The pitfalls on the internet are lurking and that, strangely enough, has everything to do with the low threshold of social media. Before you know it, you have posted something . The 'events' then become short fragments that stand alone and are only recognized afterwards as the scene from a larger story. Just look at your own timeline. Can you discover a tight storyline in it? An aspiration or an ambition? A development that leads to a deeper insight? On the contrary: often it is no more than a digital scrapbook about yourself. Full of unstructured forget-me-nots and fun moments. The 'I' with a narcissistic streak, or the 'I' as a raging reporter. Without a line to be discovered there. The real story only comes into being in the succession of all those fragmentary posts, opinions and reactions. Only from that reconstruction does the real story come into being.
People, brands and organisations
Scrapbook 1.0
And what applies to your timeline, certainly also applies to the digital story of a brand or organization. Although here it seems that the direction is somewhat better. And at the same time, that direction is immediately so visible (the voice of the omniscient narrator) that it immediately detracts from the authenticity. Because we want to keep it human: so not perfect, but with small cracks and mistakes. We recognize that, because we are that ourselves.
What applies to us should also apply to brands and organizations: digital identity should have interfaces with physical identity. If it is good, they are almost indistinguishable.
Framing: the narrator's voice
There is something else involved in this identity. Stories are told from a certain perspective (that of the narrator, or that of the camera). From that perspective, the event is interpreted and the meaning is clear. As if we put a frame around it and type a small caption. That is the essential characteristic of ' framing '. We know from the traditional media: the Telegraaf reports the same news differently than NRC (at least, that used to be the case). And especially the way in which they report it (and not so much the event) says a lot about who you are, how you look at the world and how you judge. Contemplative, humorous or downright cynical.
The 'voice' of the narrator largely determines how you look at the event. After all, you look at that event through his or her glasses. Think for example of the style of Geenstijl (they consciously seek out the boundaries), but especially of the style of their commenters, who try to outdo each other in often cynical originality.
In summary, you can conclude that with digital storytelling you must above all denmark telegram data be aware of the differences and similarities between the traditional and digital story world. In both worlds the laws of the story are the same, but the fragmentation in the digital world means that you must very carefully build a tight digital storyline. This requires that you know what you want to talk about and what you don't want to talk about, what you do and don't respond to. That you think in advance about a structure of the story in time, and that you are aware of your narrator's voice. Who am I and how do I view the world? That is not new, it is called campaigning.
Creating Story
This also includes realizing that you are not telling your story (or the story of your brand or organization) on a stage to an attentive audience in the room. Be aware of your own place in that room, of the moments when you have the microphone to contribute something and of the fact that your story is also being told by others (just look at Facebook report). The time of broadcasting long monologues yourself is long gone. If you are not careful, you will start to behave like a digital autistic, posting and posting endlessly , without listening to others or being aware of the actual conversation. How 'social' is that?
In a next contribution we will delve deeper into the true purpose of digital storytelling: the story as the start of a valuable conversation in the digital world.