Marketing isn’t just about pushing products or services. It’s about understanding how people think and using that knowledge to shape perceptions.

By tapping into some psychological principles, marketers can create more compelling, impactful strategies.

Let’s explore three influential effects: the Halo, the Framing, and the Anchoring, each with a major impact on how people perceive and respond to brands.

1. The Halo Effect: First Impressions Count

The Halo Effect describes how first impressions set the tone for all future interactions. When people encounter a brand—through its website, social media, or even a simple handshake—they make snap judgments that can impact their overall perception. If a brand’s social media is vibrant and engaging, people might assume the brand itself is lively and trustworthy. Conversely, if the website looks outdated or the messaging is dull, people may conclude the services are subpar, even if they’re excellent.

This effect cuts both ways:

• Fun social media presence = fun, trustworthy brand.
• Boring social media presence = boring brand. 
• Polished, professional website = high-quality services.
• Poor website design = low-quality services.

For brands, maintaining a consistent and appealing image across all platforms is critical.
How a business “shows up” in every interaction—online or offline—matters because each impression is an opportunity to either enhance or damage customer perception.

2. The Framing Effect: It’s All in the Presentation

The way information is presented, or “framed,” influences how people perceive it. A message framed positively will often feel more appealing than one framed negatively, even if both convey the same underlying information. For instance:

• “You have a 90% chance of surviving surgery” sounds reassuring.
  vs
• “You have a 10% chance of dying from surgery” sounds alarming.

In marketing, framing can be used to emphasize the positive benefits of a product or service and downplay any perceived risks. Here’s how framing can be applied effectively:

• “Join our event and avoid years of back pain.”
• “Download our guide and prevent bloating.”
• “Sign up now to look and feel your best at the beach.”

By framing messages in a way that highlights the positives and minimizes negatives, brands can help guide customer decisions and foster a sense of trust and positivity.

3. The Anchoring Effect: Setting the Right Baseline

The Anchoring Effect shows how people rely heavily on the first piece of information they receive (the “anchor”) to make subsequent judgments. For example, if a product is listed at $1,000 but then reduced to $100, it feels like a great deal, even if that discount is part of the regular price strategy. Similarly, offering “10 sessions for the price of 5” makes people feel they’re getting added value, anchored by the initial number of sessions.

Anchoring is powerful in pricing and promotion:

• A high original price followed by a discount can make a product seem like a great value.
• Offering “extra” sessions or benefits relative to a lower initial offer can feel like a bonus.

However, it’s essential to use anchoring ethically. Customers appreciate value, but if brands inflate prices only to mark them down significantly, it can erode trust. The best practice is to create a genuine sense of value by carefully choosing your anchor points and delivering quality.

The Halo, Framing, and Anchoring Effects show how much perception matters in marketing and help marketers build campaigns that not only catch attention but also create lasting positive impressions.

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!)

Boost your digital marketing ROI with a smarter budget

With economic uncertainty ahead – well, it’s a constant, isn’t it? – budgets get tighter.

That makes Return on Investment (ROI) even more critical.

You’ll need to stretch each euro further through smarter budgeting.

Follow these 15 steps to optimise your digital marketing budget & ROI.

1: Start with a Clear Plan and Keep it Flexible

Set clear strategic goals and map related tactics to achieve them. A plan provides direction, optimises resources, and makes measurement easier.

Know where you want to go before determining budget. Plans set the direction in line with the company objectives, but don’t have to be too rigid: periodic revision helps to adjust the trajectory, considering that forecasts might be incorrect and the market is dynamic so changes must be faced timely.

2: Audit Your Tech Stack

Take stock of your martech and tools. Look at upgrades needed and potential new investments to support goals. Don’t forget to take into account cybersecurity, business continuity and indirect costs.

Some tools are cool but not safe (mind giving access to internal documents or API keys to unknown developers).

Other tools might disappear leaving you with no alternatives – it happens frequently when working with cool startups that go bankrupt or are acquired by other companies that change their offer and pricing.

Not least, some tools might be cheap or totally free, but their implementation still has a relevant cost.

Think of switching costs (training internal staff), developing costs, hosting, security, customisation, possible increase in pricing, integration with other tools or platforms, etc. The final price of a tool is not just its cost.

