Social media has gained enormous traction just in the last few years alone. With over a billion active users on Facebook and growing, putting off social media is a huge mistake.

But creating a successful social media campaign is more than just sharing posts and getting “Likes” for your pages. It involves careful strategic planning and building a real audience.

Getting started can be overwhelming. There’s no shortage of information for social media marketing strategies. Here are three tips to help get you started.

1. Develop a platform strategy

In other words, which platforms are you going to use to market your business? Facebook is not the only player in town. There’s also Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest and YouTube. Conduct market research to see where your potential customers are and concentrate your efforts on that platform.

2. Plan a content strategy

Content marketing is one of the best strategies to bring traffic to a business. But you also need to carefully consider the type of content your customers want to see. This can be anything from tutorial guides to success stories and even videos. The more effort you put into planning your SEO campaign, the more successful it will be.

3. Set and track goals

What exactly do you want to achieve with a social media marketing campaign? More traffic? More leads? More sales? Setting goals and tracking them is crucial to determining the success of a campaign. But the key is to always focus on delivering quality to your audience instead of bombarding them with marketing messages.