With more than 400 million people registered, it’s easy to get lost in the beast called LinkedIn and put it in the too-hard basket. What many clients I work with don’t realise is that LinkedIn first and foremost is a search engine, so it acts like Google.

With more than 365 million users, LinkedIn is a great opportunity to grow your business in front of a highly targeted audience. It was originally created for executives only but has grown to connect professionals at all levels – even graduates, who are the fastest-growing LinkedIn demographic.

By now, you may be aware that LinkedIn offers you to be a member of a group. In fact, you can be a member of up to 50 groups. There are millions of different groups available.

When Tom Peters wrote his article, “The Brand Called You”, in Fast Company magazine in 1997, I was a second-year university student studying marketing in Lismore, northern NSW.

The old ways of selling have changed. It used to be about calling. It used to be about samples and then trying to get meetings with people. Now it’s quite different. Now it’s about leveraging people’s social networks.

Basketball legend Michael Jordan once said: “Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.”

I recently worked with a client, Peter, in financial services, who said he was spending a lot of time trying to grow his business through LinkedIn but found he was wasting so much time that he gave up and decided to just focus on his old sales methods.

In 1988, an Australian woman called Leisa Campbell took the world by storm. She was an Australian body builder from Victoria. She won Miss Australia, Miss World and Miss Universe. Leisa travelled the world, competing and living in Europe and the US.

Kylie and I were recently at an event where there was a buzz around LinkedIn’s new feature called the Social Selling Index (SSI).

Last month, I found myself looking for a new car. It was late on a Friday and I was rushing around, trying to find the best deal. I’d done all my online research and ended up at a particular dealer.

Kylie Chown Started her company and soon realised that she was far better off branding in her own name. Not only saving costs but making her easily searchable and easy to find! So it was – Kylie Chown Consulting.

This week I was interviewed on Channel 9’s ‘Mornings’ with David Campbell and Sonia Kruger. If you’re busy at work you possibly missed it, but it could be helpful if you’re trying to make a move!

Are you struggling to compete with bigger players? Hard to stand out from the crowd? Difficult to compete with your competitors pricing? I’ve worked with hundreds of clients to help them create personally branded businesses.

One of the complaints I hear from career practitioners is how reactive to client demands the work is and that it’s difficult to proactively sell career services. Repeat client cycles can last a year or two, they’re on a tight budget and charging a premium can feel like a pipedream.

Allison, a law graduate called me because she needed help to increase her persuasion in interviews. This was her last of 11 interviews that year and the pressure was on. She wasn’t sleeping, feeling anxious and emotional at times.

With over 347 million people now on LinkedIn, the noise can become a little overwhelming. I don’t know about you but I’m now removing some people from my feed or being skeptical of their motivation for attempting to connect.

Have you watched someone speak at a conference or watched a blog video and struggled to watch past the first 10 seconds. An attendee at a recent event I spoke at shared one such video with me.

This week I worked with an inspiring doctor called Sarah. She trains students and speaks at conferences on identifying particular conditions that can easily be overlooked. She is an avid art lover and told me about a painting she purchased online from the US last year.