3: Analyse Current Spending

Critically assess this year’s expenditures. Identify what worked and didn’t. Shift budgets accordingly. Things don’t always need to be the same. There’s no best recipe, even when it works. Because everything can always be improved.

4: Calculate Task Time

Account for team and task time in your budget, like content creation and asset production. Demonstrate work required – not always easy to estimate, but the more you’ll track, the more you’ll get a rough idea of the real time spent on single tasks. Some might be avoided, and processes can be improved adopting collaboration tools, saving time, hence costs (because time is money).

Minimise emails, calls/meeting duration and distraction time (for example avoiding copying in an email or inviting to a meeting staff not required).

Any distraction costs time, which is money. In the long term, it’s an important part of the total costs that could have been saved and invested in some more productive resources, tools, tasks.

5: Leverage External Support

Estimate needs for freelancer or agency support. Specialists bring expertise your team may lack.

However, when working with freelancers mind their availability and business continuity: if they have too many clients they might get slower or outsource to low skills collaborators. They might also stop the contract if they have a more inspiring or rewarding project to follow.

In terms of agencies, mind those ones that don’t have internal staff and just collect freelancers extra charging for that.

They also tend to charge more to cover their indirect costs, and often most of the work is carried out by interns or junior profiles despite you’ll pay at senior level.

Employees help to leverage internal skills, save costs and time (less calls, meetings, emails, that are normally charged too when working with agencies) and, not least, employees learning stay in-house while an agency might resell it to your competitors in the future.

6: Budget for Paid Social

Allocate funds to promote key social posts beyond low organic reach. Combine with employee advocacy – try an ambassadorship program – for maximum impact.

Employees network is a great multiplier. On social media channels, brands must talk with people’s voice, better if others talk about a brand, rather than the brand itself self-claiming achievement.

Paid Social helps to reach a narrow audience interested in a specific content. You don’t need to target the world to talk to a few people.

Organic social is not effective in this sense, because its reach is generally low and often out of target, especially for niches hard to reach.

7: Enhance Existing Efforts

Before launching new initiatives, optimise current ones. Reallocate to improve ROI on previous investments.

Why rebuilding the wheel when little adjustments can bring great improvements?

Don’t forget the Pareto’s law before dismantling stuff. Don’t be like those sport teams that after a few bad results change the coach, forgetting that a team is a team, and results don’t depend on a person.

8: Align Sales and Marketing

Shared budgets foster collaboration between sales and marketing teams, aligning goals. If teams don’t share the same reward, a competition between them will be unhealthy.

Depending on the type of market and product, as well as internal governance, a company normally tends to emphasise more sales or marketing – despite other be predominant too, like product management or CX. The more company elements are integrated, sharing success (and learning together from failure), the better results will be in the medium/long term.

Silos don’t work. Startups have an advantage in being smaller hence more agile, but on their side, growing fast tends to cause confusion and overlaps, difficult to sort out when experience and employee retention is lower – differently than dinosaurs.

9: Test and Adopt New Metrics & KPIs

If it’s the case, implement leading indicators for revenue streams and renewals, like Sales Velocity and Account Health Scores. Some ads platforms have plenty of metrics but there’s no need to waste a life deep diving into numbers that don’t bring learning and action. Instead, try to build your own KPIs focusing on specific segments, products, actions, trying to identify correlations between metrics. AI tools like GPT can greatly help on both quantitative (making sens of huge raw datasets) and qualitative metrics (for example sentiment analysis).

10: Follow the 70/20/10 Rule

Allocate budget as: 70% proven strategies, 20% new avenues, 10% experiments. Save some time for brainstorming, learning, testing new tools and strategies before their implementation. Assumptions never works (and if they do you’ve just been lucky – luckiness is not sustainable).

11: Get Inspired from the Industry

Make time for learning. Attend events and allocate training budget for the team. The best way to learn is to do, so avoid static resources, useful only when needed, but save time and space for little experiments that, beyond new skills, might be the seed of future successful campaigns.

12: Save Time with Templates

Leverage pre-built budget templates as helpful starting point. Speed-up work by substantially reducing time spent on routine tasks.

13: Focus on Actionable KPIs, not just Metrics

Derive value from your data. Turn findings into actionable insights and business impact. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) must be actionable.

Switch from periodic static reports to dynamic dashboards (for example Looker Data Studio or PowerBI) that allow changing timeframe and go granular.

