In our work if we’re lucky we get tons of social media questions. If we’re unlucky we get demands. Either way, the online space causes a lot of uncertainty and confusion expressed via unique questions and requests. So we collected some of the more unusual social media questions and answers, here for your entertainment and education.

Can we create a hashtag?

Yes you can. First you want to check if there’s already one in use, and how it’s being used. You can refer to WhatTheTrend.com and Tagboard.com to find hashtag trends and usage. And you can create your own hashtag tagboard.

So yes, you can and should create hashtags. And use hashtags. Just keep it to no more than 2 hashtags per post.

A word of caution, though: it’s one thing to create and use a hashtag yourself, it’s another to get others to use your hashtag. You’ll have to promote your hashtag, as if it was a product. You shouldn’t expect adoption to happen overnight.

I don’t like what my customers are saying, we want to delete that hashtag

Sorry, no can do. You can only delete your posts. You can’t delete others’ content. And in most cases content gets archived by different systems and will live forever once published.

The best way to avoid negative comments is to prevent them from happening by offering top-notch customer service. The best day to start this change is today.

Can we create a new Twitter chat to promote an event 1-2 weeks later?

A Twitter chat is an event in itself. So if you’re looking to promote an event with an event, you need to promote the event of the event. Sounds confusing? That’s because it is.

Twitter chats can be fantastic marketing tools, but they don’t become big overnight.  So their effectiveness grows over time. It’s best to start by participating in another Twitter chat. Then play nice, and invite people from different chats to your hosted chat. And by, “play nice” I mean, don’t try to compete, but offer to enhance another chat. Find a unique angle. Find a different day and time so your chats don’t overlap.

Invite as many people as you can and invite influencers to co-host. Make it a great chat, publish the summary on your blog, and then do it again and again and again. Over time, with good content and good quality tweeps participating, it can get big.

Will the people from your chat then attend your upcoming event? If you assume that you’ll get the same conversion rate as from other marketing, it’s possible 2%-5% of those attending the chat will join you for an event. Which means you’ll need to build up a chat where hundreds of people participate. Which is why a 1-2 week lead won’t be enough.

Why aren’t people typing our website directly into their browser? I want a concrete answer.

According to a Google study, only 50% of users navigate to a website by typing the URL into a computer browser and barely 36% do so on a mobile device.  There are many reasons for this, from confusion on the difference between a browser bar and a search bar, to branding issues. Your name may be hard to remember or spell, the URL may be hard to remember, or the user may be unsure of the exact URL. Additionally, as the Google study shows, with mobile devices there is no longer differentiation between a browser bar and a search bar. The two have become one. So you and me and everyone else will find it easier to just type the name and click (or tap) on the search result, rather than entering the whole shebang plus the dot com.

In other words, we’re too lazy to type your URL.

Can you just tweet during our event about our event, but not do live tweeting?

How about we tweet later about the event as if we were tweeting during the event but not live tweeting.

But what a shame to miss an opportunity to have participants from outside the event FOMOing (FOMO= Fear of Missing Out) when they get to see in real-time what’s happening at the event. You can always republish the highlights later, and you should.

In most cases others will be tweeting live from the event and you will want to get in on the conversation and extend their event experience online.

Wondering what the point of LinkedIN is…

LinkedIn is a social network, so the point is… networking. But only if you use it for networking. The problem is that too many people expect that sales should happen by just being online. Having a profile on LinkedIn is not like having a retail store at the busiest intersection in town. It’s more like being a traveling salesman who moves from busy intersection to busy intersection and listens to people who are asking (directly or indirectly) where to find help. Help that you can provide. So use LinkedIn to find the busy intersections and participate there, listen to people and offer help. Your network will grow, your leads will grow.

So what is a good number of followers? I would think like 10,000 right?

10,000 is indeed a nice number. But what does it mean?

It means you’ll have a lot of work on your hands. To get 10,000 followers on Facebook can take years unless you’re already a celebrity. But for most businesses, 10,000 is a big number. Another way to get 10,000 followers is to run ads. At an average 50 cents per Facebook like, you’re looking at spending $5,000 to get 10,000 followers.

Unfortunately, organically, only 2% to 10% of our followers see any given post; 2% on Facebook and closer to 10% on LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+. As a result, only 200-1,000 will see your content and an even smaller percentage will take action on it. So with these odds the bigger question becomes, how do we engage the largest number of followers? Ultimately it’s not about how many followers we have, it’s about how many of those followers can be moved to take action (share, click, buy etc).

Action on your content is usually influenced by a number of factors:

• The right content, for the right people, at the right stage in their buying decision-making process
• Compelling content – content that moves and elicits action
• Tell, don’t sell

So focus on the action numbers instead of follower numbers.

Why do we need to write that? There is already something about that on the Internet.

There is probably already a business or a product like yours out there. But you have your own point of view, your own advantages, your own points of differentiation. If you don’t write about them, how are your website leads to know how you’re different and what you’re all about?

72% of buyers begin their research with a Google search, according to a Nov 2012 report by Pardot. By creating your own content you put yourself in a position of control over what these buyers will see about you. You simply can’t allow chance to take over here.

There are instances when it’s not worth writing about something:

• If your target audiences wouldn’t care about it or find value in it
• If you know nothing about the topic
• If the topic will put you to sleep and has no academic value

But a good writer can make the most boring topics seem interesting.

So, what are your burning social media questions? Ask away and we’ll do our best to answer them.