Staying in Touch

Staying in touch is necessary for everyday life. For work, we need to reach out to a variety of people all day long.  For our social health, staying in touch keeps us connected to our friends and family.  To obtain goods and services, we need to communicate with others and sometimes follow-up to achieve what we need.

To be good at staying in touch, you must recognize your audience and understand their requirements to stay engaged.  As I discussed in my blog "Know Your Email Audience", there is an art to engaging others.  I use a variety of communication tools, depending on my needs and/or my audience.

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  Email:  I like the record that is created, using email. I like that I can search them and refer back to old emails for information. I like that I can deal with them when I have time.  I like sending pictures, smiles, memes, etc. to help keep my readers engaged. This is my preferred method and I tend to use it most often. 
• Text:  This is certainly the quicker way to stay in touch. People (myself included) tend to reply faster to a text than an email. I also have some family and friends that enjoy playing "guess what we are doing" via text. They send a picture and we all pipe in with fun replies.  It helps keep the group active and engaged.
• IM: Instant messaging or chats is also a very quick way to get in touch with someone. Like texts, most people reply to an IM or chat very quickly.  And, like texts, you can use this for groups and keep a lot of people engaged at the same time. With companies using this for their customer service issues, this is becoming a much more widely used form of communications.  
• Phone: Certainly one of the fastest ways to stay in touch, if the other person picks up your call. When you have a lot to communicate, it is much easier than typing or texting. I am not very good on the phone, but I try hard to embrace it when someone calls me or when I know I need to "use my words" to explain my thoughts or needs.
• In-person: This is certainly my favorite ways to get to carry on longer conversations, if I have time available to spend with others.  There is something very rewarding about using this more social form of being engaged.
• Letters: Yes, sometimes it is good to still write a letter. Some people are not computer literate. Some situations just require a hand written note. And, people still enjoy getting snail mail.
• Social Media Posts: Posting about your life, thoughts or links to your blogs, allows you to reach a larger audience, on a very casual level.  This method does not ensure you reach everyone, given that some people don't follow social media regularly.  But, this does allow some social interaction - sometimes with people you haven't heard from in a long time.  It can be a nice surprise to see a comment from someone you hadn't thought of in awhile.

I have some friends that generally only communicate through Facebook IM or Google Chat.  I have some that will only text with me. Some only email two or three times a week, but will pick up the phone if I need them quickly.  Some email in the morning and others email in the afternoon.  To stay connected, you have to learn how your friends, family, co-workers, etc. like to communicate. If you engage them in their favorite way, you can show them you care and want to engage with them.  This should even help strengthen your relationship with them.  It might seem like a pain to manage multiple communication platforms, but I believe staying in touch is worth the effort.