Author Archives: Laura Studley
Me too. And I didn’t realize just how much I’d fallen off the Twitter wagon until this subject line appeared in my inbox this week: “We’ve missed you on Twitter!” Gasp! Had it really been three months since I tweeted. Indeed it had. The reality is, I’d run out of steam, and had been for a while.
Before my Twitter derailment
I started out on Twitter much like many other people, tweeting about ordinary things like which patio I was having lunch on or venting about some unfortunate incident I’d experienced in the day 
– likely some guy spitting on the sidewalk in close proximity to my feet. As more people joined with more interesting content to offer I got a mild case of Twitter stage fright. Could I really be brilliant all the time? In all honesty, sometimes. Still, I plodded along, upping my game when I could with wittier tweets and better content as more and more people began to follow me.
Signs of boredom appear
Over time I noticed a few patterns emerging. If life was a bit status quo, so were my tweets. If life was awesome and random and exciting, so were my tweets. I found there was a direct correlation to the activity in my life and the activity on my Twitter feed. When I traveled, I couldn’t tweet fast enough about where I was and what I saw. When I was super excited about something, I shared it immediately. But on a day when I wasn’t particularly inspired and had little to say, my Twitter posts would stall and my anxiety would start to grow. And I couldn’t always bring myself to scour the blogosphere and then fake spontaneous brilliance.
My first break from Twitter
Soon enough, Twitter lethargy set in. I didn’t post or sign in for a while. Didn’t even stalk my friends to keep up with their lives. Of course that backfired a bit when I started to feel out of the loop and friends started to say “Didn’t you see it? I posted it on Twitter.” Read More
The first time I heard the term Transmedia I completely glossed over. I don’t know why, but I just assumed it was tech-related and being a writer I immediately discounted it. As it turns out, it’s 100% relevant to what I do for a living and is actually extending the demand for good storytellers beyond mainstream web.
Lots of people are talking about it
In the land of storytellers the term Transmedia is popping up regularly on the conference circuits. I attended a seminar at FITC in the spring of last year, and another at Mesh Marketing in November. I’ve heard both James Milward of Secret Location and Ivan Askwith of Big Spaceship speak about this not-so-new genre, and here’s a recap of some of what they had to say.
So what is it?
Transmedia is about leveraging the inherent qualities of the device you are using to tell your story, not just repeating the same story over and over again in the same way. In other words, you start with a core story, and then add layers to that story by taking advantage of the unique benefits of different channels.
BMW experimented with Transmedia back in 2001 with a series of short films. These films starred high-profile directors and actors in highly immersive films. Ang Lee, Guy Ritchie, John Woo are only a few of the big names that made the cut. The only requirement for the films – a BMW had to be in it. By telling a story around the product versus about the product they were able to sell the brand story at the same time.
5 guiding principles when working in Transmedia
