Content Strategy and the Full Potential of the Web

The last few weeks have been a dizzying but wonderful storm of story writing and Halloween prop building, and now that there are no props left to build (not for this year, anyway!) I can return to the writing without distractions.

One of my favorite aspects of writing A Timely Raven has been exploring different ways to use the web as a medium for storytelling. Lots of people publish online fiction; not a lot of people are willing to tell their stories in a non-linear, interactive, multimedia fashion. Perhaps there’s good reason for this; we all know how to read books, and if we mimic books online, our readers know what to expect and how to tackle what we’ve given them.

But what’s the fun in that?

Don’t get me wrong — I have a deep and abiding love for the printed word, and my adoration for books and libraries and tangible, sniffable reading materials is nigh unbounded. Yet, if storytellers are going to publish on the web, shouldn’t we use it to its fullest its capacity? Shouldn’t we explore the various methods it provides for shaping an enthralling, consuming story?

And to that end, why should storytellers and novelists have all the fun? Why shouldn’t web content writers use the web to the fullest as well?

Although I’ve long wanted to write an online story, the real reason I began writing A Timely Raven was because I wanted to explore different ways of using web apps and social media to develop and integrate online content. I wanted to see if a solid content strategy could be developed using traditional storytelling methods and online media. I wanted to explore how multiple narratives could spring from a single point of entry, allowing users and readers to “choose their own adventure”, turning a website into a mere starting point for a guided, useful treasure hunt that resulted in accumulated information that could then be transformed into knowledge.

Last year, I took some time off as a web designer to work as a graphic designer in an instructional design setting. This taught me two important lessons: 1) I love web design, not graphic design, and 2) instructional design can be extremely useful for developing content strategy, as it considers the various ways people learn, and integrates different approaches to learning (visual, aural, kinesthetic, etc.) into curriculum development, much the way a good website uses multimedia to reach its various audiences.

My approach to content strategy has always centered around education, information sharing, and learning — I was never interested in trying to sell anybody anything as a primary goal. Working in instructional design gave me the tools to do my job as an educator better, and once I was able to take what I learned about learning models to the web, the rest seemed to fall into place.

One thing was clear: a solid content strategy includes creating an integrated, holistic web experience that extends beyond a client’s primary website. A good content strategy has to incorporate all online presences: social media apps such as Twitter and Facebook, community sites such as Yelp, and even location-awareness-building tools such as Google Maps and CommunityWalk. Wherever an organization has a presence, that presence needs to be integrated unobtrusively and naturally into the main storyline to build a total user experience. And in instances where those tools aren’t being utilized, a strategist has to know how and which tools to use to develop the multi-faceted online persona that every organization needs. 

So, to that end, the exercise of writing A Timely Raven has been profoundly useful. What I’ve published here is just the tip of the iceberg (and not yet complete; there is one vignette left still to publish) — what I have planned for A Timely Raven should end up being quite an undertaking. (Hell, I figure if I’m going to tackle a project, I’m going to throw all the awesome at it that I can.) But before I can rock that project, I need y’all’s input. 

Question: What are you favorite web apps or social media tools that might be appropriate for use in online storytelling? What do you know about how a web app can be used that other people might not know? (You might be surprised to discover, for instance, how many people wrote to tell me they had no idea Google Maps could be used the way Raven uses it in the story.) What tools and media should organizations be taking advantage of to extend their online presence?