Try to integrate channels (online and offline) to provide an holistic view of your marketing efforts. Don’t get crazy with attribution models: no model is perfect and often, picking the wrong one might lead to wrong assumptions, instead of optimising your campaigns and spending allocation.

14: Track Performance Continuously

Measure and adjust your campaigns periodically, according to performance. Optimise spend across channels based on results: what counts most are KPIs, not simple metrics (for example engagement rate, not just vanity metrics like followers or impressions).

15: Secure Stakeholder Buy-in

Get leadership support through concise, data-driven plans conveying ROI. Numbers tell more than words. Your goals must always be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.

Smarter budgeting takes work but pays dividends. Following these tips will stretch your dollars further and elevate results. Take the time to plan and set your marketing up for success in the future.

Do you need help with your Digital Marketing strategy?

Ask Oltre Digital

Research published by Science reveals ideological “echo chambers” on social media

Facebook (Meta Inc.) has transformed how we get news and information.

According to self-proclaims by Meta Inc., over two billion users and counting – or better profiles, including probably a half of fakes, duplicated, bots, scammers, deads, banned… For sure, Facebook is the largest social media network worldwide. Considering the average type of current user – a boomer functional illiterate easy catch for propaganda machines of any kind – the USA-based network founded and still owned by Mark Zuckerberg greatly impacts election results worldwide.

The new anti-Twitter – or better, anti-X – network, Threads, has been a huge flop – 100 million users the first week after launch, and over 50% lost the week after. Two records – despite technically they’re not new users but rather existing users of another network, Instagram, that activated the Threads extension.

Considering the Metaverse flop, the recent introduction of paid verified profiles to provide users’ assistance – otherwise totally absent – and paid plans to watch creators’ content is not a good time for Meta. It seems more of a desperate attempt to drain the drop in advertising revenue due to poor performance amplified after the iOS14 conversion API block for privacy (mainly business) reasons.

Beyond such technical and business sides, a major question concerning Facebook’s rise among users and policymakers: is it dividing us politically?

A major new study published by Science in July 2023, ‘Asymmetric ideological segregation in exposure to political news on Facebook’, suggests it is.

A pool of 27 independent researchers analyzed Facebook data for 208 million U.S. users during the 2020 election. They examined the full universe of news stories people could see in their feeds. Then they compared this to the narrowed selection of stories Facebook’s algorithm showed them.

Facebook contributes overwhelmingly to the ideological segregation and political polarisation of society

The researchers found high levels of “ideological segregation” on Facebook. Conservatives tended to see news catering to their views. The same for liberals. This segregation grew stronger as stories moved from potential exposure to actual exposure.

Political polarisation is the divergence of political attitudes away from the center, towards ideological extremes. Most discussions of polarization in political science consider polarisation in the context of political parties and democratic systems of government. (Source: Wikipedia English)

There was also striking asymmetry between left and right. A sizable segment of conservative news was isolated and consumed only by right-leaning audiences. No equivalent bubble existed on the left.

The researchers also looked at misinformation – stories flagged as false by Facebook’s fact-checkers. Nearly all these bogus stories resided in the uniquely conservative bubble.

In other words, conservatives on Facebook inhabit an alternate media universe to a greater extent than liberals. Their feeds promote partisan news – and sometimes fake news – more aggressively.

Political polarisation taken to extremes by a cynical algorithm

To understand these findings, we need to grasp how news reaches Facebook users:

• The underlying network matters. Who you friend, follow and join shapes your potential exposure.
• Facebook’s algorithm then filters this network based on your interests. It elevates certain stories into your actual feed.
• You engage with some stories by reacting, commenting, and sharing. This signals Facebook what you like, driving the algorithm further.

Two other insights emerged:

• Pages and groups drive segregation more than friends. This suggests ideology plays a bigger role in choosing to follow pages/groups versus individuals.
• High-political interest users see twice as much segregation as low-interest users. They opt more into partisan echo chambers.

Tell me who you follow, and I will tell you who you vote for…ever

Past research using web browsing data found limited “filter bubbles” online. But this study suggests social media enables far more segregation in news consumption.

Browsing websites like “Fox News” can miss important differences in the specific stories users see. Granular data on news articles – not just outlets – is key.

The findings also underscore the asymmetric polarization of America’s media ecosystem. Conservative media nurtures a more cloistered audience than liberal media. On platforms like Facebook, this asymmetry gets amplified algorithmically.

