DEVELOPING A VISUAL STORYTELLING ROAD MAP: FROM STRATEGY TO IMPLEMENTATION 133 Social media at its finest is a continuous, two-way dialogue between your company and your customers. If you can use social listening to inspire relevant content ideas that prompt conversation and engagement, you’re one step further toward hitting those key objectives. Summarizing Your Audit Once you’ve gone through auditing your efforts and consumer conver- sations online, summarize your top 5 to 10 key takeaways. What really jumped out to you? Was it that posts on Monday morning always per- form above average, or that your consumers take a ton of photos of your products? Do customers talk about one thing on Facebook but something completely different on Twitter? You may have even identified FAQs that are asked over and over again, or you discover an unexpected use for one of your products. All of these takeaways can be translated into themes for your content calendar. Depending on your resources, it’s good to go through this process on an ongoing basis. Even if it’s not as robust, going through a topline pro- cess monthly with a deeper dive quarterly will help to keep you on track. It will also ensure that you’re not missing any new themes or trends to craft content around. Just because your customers were saying something one month doesn’t mean that it will carry on forever. The best companies and brands on social media strive to be nimble to change and tweak their content themes as needed. It’s not until we look closely at our efforts that we understand our strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. Studying your current efforts and how your consumers perceive your company are key to your content planning and measurement efforts. It will also give you that much-needed support to turn down that completely off-topic, off-strategy post request the next time it crosses your desk. When brands use data and historical analysis to optimize their engage- ment strategy, they see a significantly higher impact than they would see with just using random visuals.