Free your stories! It’s not about you anymore, it’s about what you can do…
The ever-growing stories format on social media intrigues us here at Tick. In fact, it’s the obvious inspiration behind our own Tick story format… although possibly not for the reasons you might think.
I witness countless friends investing time and energy to string together images, videos and graphics into attractive little slide-show ‘moments’ which I’m prompted to view immediately on opening IG or FB. I mindlessly tap through them, scroll right for the next (damn it, an advert, swipe again) and then eventually I tire and swipe up to scroll the main feed mindlessly for a few more minutes.
A modicum of FOMO, some body or holiday envy later or my mouth drooling from food-porn, and bang goes 9 or 10 minutes of my life I’m never getting back.
Yes, some are well constructed and entertaining, but I’ve got to be honest, I still don’t quite ‘get it’… I’m just not sure of the value over and above the same showing off we’re all used to — a moving, gif-edited string, as opposed to a static one.. and yet, they take more time to construct and edit than simple uploads to the feed and most useless of all (in my view!), they’re ephemeral. In the main, they just dissipate into the social ether. Well that experience I just had was cool, don’t you think? Next! Seriously, why bother?
In a rather meta, (passive aggressive?) manner, I actually did a ‘story’ recently asking my followers why they did stories and the responses came back:
‘People like the non-permanence of stories. Less post-post-paranoia’
‘I thought we were all doing stories precisely because they disappear!’
‘Love stories! See it once… quick to process.. Even quicker to scroll through if no interest’
‘You save them to highlights on your profile so if they’re important, then it gets saved!’
Nope, still none the wiser — although the appeal of the ephemeral is intriguing.
To my mind, it’s the same rose-tinted self-promotion that Instagram brings out in the best of us…on crack (sorry, mates) and an intense waste of time and effort. Surely if we’re going to bother investing time in creating something, it shouldn’t be with the intent of wasting others’ time (and potentially making them feel bad about the lives they’re not living)?
The beautiful sequencing of stories, step-by-step has SO much potential that I rarely see friends taking advantage of. It represents a quicker, more efficient way to showcase movement, change, progression. It’s the perfect way to teach, inform and demonstrate a creative or skilful process from start-to-finish.
But of course, there’s not a lot of point to capturing those sort of stories on social media. It’s at odds with the model as the story content doesn’t ‘live’ anywhere — it can’t be tagged, indexed, or discovered later according to its subject matter.
Well of course, the point to all this is that now it can. Tick. Done.
Tick offers the same (if not less) effort. A story that is free… searchable, discoverable from Google and one that converts that narcissistic effort to altruism and gives back. A similar creative process, but one that results in the storing of your knowledge, passion and skills for posterity so that others can learn from it. One that is accessible to everyone, not just your followers (and indeed, may earn you more in the process!). And of course, if you want to post the same content elsewhere too… by all means, do!
Free your stories. From ‘selfies’ to ‘otheries’… help us to convert social narcissism into open-web altruism. Because these days, it’s not just about you… it’s about the knowledge, passion and skills that you have to potentially share with the whole world… not just a few followers.
(A few examples here of things you could learn in the same amount of time you might have otherwise spent fuelling your green monster… enjoy!)
Things to do with kids that don’t involve screen-time| Fold a shirt like Marie Kondo| How to do Paris is 48 hours | How to make an origami swan | How to send quick photo postcards using the Touchnote app )
