
4. Building relationships: Expanding your network, nurturing connections, and fostering trust within your industry.

Follow me on LinkedIn

What are the benefits of having a higher SSI than others?

A higher SSI score can offer several advantages:

1. Increased visibility: A higher SSI can boost your profile’s visibility in search results and help you get noticed by potential employers or clients.
2. Enhanced credibility and authority: A high SSI score indicates that you’re actively engaging with your industry and staying updated on trends – making you a more credible resource for others. We can’t assume that a higher SSI also means a higher reputation. Still, it certainly helps to build trust since a more extensive network and a higher engagement than average can be considered social proof that validates user expertise.
3. Better networking opportunities: A high SSI can attract more connection requests from other professionals in your field, opening up opportunities for collaboration or business partnerships.

Professionals who rely heavily on networking to generate business opportunities – such as salespeople, marketers, consultants, entrepreneurs, and recruiters – can significantly benefit from having a high SSI score.

By leveraging their LinkedIn presence effectively, they can build a solid professional brand, connect with potential clients or partners, and ultimately drive business growth.

What should you do to increase your SSI?

To improve your LinkedIn SSI score, follow these steps, also recommended by the platform itself:

1. Complete your profile: Ensure that your profile is up-to-date, with a professional photo, compelling headline, and detailed work experience. You can check the completion percentage: ideally, it should be 100% (follow the LinkedIn guidelines to achieve it).
2. Share valuable content: Regularly post articles, updates, or insights that showcase your expertise and add value to your network. Don’t just post links or share content without a comment. LinkedIn wants to generate conversations. Any occasion is good to start one. For example, you can turn a comment into a post, adding extra insights (because the character length of a comment is lower than what you can write in a post). The more your content generates engagement, the more reach will gain your post, and consequently, your SSI will increase. Any user interaction, including clicks to links, plays, shares, likes, comments, and scroll if it’s a PDF, helps. Recently, users have tended to post more documents because it’s an easy way to generate engagement when users scroll horizontally (for example, a PDF guide in 30 pages where content is split into small sentences to let users scroll until the end). Live sessions are also a great way to gain reach and engagement, but they aren’t trendy on LinkedIn, unlike other platforms like TikTok.
3. Engage with others: Comment on posts, participate in discussions, and give skill endorsements or recommendations to people you’ve worked with.
4. Expand your network: Strengthen your network by finding and establishing trust with decision-makers relevant to your industry or specialization.

You might be questioning: How to find my LinkedIn Social Selling Index?

You might be curious to find out immediately, so here’s the link to find your LinkedIn SSI (obviously, you have to log in on LinkedIn first).

If your score is low, no worries! It’s updated frequently (apparently daily), so follow the steps listed above and recheck the next few days to see the progress and find out where to optimize your presence.

Users who turn their profile into Creator mode might have more chances of getting more visibility, but they must be active on the platform. Some users are not creators and still reach very high scores.

If you have a limited network (just a few contacts, maybe not much active on LinkedIn), reaching a relevant percentile in that pool can be easy.

However, you should also compare your score against the industry average (which also includes users who aren’t part of your professional network).

The SSI is just a number based on factors that, like any index and ranking, represent a simplified, partial summary of what it aims to measure, often producing misleading conclusions. It’s essential to check the status, but, for sure, the actual, authentic value of a user, a worker, or a person can’t be summarised in a number based on a few clicks that sometimes are the only goal of some so-called social influencers. Luckily, quality is not just a number, so don’t come to fast conclusions based on your positive or negative score. No algorithm can determine the actual value of an individual unless we accept a biased point of view.

It’s time to transform storytelling into storyselling.

How does the LinkedIn algorithm works? Key findings to remember to optimise your presence and SSI (infographic, 2023)

I am glad to announce that I will be speaking at the Video & Social Media Marketing International Conference, a Virtual Event from 23 to 26 September 2020, part of the European Digital Week 2020

📌 SESSION: “Enhance your social media dataset to build insightful KPI’s”

For Q&A join the LinkedIn group

Summary

Social platforms offer a highly valuable snapshot of your brand and product’s health. From prospects to leads, from customers to employees – including enthusiasts and evangelists as well as haters and trolls – the full range of users that learn and interact with your social channels are continuously shaping your brand equity.

What are you looking at to measure and improve your campaign performance?

Looking at the right KPIs, beyond the usual suspects, and thinking of social channels not just as broadcast, amplifier or communication tools, but also as customer feedback and market research platform gives valuable information to improve communication (content, tone of voice, style) and the product portfolio – or at least its perception.

During the presentation, we’ll look at how to build a social performance dashboard with actionable insights, easy to understand by different stakeholders. With some little hacks to your dataset, it is possible to explore performance under different points of view, going beyond the usual metrics, by creating new ones and adding more meaning and context to your social media analysis.

Learning outcomes

• What are the most successful posts on LinkedIn
• How to build an advanced social media performance dashboard on Google Data Studio
• Verify if a good performance on social networks corresponds to a conversion on your website
• Why good engagement KPIs on social media don’t always correspond to successful content

The event is organised by Ditech Media.

Do you want to attend the European Digital Week?

Join the European Digital Week here. If you’re interested to watch all the sessions, covering many topics, contact me to receive a promo code that allows a 40% discount (no affiliation).

Main topics covered during the European Digital Week:

• International Cybersecurity & Digital Services Protection Conference
• International Conference on Robotics, Automation & Artificial intelligence Systems. Legislation & Intellectual Property
• International Conference on Innovation in Agriculture, Food and Biological Systems in the Digital Age
• International Conference on Crypto Finance & Blockchain Technologies
• International eCommerce & Omnichannel Transformation Conference
• International Conference on Smart Cities, Smart Infrastructures and Smart Buildings
• International Digital Healthtech, Healthcare & Pharmacy Conference
• Fintech & Digital Banking Innovation Conference
• Smart Industry & Digital Factory Technology Conference
• International Conference on Supply Chain Management & Fulfillment Solutions
• European Digital Innovation & Start-Up Summit
• Video & Social Media Marketing International Conference
• Digital HRM Conference. The Future of HR & Talent Management