Social media expands our information horizons. But the factions we prefer to follow can consolidate our prejudices and bias. Facebook’s algorithms cater to those biases, potentially fueling political tribalism.

Hordes of devotees feast daily on media lies, whatever the political party, and then share it with their peers, reinforcing its supposed importance. However, it’s worth reminding that popularity doesn’t imply validity.

Extremist political parties fuel the trend. For example, according to public ads spending data provided by Meta Inc, Belgium’s biggest spender in political ads is the Flemish independentist right-wing party, Vlaams Belang (directly or through its representatives). Millions of taxpayers’ money are funding political parties’ propaganda, ultimately fueling the American social network revenue – skipping local taxation thanks to its Irish tax haven.

The research published by Science highlights the need for transparency from social media platforms. Clearly, in addition to Facebook, there are other platforms. Still, Meta platforms are the most influential in political polarization, both for the number of users involved and for the effects of the algorithm that generates the personalized news feed for each user And for society to navigate the internet’s risks and rewards thoughtfully. Facebook alone won’t fix political divides, but understanding its impact is crucial to mitigate it; otherwise, future elections will be pointless.

The article was also published on DataDrivenInvestor via Medium.

Impact of AI on Journalism

Artificial intelligence (AI) has shaken up the journalism industry worldwide.

Newspapers are searching for new business models to counterbalance AI’s impact and engage their readership.

The growing influence of AI in content creation has forced publishers to search for a sustainable business model that balances quality content and profitability.

The Rise and Fall of Digital Publications

Buzzfeed News and Vice were once successful digital publications that won several awards for their innovative approach to topics like politics and economy. However, both have faced financial difficulties recently.

Buzzfeed News has ceased operations, and Vice is at risk of bankruptcy. While these are high-profile examples, they’re not unique. Their downfall is primarily attributed to their inability to find a sustainable long-term business model.

The Challenge of Scaling Advertising Revenue

Vice and Buzzfeed heavily relied on video and branded content (paid for by advertisers) to generate revenue. Yet, this model could have scaled more effectively in the face of competition from social and streaming platforms, which carved out significant chunks of advertising revenue previously monopolized by newspapers.

Besides, blending journalism with advertising only sometimes yields positive results.

Paywalls: A Possible Solution?

Paywalls have proven effective only for large global brands with loyal audiences. Despite that, data shows that the paywall model is only somewhat effective for some.

In recent years, there has been a stable percentage of people willing to pay for online journalism after years of growth.

The Importance of Diversification

A diversified business model can help media organizations remain stable when market variables change.

Successful media companies operate multiple business lines, such as the Financial Times.

Balancing Press, Digital, and Events

The Financial Times hosts events through its subsidiary, The Next Web. These events contribute significantly to the newspaper’s profits and offer opportunities for networking and discovering new trends in the market.

SEO and AI

Search engine optimisation (SEO) practices have changed how content is written, leading to debates about whether the content is written for readers or search engines.

With advances in AI, SEO can shift from visible text to metadata, simplifying the process for content writers.

AI’s Impact on Content Production

AI has automated simple content production for several years, and this trend is expected to continue.

Quality content that machines cannot replicate will require heightened attention. A minority of journalists produce such quality content, and only half will likely adapt to working with new tools. Some publications are predicted to remain human-only, while others will digitize and transform their operations, publishing in various formats.

Imagine grabbing news, reshaping it for various audiences, translating it into various languages and transforming them into podcasts using text-to-speech technology (that can even adapt to regional accents). New opportunities ahead, where content creators remain crucial in shaping communication goals, setting up the right tone of voice, frequency, media planning, and leaving recurring/routine/boring tasks to machines.

Exponential technologies like generative AI, machine learning, and robotics are rapidly changing the world, predicting that about 50% of jobs will disappear due to these technologies. However, they also foresee exciting developments like new products and services we can’t yet imagine.

To survive and thrive in this new age, we need to develop our skills in creative collaboration – blending creativity, curiosity, and our ability to collaborate with people and machines. Everyone already possesses these skills but they must be developed and shaped in a constantly changing environment. After all, thinking of genetics, according to Darwin’s Origin of Species, it is neither the most intellectual of the species nor the strongest that survives, but the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment. Someway, technology follows nature’s rules.

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.

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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