Since the launch of social media and instant messaging in Smartphones, it has never been easier for people who have relocated abroad to keep in touch with friends and family back home.
Social networking
Social networks sites are one of the most popular ways to stay in touch with friends and family. Facebook allows you to post live updates about what you’ve been up to, upload photos, chat with friends and send private messages. Joining virtual groups in your area or local business groups via social networking is also a good way to associate with like minded people. Although Facebook is the most popular, you can also use Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram among other to keep your loves ones up to date about your adventure.
Write your experience in a blog
A lot of people that relocate abroad keep a blog of the things they get up to. Instead of typing different messages or emails to lots friends and family, blogging allows everybody to see what you write. It’s also a good memory bank as it stores your blog posts by date, time and topic, enabling you to look back on your entries in years to come. Sharing your photos and videos online.
Having relocated to a new location, it’s inevitable you’ll have taken hundreds of photos and will want to share them with people back home. Photo applications such as flickr.com have been designed to manage and share your photos easily – it’s simply a case of uploading your pictures and giving them a caption. This is a great way of allowing your friends and family a chance to see your new life and destination at any given time of day.
Social Media
Alongside photo sharing websites, Youtube has become a video sharing phenomenon. With an easy search tool, loved ones can just enter your username and watch all your videos. You should encourage others back home to do this too so you can still feel close to them and that way you can mark your favourite ones so you can watch them time and time again.
Instant messaging
If typing isn’t for you, then how about using an internet calling programme? Skype is a software communications package that allows you to chat to your friends and family via web-cam, free of charge. This type of technology has also been made possible by Apple, who have created a FaceTime application for users that have an iPhone.
If you’re not as tech savvy as some people out there, there’s still email! Email is great as it allows you to write as much or as little as you want and send it to whomever you want. You can attach photos, documents and videos to your email, send e-cards on special occasions and keep a log of your conversations without having to memorise everyone’s updates!
Find the method that works for you. Whether you’d prefer to chat face-to-face over a webcam or to blog your message to the world, you need to find something that is effective and easy to manage in your new life.