For businesses looking to showcase their knowledge of their industry, finding ways to build authority on a certain topic online is instrumental in instilling trust in their audience. Quora is a great place to start with this – the lesser-known question and answer network enables you to help out other users on any topic and it can be a great way to market your brand expertise. But – how can you utilise this platform to help grow your audience and your business?
What is Quora?
Quora has been around for over eight years now and it has become a worthwhile addition to many a marketer’s repertoires for a variety of reasons. It’s a question and answer site where people can post questions on any topic imaginable and other users can then answer or even edit the responses given. There are several features that marketers can take advantage of within Quora, including:
🤔 Answering questions relevant to your industry or niche
🤔 Following users and being followed by them
🤔 Publishing content like you would on LinkedIn’s publishing platform
🤔 Showcasing your personal and professional titles above the answers you provide
🤔 Gaining SEO benefits over time
🤔 Accessing new audiences through Quora emails
🤔 Making use of effective link building to direct traffic to your site
How to incorporate Quora into your marketing strategy
Create the perfect profile
In the initial stages of building Quora into your digital marketing strategy, your main aim will be to build an optimal profile that will let users learn everything they need to about you, your brand, and your knowledge. Once you’ve signed up to Quora using Facebook or Twitter, you can then start developing your profile and bio. Each time you post an answer, the first 50 characters of your bio are visible as a tagline above the answer, so it’s a great opportunity for additional branding. Be sure to include your brand name as close to the beginning as possible and really maximise the potential of those first 50 characters.
Follow other users
In a similar way to Twitter or LinkedIn, Quora enables you to follow other users and connect with them so you can contribute to similar conversations and boards. Because of the use of Facebook or Twitter as a route to sign up, you have the option of immediately following your connections on these social media platforms, which is great if you want to nurture the relationships you’ve already established while also growing your following. However, you can also look at the top questions and answers on topics related to your business to find new users to connect with too. It is important to gain a natural following rather than purchase artificial followers, as this will have detrimental effects for your business further down the line.
Answer industry-specific questions
The community aspect of Quora is what sets it apart from other networks – its design is focused on the question, rather than the user, so businesses can share their expertise to a wide audience in order to help them with specific problems or knowledge gaps. Where sites like Twitter have trending topics that are broad and not always relevant to brands, Quora makes it easier for businesses to find areas where they can provide valuable content. It’s also a great place to do research into the types of questions users are asking within your industry or niche, which you can then develop into in-depth blog posts on your website to draw in more traffic and promote your services while also answering the questions at hand. We tried and tested this method, and can confirm it was a success:
.@BuzzSumo is a great tool for content marketers. But how does it work? Can it be used for outreach purposes? 🤔 We've created a handy FAQ for all the important answers regarding #buzzsumo! ⬇️https://t.co/B7AsbqqXcE
— Bulldog Digital Media (@BulldogAgency) January 17, 2019
Gain SEO benefits for your business
Quora answers perform well in search engine rankings; answers are ranked by how trustworthy users find them. In this sense, Quora does all the work that Google would normally have to do, so if you can write answers that are really valuable to users through being accurate and informative, it will benefit your business in terms of exposure and rankings in the SERPs. One way to achieve a traffic boost is to look at the questions on Quora and consider whether your blog or website already has content that provides an answer. If you do, you can take excerpts from that content and use as a foundation for your answer in Quora, followed by a link to your blog or webpage for users to gain more information on the topic. Combined with the SEO input you invest into your own website, you could see an impressive boost of traffic and positioning in search results when played correctly.
Access a broader audience
Another way of utilising Quora as a marketing tool is to gain brand recognition in Quora Digest, which is the email newsletter sent out by Quora to users – each email will look different to the recipient depending on the topics they’ve shown an interest in on the site. The newsletter usually contains 10 answers to questions the recipient seems likely to be interested in and, depending on how much time they use Quora, they could receive these emails several times a week, so it’s a great way of accessing new audience members who already fit the profile of your target buyer persona. The more questions your business can provide answers to, the more authority you’ll build and the more likely Quora is to include you in these emails; an enormously valuable place to be.
Conclusion
To recap on the best ways to make the most of your Quora profile, start off by creating an informative and focused profile that explains exactly what your business is about and the expertise you have so users can learn about you quickly and efficiently. Next, follow topics related to your industry and become active in these conversations by post valuable content and challenging questions, remembering to post links to your own site and content where it’s relevant and appropriate. Find users you can connect with and grow your audience by building relationships with users that fit your target persona. Finally, contribute to boards on topics in your niche so you can create and share content that other users will want to follow.
