The fourth toolkit, known as the Platform module, addresses the task of creating and growing a community with which to share story ideas. Such a community is of course one that shares the interest of the storyteller, and is genuinely committed to being involved. Knowing how to harness it and nurture it are therefore intrinsic to any successful strategic storytelling campaign.
Broken down into two sections, the module first addresses finding the right places and platforms to establish a connection with audiences, and how stories can help audiences connect with the user’s organization and others who care about the particular mission.
Section One: Selecting Your Platforms, users are asked to consider which platforms they intend to use based on which ones are likely to make the biggest impact. For this, a number of things need to be considered, such as the objective the user is hoping to achieve, the age of the audience, where they live, and what tools will be employed to reach them (i.e. video, photography, copy, etc.)
In Section Two: Engaging Your Community, the focus shifts to social networks and the role they play in modern storytelling. It also acknowledges that though an organization may be using multiple social platforms, their audience may prefer communicating and sharing on one in particular. Such a process is organic and natural, and knowing which is preferred is key.
As such, users are asked to take a look at the way they communicate via social media, what tone they set in their communications, what tone they hope to adopt for the sake of their story (urgent, compassionate, uplifting, dour, etc.) and how they will go about dealing with responses – be they positive or negative.
All of this sets the user up to enter into the fifth and final step in the storytelling suite - Evaluation.
