Ex­pats And So­cial Media

Ex­pats then and now. The phe­nom­e­nal rise of so­cial me­dia is re­ally pretty re­cent – okay, so back in the mid-2000s there was a plethora of net­work­ing sites that were avail­able to all, but there wasn’t a lead­ing site that every­one was on.

Dif­fer­ent net­works catered to dif­fer­ent de­mo­graph­ics, and it was only when Face­book opened up to the pub­lic that you had a so­cial me­dia one-stop destination.

The rise of Face­book and the con­tin­ued pop­u­lar­ity of blog­ging – as well as tech­nolo­gies like Skype and front-fac­ing cam­era smart­phones have changed the whole ex­pat ex­pe­ri­ence for those who are keen on keep­ing in touch with the folks back home.

And it saves a lot of time, as well.

Rather than go­ing to the time and ex­pense of writ­ing and du­pli­cat­ing a round-robin let­ter (never mind the format’s slightly im­per­sonal touch) you can now get those cool pho­tos of you on the beach in Syd­ney or wak­ing on the pave­ment in Shang­hai across the world to your near­est and dear­est in an in­stant – al­most literally.

And what’s more, it’s never im­per­sonal since peo­ple can in­ter­act with your con­tent by lik­ing, com­ment­ing, Tweet­ing and so on.

So­cial me­dia and research

For prospec­tive ex­pa­tri­ates or peo­ple cu­ri­ous about what life might be like in an­other coun­try, so­cial me­dia plat­forms also open up a whole new world of information.

Prior to the pop­u­lar­ity of ex­pat blogs and fo­rums, any­one seek­ing info on life in a new coun­try would have had to con­sult coun­try and city guides in book form. These con­tinue to be great re­sources, but are by their na­ture not in­ter­ac­tive and can’t go too far into specifics due to the lim­i­ta­tions of space.

Fo­rums, on the other hand, pro­vide a wealth of in­for­ma­tion the type that only those ‘on the ground’ can have.

• You want to know the best part of New Jer­sey to live in with medium rent?
• Where the best Chi­nese restau­rants in Düs­sel­dorf, Ger­many are?
• The price of Eng­lish lan­guage schools in Singapore?

Gen­er­ally all it takes is to find one of the ma­jor ex­pat fo­rums and there are peo­ple there will­ing to of­fer their ex­pe­ri­ence in help­ing you an­swer any ques­tions you may have. Fo­rums are an ex­tremely use­ful re­source and you can find out a lot about health­care sys­tems and how to use them, pub­lic trans­port, and lo­cal cus­toms by brows­ing fo­rums even if you’re not a mem­ber of one.

Ex­pat blog­ging is also a great way to get a flavour of places you’ve not yet been. Just about every ma­jor city across the globe (and a great many towns and vil­lages too) have res­i­dent ex­pats re­port­ing on their daily life there. Many of these blog­gers are tal­ented writ­ers and pho­tog­ra­phers, with their web pres­ence pro­vid­ing a win­dow into their ex­pe­ri­ences set­tling into their new coun­try, and all the lan­guage chal­lenges as well as the re­wards of the ex­pat life, meet­ing new peo­ple, eat­ing all kinds of new cui­sine, and, just some­times, pin­ing for home.

[rms] Ralf’s com­ment: I’m al­most an ex­pat my­self, liv­ing in Thai­land most of the year, and only vis­it­ing my home coun­try, Ger­many, for a few weeks 2 or 3 times a year.

The in­ter­net en­abled lo­ca­tion in­de­pen­dent busi­ness for lots of peo­ple, and so­cial me­dia is a nice ad­di­tion to that.

What I found is that Face­book mes­sag­ing re­placed email with many people.

One of my blog posts, where I pub­lished a se­ries of Thai­land pics, re­ceives tons of vis­i­tors, but from a busi­ness stand­point it’s un­tar­geted traf­fic, of course.

A so­cial site I find specif­i­cally in­ter­est­ing for do­ing biz abroad is https://www.meetup.com. It’s an easy way to con­nect to lo­cal peo­ple and other ex­pats based on in­ter­ests, in­clud­ing top­ics rel­e­vant to your business.