Came across a couple of additional postings that relate to the upcoming Social Story: How To Tell Your Story Through Social Media Conference (Aug. 24 in Denver).
Anthony Townsend is annoyed that “There aren’t any stories” on venues like Twitter and Facebook. “Some conversations become really good stories,” he writes, “but unless you follow them in real-time you’re S.O.L. They dissipate and hang there in the cloud like a cool blue mist of vaporized bank notes.” Further:
… since there’s no way to link updates or layer metadata to create a narrative structure, you have to manually sort through timelines and excavate that structure like a cyberspatial Sherlock Holmes.
I know many who would disagree that no stories exist on social-media venues, but most would probably agree that social-media stories are fragmented and, as Townsend points out, useless unless followed in real time. Folks would also probably agree that the perfect social-media venue for supporting storytelling has yet to emerge.
When it does, Townsend suggests, it will become the Next Big Thing:
My forecast is — social networks and the real-time web are either a) going to morph into storytelling media that provide tools to construct narrative on top of the update stream, or b) are going to stop growing as people seek out a different set of tools that are better for communication and storytelling than social networks, which do a mediocre job at both.
(Part 2 of Townsend’s post discusses some venues that are moving in predicted directions — gaming and location-based apps.)
While we’re waiting for the perfect social-media storytelling mashup, Ian McGonnigal has offered a list of tips to apply to social-media storytelling He wrote a few months ago about “how critical storytelling is to successful brand engagement on the social web as well as at face-to-face events.” You can read more details of each tip in his posting:
- Have a purpose.
- Clearly articulate the theme.
- Keep it simple.
- Ensure your story has a structure and a well-defined plot.
- Use the right tools to tell your story.
- Engage your audience.
- Choose the right protagonist.
- Defeat the antagonist.
- Communicate like a human being.
- Be Authentic.