Today, most millennials interact with various brands on social media at least once a month, and that is why many businesses have a presence on different social platforms. Your presence on social media is a step in the right direction, but it will take more than that to succeed in 2018. Going an extra mile to invest in effective social media marketing strategies and focusing on engagement are some of the aspects you will need to consider adopting.

Failure to invest in the right marketing strategy may cause your business to lose valuable clients. Here are three steps to creating a winning social media marketing strategy for this year.

Create Goals The first step towards establishing a strategy begins with identifying what you want to achieve in the end. Therefore, as you seek to create a social media marketing strategy, you need to come up with specific goals that will help you address your most significant challenges. Setting attainable goals, in this case, is very important because it will help you stick to the original plan even when circumstances change.

That way you are capable of taking on new challenges as you overcome old milestones. Also, opt for marketing channels that will help you attain your goals in the best way possible and do not complicate your strategy with numerous targets and objectives. Simplicity will yield better results. It is wise to document your goals as well because it increases the possibility of attaining them.

Research Your Social Media Audience Before you opt for a particular social media marketing channel, you need to establish the level of engagement of your target audience in each of the options available. Some of the things to focus on include the income level of your return clients, those who buy from you and the age group that is proving difficult to engage.

You can also use the social media dashboard, which provides an overview of your followers and their interaction with your brand on each marketing channel.

Identify Your Critical Metrics Monitoring the number of followers and likes on social platforms form part of the social media metrics that are important for your marketing strategy. However, information from both parameters may not tell you everything you need to know about your brand. Therefore, analyzing other metrics to get the whole story including reach, hashtag performance, clicks and live as well as paid likes is necessary.

If you need more information on steps to creating a winning social media marketing strategy,