The Definitive Guide to Content Marketing on Quora

“What is Quora?”

Quora is the most popular Question & Answer resource on the Internet with more than 200 million monthly unique visitors and 500k registered users. Created in 2010, Quora’s mission is to “share and grow the world’s knowledge”.

“Hold on. In that case, how’s it different to, say, Yahoo Answers?”

It’s simple. The reason Quora stands out is because it provides you with an opportunity to engage with some of the top experts from your industry and other inspiring people with relevant experience. In other words, you access unique, industry-specific information right from the horse’s mouth. For example, there is a chance that one of your questions may be answered by Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO and Founder of Facebook, or Adam D’Angelo, the creator of Quora, himself.

If you’ve even been to a forum or any Q&A website, using Quora shouldn’t be a challenge: both UI and UX are simple and intuitive.

At first, it may seem that digital technologies and business are the only topics that are ever discussed there. But don’t let that fool you. There’s literally a whole bunch of other topics with millions of people from all around the world gather to discuss: from Game of Thrones to Mental Health. If you’re wondering, you can find the full list of topics here. As you can see, Quora is a place that opens a lot of opportunities for marketing and growing both your personal and business brand.

“What can I use Quora for?”

Repurpose your content

Since Google is indexing answers on Quora just like any other website, you can leverage that to repurpose the content you already have. For example, if you have a great explanatory video on how to create awesome pictures in Sketch or Photoshop, you can use that to to make a mini-article with cool screenshots and post it on Quora. But you can take it even further! Oftentimes, users post really cool answers , but forget to format them properly (we’ll get to the issue of formatting later in the article). You can combine the information from those answers and come up with with a refined, easy-to-read answer.

Search for content gaps

Most of today’s businesses have blogs. What they usually don’t have, is enough time to write about every piece of experience they’d like to share with their customers. So what can you do if you want to reach out to your target audience, but don’t have time to write a few 1500-word articles a week? In such a case, Quora will come to rescue. For example, if you have a blog about web and mobile development, but don’t have a section about iOS development, you’re missing out on a significant amount of content that is important to your expertise. Solution? Go to Quora and search for the most followed questions on the topic. Writing an answer will surely take you less time than crafting a long-read article.

Reach out to both your existing and potential customers

As we’ve mentioned, the uniqueness of Quora is that it provides you with an opportunity to directly interact with your potential or existing customers. By studying questions related to your industry, you can see what challenges your potential customers are experiencing.

Analyze content of your competitors

Quora may not have a dedicated section with videos, tons of in-built services, an access to all websites in the world, etc. Other than that, it’s very similar to Google. You can make a search request on a certain topic and check what people are looking for. While Google outputs any results that are somehow related to the keyword in your search phrase, Quora shows only industry-specific information. This makes Quora a good place to find new ideas for your content and analyze what it is your competitors are writing about.

“What should I know to use Quora the right way?”

• Avoid self-promotion. That’s right, you read that correctly. Even though the point of this article is to teach you how to use Quora for content marketing, you should always remember that it’s a place where people come to search for actual advice, not another bunch of promotional copy. You can use external links to corroborate your answer and make it more helpful, but it doesn’t mean you can insert links after every sentence. The last thing people want on Quora is getting spammed with irrelevant information, especially if it’s aimed to promote a specific website/blog/youtube/etc.
• Give credit to others. Referencing other resources doesn’t make you less of an expert. So unless the question is purely about your business, remember to include links to other websites/places. Also, you can mention other experts to make your answers more credible.
• Make sure to be first when answering a question. In the vast majority of cases people will read only the first couple of posts from the top of the thread. Accordingly, the lower your answer is, the lesser the chance that somebody will actually read it. That’s why you need to respond quickly if you want your answers be noticed. To make that a less stressful procedure, you can set Quora to notify you whenever there is a new question related to your topic. Another piece of advice that should help your answer get more views is to look for questions that have more followers.
• Be consistent. It’s very simple here. In order to make your brand, personal or business, recognizable, you should answer questions at least several times a week. The more active you are, the more likely your name will pop up in the list of suggested writers whenever someone will ask a related question. If you’re tight on schedule, create a simplified version of an editorial calendar for Quora.
• Remember about formatting your answer. Make sure your answers are easy to read. If you fail to, users will skip it. Again, Quora isn’t Google; there are a lot of experts waiting to share their knowledge. So if you’ve ever written articles for a blog, you know what to do. Use bullet points to break your text into readable chunks and bold or italics to highlight the most important parts. Relevant and appealing images will increase the chances of your answer being upvoted as well.
• Make it personal. Users on Quora want to receive answers from people just like them, not just faceless brands. Be sure to consider this when writing your response.

Conclusion

There are many ways you can spread the word about your business on the Internet today. Quora is one of them. If used properly, Quora can be a very effective marketing tool. However, as we’ve already mentioned, it’s not the main purpose of Quora. In other words, before you decide to post another answer, think of whether it’s of any help to the person who asked.