126 THE POWER OF VISUAL STORYTELLING Tactics without a strategy is worse companies need to take a hard look at how their current 1 than doing nothing at all. efforts compare to where they want to be in the future. „ LI EVANS, author of Social Media Identifying strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities will Marketing: Engaging Strategies for help to determine what additional resources are needed to Facebook, Twitter & Other Social Media achieve these goals. In addition to setting goals, content planning is key to strategically developing visuals that will bring your com- pany’s story to life. Planning for what you can control and developing a robust visual library will help your company to be more nimble when the unexpected happens. It will also allow you to focus more on content dis- tribution and engagement, both of which are key performance indicators (KPIs) for visual storytelling success. In this chapter we’ll offer tips and resources for measuring program success, and we’ll show you how the right analytics can help you tweak your visual content strategy on the fly. It’s important to note that the step-by-step process and solutions shared in this chapter can be leveraged regardless of your resources or head count. We often hear, “Oh, but I’m a one-person department,” or, “I’m a small business owner.” Phooey! Passion, enthusiasm, and a can-do attitude are the very first things you need to embrace visual storytelling. Some of the best visual storytellers out there are small businesses because they live and breathe their story each and every day. We’re here to offer thought starters and a defined process that will have you looking at and capturing the visual world around you a little differently. Are you ready? Setting Goals There’s no denying that social media can be a powerful tool, but too often companies get caught up in producing a stream of content, and they don’t think about the big picture. Or worse, they get caught in a cycle of random requests from departments across the company who are all competing for space on the social media content calendar. Instead of perpetuating the