There's been a gradual evolution of how stories are told via traditional mediums. We've seen A-listers moving to the small screen to tell stories across whole seasons of television shows, and movies painting entire universes across a decade of cinema.

Episodic content is evolving.

With the advent of online content, an opportunity to tell bigger stories through smaller, individual pieces of content has developed.

When a video drops it is common for it to be accompanied by an attendant cloud of related content, usually shorter cutdowns of the main piece but I think this is a missed opportunity.

The term Meta narratives, as part of postmodern theory, used to refer to the bigger narratives our everyday stories are built on, but has since fallen out of favour. So I'm suggesting a slight repurposing of the phrase.

Now when planning a series of social media content why not consider the meta narrative it's part of? So that each piece of content is self contained yet at the same time reveals part of a wider story or message.

Comic books have been exploring larger narrative universes since the 1960s as a way to sell more comics, and now we have the opportunity to explore additional layers of engagement across multiple pieces of content and mediums in exactly the same way.

Rather than putting out different length cutdowns of the same film, why not produce different flavours for different channels (i.e a more visual film for Instagram, a socially orientated film for Facebook or a business related angle for Linkedin) all rooted in your one meta narrative?

A little forethought goes a long way.