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A Marketer's Guide to Quora

 

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Sometimes, it can seem like there is an endless number of social media sites to participate on. Part of a social media marketer’s challenge can be to filter through what’s important or not important to a discussion, or if a particular site deserves their time and attention. Quora has entered the marketplace as a site worthy of consideration for marketers. A handful of unique features for this question and answer site makes it compelling to marketers.

quora

 

 

Getting Started With Quora

Quora shares the features of two popular social media applications and combines them in an interesting way. Quora has a follow feature, which many of us who have used Twitter, should be familiar with. It adds this follow feature to a question and answer system which is similar to LinkedIn Answers or Yahoo Answers. Users on Quora can ask or answer questions and follow questions and people to create a stream of information aligned with their interests.

When first signing up for Quora, users are able to follow their connections from Facebook and Twitter, to start with people and questions to follow from the beginning.

What Is Different About Quora?

As stated previously, Quora shares features with other popular social applications, so what makes Quora unique? Two main elements, design and its community. Quora's design as created a positive initial user experience. Because questions and answers is all Quora does, it has been able to create an great experience around this one aspect of online information sharing.

In addition to design, its initial community, which only really started its rapid growth in the past few months, provides rich and relevant answers. The expertise of the people who are answers questions on Quora is incredibly impressive and adds to the value of using the application.

Marketing Applications of Quora

There’s a few very visible early benefits to Quora. To start off, it caters to specific subject matters in each of their "topics". You can pick your own expertise areas and then stay there as your chief engagement. If your business or expertise is in foreign currency exchange, they have the perfect area where you can relay your leadership and help answer questions for people. Then as a marketer, you can consider the people who are asking questions or engaging in discussion with you as your potential leads.

If you see someone is asking for help picking a good foreign exchange broker, or how to know if someone is a good adviser, don’t be afraid to mention your services and include your URL for your website when answering their question.

You can also use Quora to help do research on what you should blog about - Any good answer is going to be more than a paragraph, and could be used as the basis for your newest blog post. This is a great way to do keyword research and get a sense of what the keyword phrases and description that your potential leads really use, and see what they don't understand or should know about your business.

If someone's asking a fundamental question about your industry, think about writing a blog post to reply and then linking them in your answer to the blog post. You can bring them to your website, show them your calls-to-action, and present them with an offer all while answering their question. 

Have you started using Quora yet for your business?

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Posted by Brian Whalley on Wed, Feb 09, 2011 @ 08:30 AM

COMMENTS

Quora is a great place to offer professional comments on various topics and also a great place to meet people, network and highlight your talents. Sounds good to me! I notice that when Quora appeared LinkedIn was very quiet for a few days and now LinkedIn is offering a lots more valuable features. Coincidence? Maybe??

posted on Wednesday, February 09, 2011 at 8:33 AM by Peter L Masters MCIM


Great article with some useful advice--but one point to be leery of. If you write an answer that simply consists of a link to a blog post, your answer will likely be marked not helpful and knocked down to the bottom of the thread. It's a good idea to link to a blog post, but be sure that you've included either a significant summary or excerpt in your answer. If you do this well, it will be even more of an incentive for people to click through to your link.

posted on Wednesday, February 09, 2011 at 8:59 AM by Tracy Gold


I've been using Quora for over a month and I love it. However your suggestions "to mention your services and include your URL for your website when answering their question" is absolutely incorrect. Quora is adamantly against self-promotion, “Self-promotional content is generally not allowed on Quora. Questions and answers that are primarily self-promotional will be deleted and collapsed, respectively.” For marketing purposes, Quora is best used as an inbound marketing tool. If you answer questions thoughtfully and without bias you will be upvoted. If you promote your services, you probably won’t get out of ‘review’ or your answer will be hidden by downvotes. You should absolutely specify your expertise in your heading and contact those people on your own. Everyone on Quora must use their real name so it is very easy to build your reputation (or ruin it).

posted on Wednesday, February 09, 2011 at 9:05 AM by Pamela D'Luhy


Hi everyone -  
 
To clarify, I did not mean when writing this that you should only post a link to your blog or website, and nothing else in your answer. You should, of course, answer the question fully on Quora in your answer, but then use your blog post as a supporting reference. As always with social media, people are not interested in hearing you talk about yourself, but are interested in hearing you talk AS yourself. But, give them a place to learn more or follow up if they want to. I hope that clarifies things.

posted on Wednesday, February 09, 2011 at 9:08 AM by Brian Whalley


Brian introduced us to Quora and we have found it an excellent product and we can answer questions as a specialist and have direct interaction with our desired audience.www.piagifx.com

posted on Wednesday, February 09, 2011 at 9:10 AM by Darren Hutchinson


Anyone can share an invitation to Quora?

posted on Wednesday, February 09, 2011 at 11:48 AM by Javier


I like the idea of using Quora to do research on what I should blog about. I did it with topics like foursquare for hotels and works great! The value I see is in following very specific topic. 

posted on Wednesday, February 09, 2011 at 12:12 PM by Sebastian Blanco


I am on Quora but honestly have not used it as much as I should. I appreciate the insight into the website, and advice on how to use it for marketing. I will be sure to let you know how it goes :)

posted on Wednesday, February 09, 2011 at 2:08 PM by Jeff Kryger


@Javier No invitation required, just go to quora.com 
 
@Sebastian What is your Quora name? (couldn't find you w/Blanco). I'd love to see what you've done, I've been trying to get blog fodder w/o much success.

posted on Wednesday, February 09, 2011 at 2:27 PM by Pamela D'Luhy


@ Pamela 
 
 
 
I go to Quora.com and I get 
 
 
 
Sorry, you must have an invitation to create an account on Quora. 
 
 
 

posted on Wednesday, February 09, 2011 at 2:51 PM by Javier


I'd give you an invite myself (I don't believe there is a limit), but I need your email. If you'd rather, this guy is inviting people via his website: http://www.gxjansen.com/quora-invite/

posted on Wednesday, February 09, 2011 at 3:15 PM by Pamela D'Luhy


@Pamela, 
 
Thanks. My email is jlorenzo(at)thebluefloor.com

posted on Wednesday, February 09, 2011 at 3:24 PM by Javier


This site looks very helpful. If you need help with social media networks or websites made for your company go to my website and give us a call

posted on Tuesday, February 15, 2011 at 1:31 PM by Sterling McKinley


I'll be the contrarian. I see no marketing value in Quora. It's just LinkedIn Answers on a dedicated site. It's a shiny new social media toy that is getting some traction, but I'm not sold. 
 
A marketer needs leverage. I can't spend hours answering questions in Quora just to "network" or find ideas for blog posts. I need to reach many people people, not a few people asking questions.  
 
I'll stick with Linkedin Answers and of course Twitter and Facebook to build my network.  
 
I write this from a marketer's perspective. I do see value in Quora for job seekers and business development people. But, not for marketers responsible for generating tons of leads to feed a salesforce.

posted on Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 7:40 PM by Bernie Borges


Comments have been closed for this article.