Multimodality: The modern storyteller’s best friend?
A critical reflection of how Instagram Stories can be used as a powerful tool of communication
Paving the way for platforms to come, Snapchat first introduced us to Stories in 2013. Instagram soon followed suit and introduced their own Stories to the platform in 2016, with over 500 million people now using Instagram Stories daily. But what makes them so effective?
As defined by an article from the Review of Cognitive Linguistics, multimodal digital storytelling is “an expanding activity by which ordinary people all over the world relate their personal experiences in the form of a multimodal story and upload them onto the Internet.”. According to Social Media Today, Facebook announced in 2019 that over 1 billion people were using Stories every day across their family of apps (Facebook Stories, Instagram Stories and WhatsApp Status). Additionally, their research showed that 57% of people agreed that Stories made them feel part of a larger community. Evidently, it is now easier than ever before for users to create and share content. When used effectively, Instagram Stories allow creators to engage more people through their use of multimodality.
“Multimodality adds complexity to both the production and interpretation of digital stories.” Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 2013
I recently experimented with using Instagram Stories as a storytelling medium, with the intent of sharing some information from my research and promoting my blog posts. Below are some of the Stories I created:
A study from Microsoft found that the average human’s attention span is just 8 seconds — meaning you have limited time to grab your audience’s attention. Thankfully, the concise nature of Stories ensures that this is relatively easy to fulfil. The ultimate goal of these stories was to direct followers to my blog post. In order to do so I carried out a few steps which actively encouraged them to click through to the end of the Stories, eventually leading them to my post.
Buffer writes that when promoting a recent blog post it can be useful to create a storyboard that showcases the key points, enticing readers to click through. With this in mind, I chose the statistics that I felt to be most important. A design element that I became aware of when using Canva to create my infographics, is the importance of staying within the Story frame. If placed too high or low, the information is covered by the account username or Direct Message function, leading to decreased visibility. Furthermore, I learnt the importance of colour in design. A study in the Management Decision journal found that “people make up their minds within 90 seconds of their initial interactions” with people or products, and around 62–90% of these judgements are based on colours. A Reader’s Digest article highlights a study that found mostly-blue images gained 24% more likes than images containing red. With this in mind, I opted for a blue theme with contrasting white text for clarity.
To further encourage my audience to click through, I added a moving sticker of a cursor pointing towards the next slide. This engages with the multimodal and interactive aspect of stories, encouraging readers to physically ‘tap’ on their screens to see more. I had previously been aware of the importance of Instagram Stickers with regards to interaction, but only when creating Stories with the intent of increasing engagement did I research this further. Stickers are a great way of interacting with your audience — but should be used sparingly. Social Media Today states that stickers should be kept to a minimum, used only in the right context. For this reason I only added one ‘ask me a question’ Sticker, encouraging my followers to engage in the conversation. Finally, I directed followers to the link in my bio which led to my blog. Due to Stories only lasting 24 hours I also found it was crucial to publish them as Highlights, ensuring that anyone landing on my page after the Story had been deleted would still be able to see them
In order to ensure that Stories are as effective as possible, the approach should be tailored to the content. Different verticals of multimodality such as videos, GIFs, Stickers and Hashtags are also important and should be explored and used where appropriate. With regards to blogging, social journalism and the sharing of information — Instagram Stories are indeed the modern storyteller’s best friend!
