Recent funding round of Quora left no doubt- it means business. Raising round D of $85 million Series meaning Quora is now worth around $1.8 billion.
With 190 million monthly users, most of which are active and considered quite intelligent, this is a great source for inbound marketers.
I have been using for some time now and find it surprising not many do. Here are a few tips to help you get started:
- Find answers to questions that bother you
This may seem trivial, as it’s the goal of this platform. But if you have any marketing or market related question, Quora would be the best place to get professional answers. This could be very helpful as a marketer in general, as well as provide specific insights you may need for a campaign. - Market research- This isn’t as obvious, but you can learn much about the market, potential users’ behavior and sentiment on this platform. All you need to do is ask
- Competitive analysis- Here you’ll need to be more subtle, but in many areas people discuss pros and cons of specific products, which you can learn a lot from.
- Content research: you can easily understand what’s bothering people and which topics are left unanswered by searching for a answer and seeing how many people asked such questions, how many people follow these questions and topics and what it the general quality of these answers. Generate your content accordingly and don’t forget to ask/ answer and link back to it. You’d be helping people get the information they crave and gain traffic to your publication.
- Thought leadership
Quora has an option to host a blog, but it could be difficult to maintain in parallel to the blog of a brand you are trying to promote. Instead, be an authentic voice and position yourself as an authority on topics which are relevant to your business. - Traffic- Answer questions:
This is what we’re really here for. If you can answer someone’s question, provide helpful details AND link back to your site you can create a constant traffic stream back to your site. Be helpful and subtle, Quora forbids you from simply pasting post written elsewhere or simply pasting links to external sites. - and some more traffic- ask questions
Asking questions drives traffic, engagement and positions you as a thought leader.
Here’s one example of a question I’ve asked on Quora that keeps sending people to my site, 2 years later: https://owntrepreneurship.com/2016/05/16/how-one-post-generated-tremendous-traffic-to-my-blog/ - Incorporate Quora search, question and answering into your routine content creation process:
I’ve incorporated it into my social media published routine- I ask a “leading” question regarding every new post I publish, and add the post link in the questions’ details. - Don’t forget to share on social media
Quora answers and questions are easily shared on Social media, and these tend to get nice traffic (don’t forget to include .@quora and #Quora in your tweets).
Beware of one caveat- Quora does not allow to open company profiles, so all this activity will be conducted under your own name. Make sure you adhere to Quora rules and etiquette (yes- there’s an answer for that as well: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-major-policies-and-guidelines-on-Quora)
BTW- here’s my Quora profile: https://www.quora.com/profile/Yotam-Gutman-2