Breadcrumb Storytelling – A fun way to keep the audience interested and engaged

Here is a thought, imagine you as the content creator is the witch in the popular folktale of ‘Hansel and Gretel’ and the content consumers are the titular children in this tale. You as the witch wants to lead them into your house to well gobble them up. In this allegory, the house is the desired action or feeling you want the content consumers to have after consuming the breadcrumbs that you had provided earlier. This is what I call ‘breadcrumb storytelling’.

I believe by using this method, content can be made more interesting and you have a better chance of eliciting a better response from consumers. These days, whether it be reading an article on medium, watching a video on youtube, or be it listening to a podcast on Apple Podcasts, the content might be very interesting but the medium is just stale. However, using the power of Transmedia and this method, the act of consuming content can be made more engaging and fun.

There is so much noise in content these days that many consumers of media seem to be bored of consuming content in the usual channels. In order to combat that boredom, how about instead of giving away the full content in one medium, just chop it up into a few easily digestible pieces and mixed around different mediums. For instance, the beginning of the content can be introduced on Twitter and then the meat of the content on Facebook Videos, and the ending at Instagram. Due to this, the consumer does not get the full content in one-shot but rather anticipates for the next morsel.

This might be counter to the current method of content delivery where all content needs to be pushed out right here right now. Look at how Netflix has brought about this change of binge-watching tv shows instead of watching an episode a week. This has stopped the longevity of content being allowed to take up expensive real estate in our collective psyche and effectively reduced the cycle in which good content gets to thrive in the worldwide web.

However, due to that binging culture embedded in the post-Netflix Era and Web 3.0, it might be hard to pull off such a breadcrumb storytelling strategy. People are very much infected with having the attention span of a goldfish, always scrolling and looking for the next relevant content to get that dopamine fix. However, in post-2020, we can use these kinds of methods to get media consumers out of that kind of mentality and create a mindset where content is actively consumed with purpose instead of being couch potatoes or internet zombie addicts.

Using Transmedia lets slowly entice consumers to this kind of media consumption so that content can live longer and we all can have a higher appreciation for good content and most importantly relive of our boredom in an interesting new way. Whos knows?! This could be a part and parcel of content consumption in the upcoming Web 4.0. I for one am looking forward to the future and optimistically hoping that content creation and consumption can and will become better.