What Is Quora?
For more than 10 years, people have been going to Quora to find information. Chances are you’ve used the platform too, to ask or answer questions or to look at threads to find a response that suits your query. Recently, Quora has added blogs (or Spaces) and is now adding new features, such as paywalled content and subscriptions.
Today, the Quora question and answer site is a highly popular and rapidly developing platform that combines different features to offer a very specific service that holds enormous marketing potential.
Why Use Quora for Marketing
Where exactly does Quora’s marketing potential lie?
First, the platform’s popularity. Quora has over 300 million active users, meaning there are thousands of potential customers to market to.
Second, as a question and answer site, Quora is the place to look for what real people are saying and asking on the topics that directly concern your brand.
Third, there are excellent chances of being found through search engines. Furthermore, a good Quora answer can remain relevant for years and continue to drive organic traffic to your website long after you’ve posted it.
Finally, helping people with questions in your brand’s area of expertise will contribute to your reputation in the industry. Plenty of high-profile professionals are sharing their expertise on Quora, including Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, UK actor Stephen Fry, and former US President Barack Obama.
How to Promote Your Blog on Quora
Let’s drill down and explore the specific steps you need to take to build an effective Quora marketing strategy.
1. Create a Great Profile
Your profile is always essential and is the best place to start when setting out to market your products or services on social media. A complete profile helps you make a good impression, demonstrate your expertise, and get found through searches.
Unlike most other platforms, Quora only lets you participate in sharing information as an individual. So, your brand’s Quora page would be represented and managed by an individual from your company.
Here’s what you need to do to create an attractive profile:
- Upload a good picture (a professional photo where your face is clearly visible will work best).
- Write a compelling bio, which includes your interests (these need to be related to your brand or industry).
- Condense your bio into a nice tagline (it’s never a bad idea to add a little humor,).
- Fill in all the information fields, such as your current position, education, place of residence, etc.
- Add the topics you are knowledgeable about to the “Knows About” section.
When you post, the first 50 characters of your bio (or “About Me” section) will appear next to your picture. So, it’s always a good idea to mention your company there. You can also leave links to resources on your website, but don’t overuse them.
2. Find and Follow Topics
Quora lets you subscribe to particular topics that you’re interested in. This helps you stay in the loop on industry discussions and news as well as keep track of what people are saying on a given topic. You will also get notifications of questions in your inbox so you can answer them quickly or join the discussion while it’s relevant.
To follow a topic, type a keyword in the search bar and select from a list of suggested topics. There is also a drill-down option within each general topic to allow you to get more specific.
3. Find the Right Questions to Answer
Millions of questions get asked on Quora and you need to find those that will be the most helpful in promoting your brand.
You can find questions through the topics you follow or by searching independently in the Quora search bar.
Narrow your search down to the last couple of weeks to focus on newer, relevant questions.
Generally, it’s a good idea to join the discussion in threads with many upvotes, as these will give you more visibility, and answer completely new questions in your area of expertise.
4. Answer Questions With Authority
Your approach to answering questions should showcase your competence in your area of business. Aim to provide smart, thoughtful answers. If you’re not the first to answer a question, make sure that your input brings something of value to the table.
To add credibility to your answer, back it up with links to case studies, research data, or statistics. When appropriate, link to useful resources on your website.
5. Ask Questions
The questions people ask about a certain topic can tell you a lot about what interests Quora users, what their feelings are, and what kinds of issues they are experiencing. However, knowing how to ask a question on Quora can gain you even more vital insights.
Whether you’re doing market research or simply showing interest in things related to your business, asking a good question gives you visibility and valuable information. Remember to upvote answers that you find useful to show gratitude and engagement.
6. Connect With Other Quora Users
To make the most of Quora’s social networking and community-building potential, it’s always a good idea to connect with other users in your industry.
Quora has a “Follow” feature that you can use to stay up-to-date on other people’s posts and activities. You can also engage with interesting people directly by sending a private message.
