Cross-Media Marketing - Make your Message Shine!

 From ancient cave men to present day, the charm and emotional resonance that storytelling can bring is invaluable. Cross-Media, also referred to as 'Trans-Media' is the process of 'Storytelling' using digital tools to bring your Story to life.

One such tool is Animoto - A plausibly free website on which you can post your photos, video, Text pages and imagery into pre-made templates and make them you own. Approachable, flexible and containing a generous amount of options for the average user, Animoto is a tool that can bring Life and experience to your story.

This is my second effort on Animoto and I can see the engagement that this tool can bring to both business and personal projects - ending in a professional, enjoyable product that creates true talk value. I LOVE IT!

Wordle Clouds in the Sky

I found that using Wordle to create a story cloud reflected similar points to my own notes. 

Words like story, building, cross-platform, engagement, and experience are all words that I noted as important or key words. The Wordle highlights story and audience as focus words- I think I would have added engagement due to the importance of the audience in transmedia. As the article states, there are two main parts to transmedia and the targeted audience engagement can make or break a work of digital storytelling.  

This application would be a great addition to creating an academic paper or an essay draft when reviewing multiple works. I do find, as an avid note taker myself, I enjoy writing down sentences such as "cohesive audience experience" as the whole sentence allows for more of a direct definition of the important points. I also notes the authors point about being two parts, as transmedia is not only about a creative storyline, but also about a multiple platform experience and how this experience interacts with the audience. 

I also enjoyed the term "audience architect." I believe this term applies to all users and creators of content for social media. Not only is it important to have great content, the content must be applicable to the audience it is being showcased to. 

- Samantha 

What is Cross-Media Storytelling - A Storify experiment

*Google Photo - Creative Commons

If you have a computer and you have searched the web, you have unconsciously been reading and experiencing cross-media storytelling for years! Using multiple platforms such as: Twitter, Facebook, Blogs and other social media platforms, digital technology has slowly been changing the way we read, interpret and experience the world.

I undertook to explain to an average person the concept of cross-media storytelling using a multi-modal approach through the use of Storify as a visual pathway to understanding the concept, execution and reasons for the changes in our storytelling world.



Research resources chosen: I attempted to conceptualize/visualize my research using information from both experts and professionals in the media/social media/marketing fields.

Platform resources included: Twitter, Blogs, Infographics, YouTube, TedTalk and resources from our course. My Research tools: Storify medium for searches. 

•  Twitter Hashtag tracking: Used to find interesting conversations and posts about my topic matter: #Digitalstorytelling, #Transmediastorytelling #crossmedia. Although difficult at first due to a sensitive case issue with hashtag searches, I finally found a number of sources that proved fruitful and selected one that would fit the educational and entertaining experiential tone of the piece.
• Google: Used Google search in Storify by searching terms such: Digital Narrative, Cross-Media Storytelling, Trans-media and finally found some great blogs and videos that would be appropriate to the flow and information set I wanted while being visually compelling where possible. Pictures - I used Google to search for creative commons pictures.
•  Links - I also attached Hyperlinks where I wished to provide an outsource to the information and finally provide a link to my Twitter site for following with a call to action to conclude.

Storify Experience- The platform has been purchased and therefor has changed a great deal in the last few months and has taken away some of the customization options previously offered. I certainly found it a lot more cumbersome to work with than previous projects. I certainly think that the topic could easily expand into a paper and the possible inclusions are endless.

'These Waves of Girls' - She was warned...

The Blog itself was appropriately titled the content was like being tossed on the waves of the ocean in that, the messages conveyed were somewhat random and wandering. In the article that we read, we felt that the nature of this wandering and the links therein took away from the narrative, rather than adding to it.

The character does describe herself as 'Drunk' in the text on Black Russians' and 'high on Mushrooms' which, in light of the wandering nature of the text leads one to wonder....Is the text meant to be the ramblings of a drunk/high  girl of 15?

Visuals
The visual nature of the blog made it difficult to read the text at times and we additionally had difficulty deciphering who the narrator was: Tammy, (the Slut - which is never referred to again beyond the preface of the title and therefor relates to nothing) or Vivian who, would appear to be a by-stander to Tammy losing her teeth?
In relation to the title 'She was Warned' at no time was there a warning in the text - therefor, the message expectation does not deliver and misleading.

Links
We chose not to 'engage' with more than one link in the trans-media piece which was influenced by a an epic 'Fail' on the content of the first link - which shed little insight into the story itself and was not a an experience leading back to the overarching story - just more seemingly 'random rambling'.

The links are used to displace you - as an exemplification of where the character is mentally, for her age and state in life.

The Links do however provide another recourse for stories and characters but, are not necessarily connected to the actual story you were in. The pieces are stand alone but may lend background on the protagonist herself - Tammy?


Samantha Lau's blog provides additional background analysis on the thematic nature of 'The Waves of Girls' providing the connection between sexuality, structure and the abstract nature of the graphics within this blog that may be of interest to readers of this piece. Samantha Lau's Critical review

Written By: Crystal Armstrong, Kristin Black, Louise McEachern

Module 5: Twitter Fiction

Module 5 Twitter Fiction

Activities/Assignments ●      Add a comment to Module 5’s blog post in which you respond to Carla Raguseo’s statement: “Twitter fiction can provide learners with a rich language experience in easily digestible fragments. It challenges them both as readers and as writers to attempt and explore multiple meanings and to develop academic skills such as synthesizing and paraphrasing while fostering structural and semantic awareness in playful experimentation.” ●      Live tweet @JessL THREE initial reactions and responses as you make your way through ONE of the three Twitterature readings

Module 4: Writing for Social Media (Marketing)

Module 4 Writing for Social Media (Marketing)

Activities/Assignments ●      Add a comment to Module 4’s blog post with your reaction to infographics. Are you a staunch supporter of their engaging presentation of information or do you abhor their excessive inclusion of unnecessary design elements? ●      Tweet @JessL with two examples of how Twitter can sharpen your writing.