Last week I hosted on Twitter and I decided to capture my answers and share them here.

Q1) Basics of content promotion on social media: What to expect?

Three things to remember about social media promotion… It’s almost impossible to predict how your content will spread on social media… More on this in Q3

Highest quality content may be ignored on social media. More in Q2 on this… Stay tuned!

Social media traffic may vary: Sometimes it will result in interatcions but will pass quickly, other times it will be long-term, etc.

Generally, Twitter traffic = easy but passes quickly, Facebook = people will engage, Pinterest = Steady traffic for months to come

Q2) What types of content usually do best on social media?

Think lists, pictures, trending topics to please #socialmedia crowd…

A wall of text (even exceptionally good text!) will rarely catch social media users’ attention

Social media users deal with TONS of content every hour: They need something easy to digest

It’s also hard to stand out, so it will take a lot of trial and error before you see your piece to truly go viral

Q3) How well can we predict if content is going to do well on social media?

Almost impossible: I’ve seen content that had all chances to spread, yet it was really struggling to get any shares…

Understanding this will help manage your expectations (So you don’t burn out after a few fails)

But you can get close by looking at your competitors, following trends & using GREAT visuals

Q4) How can we improve our odds of our content to spread on social media?

Think buzzfeed: They follow all the rules (Catchy titles, cool GIFs, trending topics) & go viral every day

• Here’s a good article on creating titles that get shared via @BuzzSumo.
• And here’s my list of tools to create images &animations
• Here’s how you can follow trends to create social-media-friendly content

Using Viral Content Buzz and MyBlogU will help a lot too! More on this in Q6 and Q7

Q5) Which social networks are best for promoting content (URLs)?

My three favorite ones are Twitter, Facebook and StumbleUpon (yes, SU still works!)

People also have success with Pinterest but I wasn’t so lucky with it yet

Twitter is the easiest for me because I have an established following there which I’ve been building for years

Facebook is good thanks to their ads which work! (They did a good job with them)

StumbleUpon will work for some types of content (Usually something geeky) but it brings very long-term traffic

Q6) How can Viral Content Buzz help our content to go viral?

Viral Content Buzz brings your content in front of powerful social media sharers so it gets shared outside of your immediate circles

This way, thanks to Viral Content Buzz, your content gets the initial social media boost which increases its chances to spread.

Viral Content Buzz supports Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and StumbleUpon

Please read my own Viral Content Buzz case study here. Here’s a video that explains the concept better.

Q7) How can MyBlogU help our content to go viral?

MyBlogU connects you to experts who are eager to contribute quotes to your article

By being part of your content, they feel more willing to share it when it goes live

This way you use the power of collaboraton to get powerful niche influencers to help promote your content

Here’s more on how MyBlogU helps you create content that gets shared

Q8) Which other tools are there to help our content to go viral?

• Here are the tools I am using: @MavSocial to schedule content to Facebook pages anf Linkedin
• @drumupio to schedule several recurring tweets for most important content
• Tweetdeck to retweet those who share my content

Here’s a good article explaining social media routine.

When to pay for social media ads? What is the minimum budge to see some results?

If you create content regularly, it becomes too expensive to promote each post using ads

I usually invest in the ads, (a) if my article is already spreading well (means it will be well-received when sponsored) if my post covers some timely trend or includes a time-sensitive offer

Where’s the ROI? How to understand if your social media + content marketing strategy is working?

That’s the trickiest one: social media seldom brings direct sales you can measure

Some benefits of social media campaign are impossible to tranlate into monetary gains (e.g. brand awareness & loyalty)

Thus I never try to measure direct ROI: Instead, I focus on engagement and brand mentions.

You can join #MediaChat each Thursday 7 pm CST / 10 pm EST here.