7. Check Your Analytics
Analytics are crucial in understanding how well your strategy is working, which actions provide the most value to your marketing efforts, and what areas may need improvement.
Your Quora profile menu has a tab called “Your Content & Stats”.
Here, you can monitor your views, upvotes, comments, and external shares.
You can also use Google Analytics to track how much of your traffic comes from Quora.
8. Know Your Audience
Quora’s stats also allow you to see which users have viewed each of your answers. Knowing how well your content does among different groups, as well as who is interested in your topics and in what you have to say, is vital to improving your targeting efforts.
By analyzing viewer data, you can see what works for a specific audience, tweak your approach, and make decisions regarding targeting for the future.
9. Share Content on Spaces
Quora has long been moving toward becoming a more creator-oriented platform. Its latest feature, Spaces, is something between a blog and a Facebook group.
A Space is created around one topic. Users can write posts in a Space as well as collect query answers they find relevant in one place. Spaces have followers and contributors (from one to hundreds) and can be differentiated from Facebook groups since only contributors can post within them. You can think of them as curated pages or collections of editor’s picks.
Submitting posts to a Space will help you expand your audience by tapping into existing follower bases. This is also a great way to increase engagement on the platform and connect with potential customers or industry partners.
You can also create your own Spaces. This is another great way of repurposing your blog content and demonstrating thought leadership in your sphere.
10. Add Pictures
Quora has an image upload feature for answer fields and it’s definitely worth using. Illustrate your answers with images whenever appropriate: they attract attention and can back up your answer with visual context, helping the reader process and better understand the information you provided.
This approach will raise your chances of getting upvotes and views compared to answers with no visuals.
11. Run Paid Ads
Like many other platforms, Quora offers paid advertising that can be set up in minutes. Launching ads on Quora will boost your marketing campaign manifold by increasing your reach and allowing you to target specific audiences.
Using Quora’s self-service Ad Manager, you can choose a campaign objective (conversions, traffic, awareness, or app installs) and select targeting options (contextual targeting, audience targeting, behavioral targeting, and broad targeting). Another level allows you to target your audience by specific location, device, browser, and gender, as well as find out which of them are Quora Digest newsletter subscribers.
Your ads can be image or text-based and will appear on question pages according to your targeting preferences.
For a full guide on Quora advertising, check out this article.
12. Answer Quickly
Being the first, or one of the first people, to answer a question raises your chances of getting views and upvotes.
To get there quickly, search for fresh questions within your business’ area of expertise by typing a keyword in the search bar and narrowing it down to the last day or week.
13. Share Your Answers on Social Media
Let your social media followers know you are helping people on Quora. Use the share feature under an answer to post it directly on Facebook or Twitter, or copy the link to share the answer to any other network of your choice.
Sharing a good response with many upvotes will demonstrate your expertise to your social media followers and show that you are seen as an authority of the subject, which will add further credibility to your brand.
14. Repurpose Your Blog Content
To help develop your Quora campaign more quickly and avoid overinvesting time and effort, consider using your existing blog content.
When searching for questions, look at those you have addressed in the past on your website or blog. This is a fantastic way to make use of the content you’ve already created and drive traffic to your site at little or no cost.
15. Find New Topic Ideas
Your blog content can be used to contribute to threads on Quora, so why not make it work both ways? Browsing popular questions on topics related to your brand can provide inspiration for new content.
Questions are an important source of information about customer needs and industry trends. By picking up on these as quickly as possible, you can draw attention to your blog by writing on a hot topic.
Bottom Line
You’ve seen how useful Quora can be in promoting your brand. With its enormous audience and questions on any topic, this platform can serve as an instrument for market research, raising brand awareness, topic inspiration, visibility, reputation-building, and much more.
Let’s do a quick recap of how to make it work:
- create a great profile
- pick the right questions to answer
- demonstrate your knowledge
- use your existing content
- use Quora to observe trends that may be useful to you