About a year ago, I wrote about developing a long-term social media audience. You should find some general tips there to apply to almost any social site; however, I mostly had platforms like Twitter and Facebook in mind when I wrote that piece. Since then, I can admit that I’ve found another kind of social site, Quora, engaging both as a regular user and as a marketer. And let me tell you, Quora marketing opens up a whole new opportunity for businesses to engage with their audience authentically.
Sometimes I’ve described Quora as a rabbit hole, mostly because it’s so easy to spend a lot of time there. This large Q&A site’s algorithm constantly delivers diverting content to my feed, based upon my browsing history and interests. A few times a day, an email message appears in my inbox to further tempt me with highlights from that feed.
I don’t have statistics about Quora’s open rates, but I do know that I personally ignore many email messages but not theirs. While that diversion isn’t always so healthy for my time management, it is great news for content marketers who want to reach a vast, diverse, and engaged audience through Quora marketing.
Why Quora Marketing?
In my opinion, there’s something special about Quora. With other social networks, you are joining communities. But when it comes to Quora, it truly is a community. In fact, on Quora, we often refer to ourselves as Quorans. In contrast, you don’t hear many Facebook users identify themselves Facebookers. When I personally ask and answer questions, I take some pride in joining a global community of inquisitive and helpful folks who have voluntarily stepped up to do the same. And Quora marketing gives you the opportunity to be a part of that community.
Consider some reasons to associate yourself or your brand with Quora:
- High-quality answers rule: While you can certainly find exceptions, consistent Quorans appear to demonstrate great care about both the quality of the questions and answers on the website and don’t mind pointing out violations of the site’s standards and their own self-imposed ones. Also, moderators are quick to collapse substandard questions, follow up on reports, and merge duplicates.
- Good association of content with user intent: Perhaps the high user intent demonstrated by Quora readers offers one of the most compelling reasons to establish yourself as a topic expert. Note that Google’s recent Bert update focused upon user intent by working harder to provide quick answers or solutions that online searchers want, and as an added bonus, Quora questions and answers tend to rank quite well on Google.
Getting Started on Quora
As with every social site, you get started by creating an account and filling out your profile. You should use your profile spaces to introduce yourself or you business to other site users. For instance, you can mention your website and invite Quorans to connect on other social media. You should also add credentials in your main profile, and remember, you can also add specific credentials for each topic you participate in them. These credentials let people know why you’re qualified to answer questions, so they will help increase engagement dramatically.
You can find questions to answer in a few different ways:
- To begin, you might use the search bar to look for topics or questions.
- If you represent a brand, you’ll certainly want to see if its already gotten a mention on the site.
- You can also hover over topics with your cursor to either explore them or follow them.
High-Quality Answers Rule Quora
Approach any answers that you provide as you would any high-quality content. Take advantage of headings, paragraph breaks, and bullet points to enhance readability, and for goodness sakes, proofread. As with other social sites, using graphics and even videos to enhance your answer can increase attention.
You’re allowed to link back to your own site to increase the odds of getting direct referrals. At the same time, you don’t want to answer a question with just a sales pitch. You’ll want to craft a high-quality answer to let readers know why your link is a helpful part of that. Quora questions and answers often rank on Google and other search engines. At the same time, you need to please users with your content because the top spots go to the most highly rated answers.
You can also use the @ sign to tag other Quora users in questions and answers order to gain their attention or give them credit. Used prudently, this feature can help you get attention from and build goodwill with influencers
Why Aren’t You a Quoran?
If you want to increase your brand recognition, connect with other influencers, and/or drive direct referral traffic, I suggest you join the 300 million other regular users of this large and active Q&A website. Users include people seeking answers, topic experts from all over the world, and yes, a fair number of well-known executives, scientists, authors, politicians, and celebrities.
Save Time Writing High-Quality Quora Answers
Establishing yourself on Quora and other social sites takes plenty of high-quality content. WriterAccess offers you a small army of expert writers to answer questions in a way that will present your business in the sort of positive light that will improve your brand. For articles, social media posts, and dozens of other kinds of content, open an account with WriterAccess today.
After graduating from The University of Texas, Marilyn K enjoyed a professional career in IT and insurance before answering the call of fulltime freelancing. While Marilyn has a great number of interests, she’s a popular choice for intent-driven articles in such niche areas as marketing, insurance, IT, finance, and small business. She’s also interested in health topics, including plant-based cooking.
