How do you tell a story that fits every platform?

The driving force behind all your stories is your CORE story. It's NOT just knowing your audience but also each platform's audience and demographics. For example, blogs are often long-form written content. They're readers. Youtube can be both long-form and short-form content (youtube shorts), the age range is massive. TikTok often appeals more to GenZ, prefer short animated content. Instagram - visuals, X and Threads - short texts. Facebook has an older demographic and is more community driven.

A story is a story, it doesn't change depending on the format/platform. What changes, however, is the narrative structure and sequence. This is where the hard work - and the magic - goes in. Ask yourself: what's the best structure for this platform? How about the cadence? The unfolding of sequences? How fast or slow of a pace does the platform and its users allow?

When it comes to the core message try to focus on the one thing you want to leave your readers with okay. Let's say you are promoting something. What do you want your readers to do or think at the end? Do you want them to go ahead and click on any link? Your story should drive them to that action. You can't share more than one idea, they might take more lessons, but your work is to make it easy for them to get the lesson and go on their merry way with it.

How to find your core message: Why do you do what you do? Why this matters? If you're able to articulate that, then that's your core message. To turn it into a story, ask yourself, where where you? When was this? Who was there with you? Tell it like it's unfolding right in front of you. That's a good way to start.

You can make it easy for yourself. See how others are writing on a particular platform and try to write a certain way without overthinking it. LinkedIn posts- Maximum of 2 lines. Articles- 1 line, 3 line, 5 line, and repeat. Quora- paragraphs do well. Similarly, see how things are working the best and how you like to read the content. And follow it.

Adjust your style and tone but still be true to yourself. We are all multifaceted. Don't try to be someone you're not. Your audience can sense inauthenticity and would derail from your core message. So my advice: adapt to the style of the platform but to your comfort level.

The most important part of telling a story, is curating it according to the audience. Such as to how a fairytale would be told to a 5 year old vs if it was being made into a feature film for an adult audience. Similarly, when it comes to different platforms we have to be mindful of the demographics, by understanding the humans highest engaged on that platform and how they perceive, receive and engage with content. Mastering their preferences and also keeping track with their trends is the first step the storyteller can take to really figure out HOW to tell them the story at hand.

You're not going to find something that fits EVERY platform without editing. That is a pipe dream. The core may stay the same. But you'll have to edit to fit the medium.

WHY before HOW, and the same is true for telling (or not telling!) a story across platforms. A few WHYs to jumpstart your thinking: 💡 Why do I want to tell this story? 💡 Why is it important for my audience? 💡 Why is this the right moment or channel to tell this to them? If the answer to these WHYs help you decide that a platform is indeed the right place for your story, begin to ask the HOWs and WHATs: 💭 How should I then shape this story? 💭 How should I deliver this (visuals, text, etc)? 💭 What relevant elements do I keep in my story? 💭 What call-to-action do I give to my audience? WHY-HOW-WHAT, a powerful way to test if telling your story works across platforms.

Storytelling should be done as it gets done for a 3-year-old child. Curated as per the message the parent wants to give in a given situation, characters should be the receiver's linking, the story plot should be according to the receiver's level of concentration. In a nutshell, every platform requires a different level of attention to detail, perceived audience, content strategy and customer span of focus.