A family podcast is a fun and unique way to catch up with family!
If you want to connect with loved ones, but live long distance, that’s okay! There are still plenty of high tech ways to talk, chat, and message with all your friends and family, no matter how far away they live.
Tech expert Sarah Kimmel shared a few creative ways to connect with those loved ones who live long distance.
Family Podcasts
One unique idea is creating a family podcast. Sarah shared a story about her cousin, Gabby, who was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer. To support her, Gabby’s sister decided to interview all their cousins and create a podcast. “When she’s in treatment, she can listen to these podcasts and connect the whole family together,” Sarah explained. This keeps everyone updated and preserves family memories in a unique format. The process is simple: record a Zoom call and upload it to Spotify, which offers a free platform for podcast uploads.
With Spotify, your podcast will be public, but there are other options if you want it to be private. “You would have to probably do a different platform than Spotify to make it private,” Sarah said. “So YouTube, you can have privatized videos there if you want to just upload the audio to a YouTube channel.”
With the popularity of podcasts, the chances are low that someone is going to stumble upon your family podcast on Spotify. “On Spotify, it is going to be public, but there are thousands upon thousands upon thousands of podcasts. The fact that somebody might find your, like, weird family podcast is probably pretty minimal,” Sarah emphasized.
Marco Polo
Another of Sarah’s favorites is the Marco Polo app. Unlike real-time video calls, Marco Polo allows you to send video messages that can be watched at any time. “I love the fact that it’s not a right away thing. So if you’re going to FaceTime or video call somebody, you have to be in a place where you can chat with somebody,” Sarah explained. “But with Marco Polo, I can tell my whole story… and then I can send that to my friends or my family, or we can have a group where we’re all chatting and people can listen to that whenever they have the time.” This flexibility makes it easier to share experiences without trying to coordinate schedules.
When you have a really long message to type out, Marco Polo is a lot easier to manage than texting a long message. “ I will send it on Marco Polo cause it’s so much easier to just say the story than just text out the whole thing,” Sarah emphasized.
Facebook Messenger
Facebook Messenger is still a popular choice, especially for families with young children. “With a young kid, they can do Facebook Messenger Kids and you have just regular Facebook Messenger and you can video call or share funny stories,” Sarah explained. This platform is useful for maintaining connections with younger family members who may not have their own devices yet.
Sarah also prefers Facebook Messenger when trying to send videos or pictures across different devices. “Especially with Apple to Android, videos over text can get really pixelated. The platforms really don’t talk to each other very well,” she explained. “Using a platform like Facebook Messenger or just Marco Polo is so, so much easier.”
FaceTime
For those who use FaceTime, Sarah shared a helpful tip for connecting with Android users. “If you have iOS, you can send a FaceTime link to somebody with an Android device and you can FaceTime that Android user,” she said. This feature lets everyone, regardless of their device, participate in video calls.
“All you do is you open up FaceTime on your iOS and you say ‘create a new FaceTime.’ Then if you want to send it… it’ll send them the link via text and they just click on that… it opens up their web browser on their phone and it’s a FaceTime message,” Sarah explained.
Facebook Groups
Creating a private Facebook group is another way you can stay connected. “You can have a Facebook group with just your family and invite those people and you can share different things,” Sarah suggested. This lets you have ongoing conversations and updates in a secure, private space.
Alexa and Google Devices
You can use Alexa and Google for video calling. “If you have the Alexa or Google device that has a screen, you can actually do video calling through those devices,” Sarah said. This feature is great for quick calls.
“ For Alexa devices, you will need the Alexa app on your phone, but then you can drop in to those devices really easily just through that Alexa app,” Sarah explained. “With Google… if you have an android device, it’s going to connect right away, but you might have to download Google Meet or something to connect with a Google Home device.”
Watching Movies Together
Lastly, Sarah recommended using platforms like Plex or streaming services that offer watch-together features. “You can watch together on a Plex server, or there are streaming platforms that do have the feature to watch together,” she said. This lets family members enjoy movies at the same time for a shared experience even when apart.
On some streaming services, this function is pretty easy to set up. “ You basically just click a button that says watch together. It starts it at the same time,” Sarah said.
Find more tech recommendations from Sarah on Instagram, @familytech, or at familytechzone.com.
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