136 THE POWER OF VISUAL STORYTELLING were encouraged to share the image that included their prediction for which team would win, and in how many games. Both of these campaigns created a consistent feel to the page and a repeatable success for the NBA. In addition to these campaigns, the team wanted to create a few posts that would really stand out and create buzz. One idea was to design and post championship rings and banners for the Heat and the Spurs, countdown posts leading up to the crucial finals game 7, and even posts celebrating Father’s Day and the NBA’s Social Media Awards. And fans loved it! These posts even got picked up by Bleacher Report, Fox Sports, and the NESN channel. This visual strategy and creative thinking led to an increase of nearly six times more shares than the previous year’s posts. Visual storytelling is the confluence Shaping Your Visual Story of art and science, balancing an intended message with purpose Now starts the really exciting stage of taking your goals and mutual value while investing and current social media content efforts, plus any new in the medium and the culture that learnings, and translating them into your visual storytell- defines it. It’s not only meant to be ing program. A little planning goes a long way in terms of consumed but also designed to be keeping your efforts strategic and on track. shared . . . educating, informing, Goals may be the backbone of your visual storytell- and entertaining along the way. ing program, but translating them into a powerful story „BRIAN SOLIS requires meaningful supporting content. Think of each piece of content you share as a visual vignette contributing to the larger story your company wants to communicate. Each piece of content needs to have a clear theme and point of view, much like a chapter or scene, plus a takeaway message for the reader. The con- tent also needs to be aligned with who you are as a company in terms of voice, personality, and values. Once woven together, these themes will shape your visual story. Themes can come from many places, so we recommend a little exercise that involves looking at how your goals, company voice, and customer feedback can be supported with visual content.