Reconnect your past and present Social Networks

I recently wrote a blog “Social Networking – Facebook connects past and present”

The questions that immediately come to mind:

• How do I reconnect with my past?
• Where do I begin?

This will take some investigative work on your part of course.

First, you need to list your friends’ names.

“Where am I going to find these names?,” you ask.

Here are some sources you might find useful:

• School yearbooks
• Graduation Programs
• Old photo albums – these might jog your memory
• Classmates.com – they’re trying to sell a service, but you will see the names of people in your class (Elementary School, Middle School, High School, College)
• Search for your school using Google, Wikipedia, Yahoo, Bing (Remember to include City and State if necessary)
• Business Cards – many times people you know will give you their business card to remember them.  Some of us have a folder or Rolodex full of them.
• Phone lists – If you’ve worked for large companies before, you sometimes get a phone list of important contacts
• email archives – sometimes, you might find other contacts who were copied on the email.  This is a great source of contacts
• LinkedIn.com – a business oriented social network, as you create your profile, it helps you get in touch with other people from organizations you’ve worked for

If you’re lucky you’ll find an announcement of a reunion or an alumni association.

If you do find a current email to a past connection, you can always invite them to join your network on Facebook or LinkedIn.  Once you start making network connections with a few people from the past, others who know you and them will start connecting with you too.

If you don’t find anything, you can always start an Alumni association for your school.

While researching this article, I was able to find alumni from each of the schools I’ve attended; from Elementary through College.

Good luck on your efforts to reconnect your past and present social networks.