Aerospace eBusiness

Five Aerospace & Defense groups you should join on LinkedIn April 23, 2009

If you have a LinkedIn account (shame on you if you don’t) you will want to join some professional groups to develop your network. There are 300 Aerospace groups on LinkedIn, some of them covering very niche areas. Here are five groups definitely worth joining:

Once you have joined these groups, it is important to be more than a peeper. You will want to interact and participate. Here are three thinks you should do:

1. Sign up for email updates. Select an email update frequency (once a week is fine) so you can be informed of the activities of the group. The emails you will receive can be easily and quickly scanned so they will save you time in deciding which groups you should visit in #2 below.
2. Set aside 30 minutes a week to contribute. Choose the right tab (Discussion, News, Jobs) and provide content or questions that will interest the members of the group. If you are a vendor, remember that these are not advertising boards. Do not post “Contact me if you need Titanium casting”. Instead, start a conversation such as “What are the challenges of finding a reliable Titanium casting supplier?” Participate in conversations by posting comments on existing discussion to showcase yourself as an active member of the community.
3. Add select members to your network. If you find other members with which you have a professional affinity, invite them to connect your networks. Make sure to select “Share a Network” in the “How do you know” menu, and edit the invitation message to personalize it. Do not post a lame “Please help me expand my network” message to get more connections. This is not a popularity contest.

LinkedIn groups are a great resource for networking directly with experts and colleagues about real issues that concern you or the industry. I hope you get as much value out of it as I do. Let me know what your findings are.