If you have a good story ready, as per our article “Storytelling: Five Building Blocks for Good Stories”, you also need to deliver it to your target audience. For a story to be heard, read, and seen, it's ideal to build a “story universe”. This includes transmedia storytelling. We reveal how to master this high art of storytelling in this article from our storytelling series.
The New Players in Storytelling
During the 90s, cross-media storytelling was still quite effective. Stories could be consumed through various media (e.g., very current at the time, via audiobooks on cassettes), primarily linearly. Today, that's no longer enough. To capture interest, a “story universe” with a core narrative must be created.
Stories today are no longer told linearly, sentence by sentence. Instead, in our digital age, we must engage with multimedia and interactive content. This, of course, opens up a lot of room for creativity. Ever since televisions spread into our living rooms, it's become quite easy to interrupt, pause, or even consume multiple stories in parallel.
The second screen era has shown us since the early 2010s: we often consume multiple stories simultaneously, switch between various content and devices, and only consume when we feel like it. Already over half of Germans regularly use TV and the internet on a second device in parallel. However, direct use of a second device, usually a smartphone or tablet, in relation to a running programme, is rather rare.
Today, stories are also told much more openly and flexibly. There's no longer an untouched storyteller. The universe around one's own story is expanded with interactive elements such as games and apps. “Consumption” becomes “interaction”.
THE DIGITAL WORLD PROVIDES US WITH THE TOOLS TO TELL STORIES IN A CONTEMPORARY AND ENGAGING WAY
- Videos (YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat)
- Real-time conversations (Periscope, Facebook Live)
- Gamification (Duolingo)
The basis of transmedia stories is a media strategy (or content strategy) that goes beyond the isolated approach of marketing and PR.
IT IS THEREFORE ADVISABLE TO UTILISE THE ENTIRE PESO SPECTRUM OF MEDIA:
- Paid Media (traditional advertisements such as print and AdWords)
- Earned Media (Public Relations)
- Shared Media (viral stories)
- Owned Media (own media such as blogs)
How Stories Go Viral
One word is heard (too) often when it comes to spreading stories online: “viral”. Yet virality is not an invention of the internet. Good stories have always been passed on. Our ancestors already shared stories orally and in writing. Stories were constantly altered, embellished, or reinterpreted. The difference from transmedia storytelling? Stories used to be told linearly. And perhaps this is also why we love such linear stories and why no Angry Birds in the world can replace a good storyteller for children.
Is this linearity perhaps also the reason for Snapchat's success? On the new social network, you are almost forced to follow a story continuously – from beginning to end. And you have to give it your full, undivided attention, because the stories are only available once for 24 hours. “Attention Economy at its best”, so to speak.
The fact is, there is no “recipe” for viral stories. Sorry, the heading might have given some hope here. But there are
that favour the virality of stories. One also speaks of stories needing to be “shareable”.
Creating Shareability
Thousands of clicks by no means guarantee a “virus-like” spread online. Often, attention is gone after just a few seconds. Viral stories give recipients the feeling that they are worth sharing. So, as is often the case, it all depends on the content. And it can happen that you build a large following overnight.
WHEN SHARING STORIES, PEOPLE PURSUE DIFFERENT MOTIVATIONS:
- Helpfulness (“My friends need to know this.”)
- Self-presentation (“
”) – Encouraging self-reflection (“Look, we are also responsible for climate change.”) – Gaining attention (“I was the first!”)
Thales Teixeira, Professor of Marketing at Harvard Business School, refers in an article to the importance of egocentric and extroverted orientation on the internet. Many people want to elevate their own status and demonstrate their taste and competence through the content they share.
IF THE NECESSARY MOTIVATION IS PRESENT, SHARING MUST ALSO BE MADE AS EASY AS POSSIBLE. THEREFORE, THE FOLLOWING MEASURES ARE RECOMMENDED:
- Social Share Buttons Nowadays standard for blogs, but not yet taken for granted for other content. Buttons for relevant social networks (mostly Facebook and Twitter) should ideally be available with every piece of content. This allows content to be shared quickly and easily.
- Open Graph Objects The Open Graph protocol allows external content on social networks to look like native content. With the help of metatags, for example, title, image, and description can be offered in a format optimised for social networks.
- Appealing Imagery A picture says more than a thousand words. If you tell a story in pure text form, it should always be supported with appealing images or videos. Even infographics and GIFs are well suited to communicate the messages of stories concisely and appealingly (and shareably).
- Call-to-Action Begging for content to be shared makes no sense, of course. But when telling a story, one should also not forget a corresponding (perhaps subtle) call to action at the end. An Instagram post could, for example, end with a question (along the lines of “And what do you think?”).
Opportunities & Risks
A major danger in transmedia storytelling is that the actual core of the “story universe” gets lost. If a company manages to make a cat GIF go viral, that may be entertaining, but the message has probably been lost.
The more media or channels you use, the more effort is also required for the production and monitoring of the content. Transmedia storytelling can be very diverse and thus appeal to the most diverse people (corresponding to different learning styles). However, this also means increased production effort. Instead of just writing a text, videos need to be produced and apps programmed. And the quality of the content should always be paramount.
Another problem with transmedia storytelling is the lack of opportunity to test success in advance. There are no models, no rules for success, no recipes or secrets as to whether and how the self-constructed “story universe” will work, and whether it will expand or collapse. It's equally difficult to evaluate relevant key figures and quantitatively measure success
