The Foundation Of Personal Approach To Expatriate Messaging

Expatriate Messaging is a growing trend in a cross-channel communication greased up by the chain of tools available today – technology, social platforms like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and the likes, and naturally our human nature willing to communicate emotions and experiences.

As I blogged previously, “Part of the social graph each individual keeps is the ability to shift between channels as s/he pleases.” Yes, I am talking about the personal use of these channels. The brand one differs quite a bit, mainly because the user is the one that decides how to engage with corporate communication, not the other way around. But this is a topic of another blog post that will come later. Now I will focus exclusively on the personal type of expatriate messaging.

As humans, we make friends and engage in conversation with “old” and “new” people daily. However, this “old” sort tends to be the core of our social graph. We cluster and group it into different circles of trust, purpose and whatever else and we transport it through channels the way we please. We have our closest friends’ and business partners’ phone numbers and emails on our phones. But we seek the former on Facebook and the latter on LinkedIn. On Twitter we might have them both as Following and Followers – it is an open channel after all and segmentation happens exclusively by creating Lists. However, on Facebook, we create Groups and set sharing preferences allowing us publishing only within a certain circle of Friends.

But enough of social graph form, transportation and techniques, let’s get down to expatriate messaging business!

The one that rules them all is how EASY it is to share.

In the sense that we approach communication based on a momentary whim, most people out there do not know of social media clients, letting them blast a message to multiple social networks simultaneously. They publish a photo on Facebook and share the link on Twitter. Or grab a status from LinkedIn and send it to a friend via personal message. They think of something and executing it comes to them without considering reach or necessarily looking for feedback or engagement. Some hook the Twitter account to their Facebook one and everything that gets published on the former is also posted on the user’s Facebook timeline. I am not going to venture on why they do that. It is a personal choice – different people, different approaches.

Is it ok to ask your tweeps to view the latest picture you published on Facebook?

By all means, yes. I will leave it up to you to decide how far it is. But the question of whether your followers have a Facebook profile does come second. You are sharing, and this is enough of a personal reason. As a brand, things stand a bit in the opposite direction, though.

The basic truth is that many of us share because we want to share, not because we are forced to. Yes, there are many cases where people search for social approval, justification or another not obvious reason. But we do share because we want to.

These are the main reasons that we have expatriate messaging at hand – what is easier and faster to use as an original publishing platform and how far we would like to continue with the message expansion behind the walled garden we initially disclosed our thought on. Phones, social network, email and others, they are just channels that serve our purpose to communicate, not a factor that imposes restrictions and limitations.

Do you agree? Do you have any comments?

Photo credit: Pablo by Buffer