How To Leverage Quora For Content Marketing

When you think of content marketing, Quora is probably not the first thing that comes to mind. The popular platform is commonly used to ask questions and find answers on any question in mind. Marketers can actually leverage this to provide wide audiences with knowledge about the product or service that they’re selling.

The way Quora works is a user first asks a question that can be answered by any other user. Answers have added credibility on this platform as users must post their full name, links to social media, and credentials/experiences that made them qualified to address the question.

Quora can be used by content marketers in several ways. One way is by answering questions that users belonging to your target audience have submitted. A well-crafted response will be among the first to be viewed, bringing greater attention to the associated brand.

Another way to use Quora is to ask questions to your desired audience. Whether it’s a question about the problems faced by your specific customer segment or a request for feedback on a product category, the responses you receive might give you in-depth insights that can help you directly improve your product or service.

With this in mind, read on to learn more about how you can leverage Quora for content marketing purposes and boost your brand online.

Why Quora?

Quora had 300 million monthly active users in 2018, the majority of whom come from the US. It’s an increasingly popular online platform for interacting with users through question-and-answer formats.

Though it’s not the most common social media platform, Quora can be used in surprisingly unique and innovative ways by content marketers to respond to particular questions that relate to your brand. Since questions are sorted into categories and related topics, it’s easy to find questions that can be answered by your expertise in the subject matter.

Alternatively, a creative way to utilize Quora is to pose questions asking for product/service feedback or start more general conversations to generate ideas and improvements. To take it a step further, Quora supports advertising that promotes your answers to high-traffic questions.

Unlike traditional push advertising, Quora encourages your audience to actually respond to your content. Not only does this increase web traffic and brand awareness by getting the word out there about your business, but it’s also a great way to gain feedback and new ideas for your services.

Another use of Quora questions can be to source ideas for blog posts. Simply search for the top questions in topics most relevant to your business, and see if you can craft blog posts based on those questions.

This will help your content stand out as you’re identifying gaps in knowledge that haven’t been addressed entirely, which may be a reason users have taken to Quora to find a solution. In this way, Quora can directly support your content marketing strategy as a leading ideas generator for your blogs, newsletters, or related media.

Below is an example of DuckDuckGo, an internet browser which protects users’ privacy, leveraging the right questions to mention their brand:

Here is an exchange of information that leads your target audience to your offering. If your product or service is a solution to a problem that certain users face, make it known on Quora and viewers will be motivated to check out your website.

If your answer to a user’s question is highly relevant to them, you’ll have permanent content posted on the internet for future readers who are interested in the same solution. This will continue to passively drive traffic and generate top-of-funnel interest months after the original answer is submitted.

Figure Out What’s Your Target Audience

First of all, in order to succeed with Quora content marketing, you need to understand who your target customers are.

A target market is a certain group of people who you want to reach with your marketing material. They are the people who are going to be most likely to purchase your services or products and are thus united by common characteristics such as their behaviors or demographics.

The more clearly defined your target audience is, the better you are going to be able to understand how to use Quora in order to reach them.

You can start off with broader demographics such as single mums or millennials. However, you are going to need to become a lot more detailed to reach optimal conversion rates. This is important when targeting your marketing efforts successfully.

People who are not incorporated into your target market group are still going to be able to buy from you, so you’re not going to hurt your efforts by having a very specific target audience persona.

There are a number of different steps to take when it comes to defining your target audience so you can market on Quora effectively. This includes compiling data on your existing customers, looking to social media and website analytics, and also researching your competition.

You can use this information to form an idea regarding some of the key characteristics that are likely to be shared amongst those who will be most interested in the products and services you sell.

Create A Stunning Quora Profile

It is important to make sure that you have a great profile on Quora. Jason Lemkin, the prominent entrepreneur and investor, has a well-optimized Quora profile, as shown below. Pay special attention to his credentials and notable achievements listed prominently below his name, as well as his bio which establishes his credibility in a clear and concise manner.

What can we learn from the example above for creating a high-quality Quora profile? Well, you are going to want to accurately summarise the “Knows About” section and highlight your “Credentials and Highlights” to boost your credibility.

Generally, the more information on your profile, the better, but you also need to make sure that the information you incorporate is actually adding value.

When you are prompted to choose the topics you know about when building your Quora profile, it is imperative to only choose the topics that you are genuinely highly knowledgeable about.

This is going to be critical later on because you are only going to want to supply answers for topics and questions for which you have a thorough understanding. Why? Because you establish yourself as a trustworthy person in the industry.

At the top of your profile, make sure you highlight the following essentials. State what you do, mention a service or product you offer and talk about your most significant achievements.

You should also make sure that social media or other relevant links are embedded throughout your bio so people can find out more about what you do and what you have achieved.

Find The Right Quora Questions

Not all questions you answer will actually send traffic to your site. You need to work out which question topics and categories are most relevant to your product, and which ones you have the highest expertise in. So, how do you find the right questions?

The first thing you need to consider is whether or not the question is going to result in organic search traffic. You can use the likes of Ahrefs’ Site Explorer for this.

Simply enter quora.com and go to the “Top Pages” report. This is going to show you the pages on Quora that generate the greatest amount of organic search traffic. You can narrow down the list by entering a relevant phrase or word in the “include” box.

There are other ways that you can determine what sort of questions are going to be worth answering. This includes looking at how many views the question has received so far. However, it is important to bear in mind the fact that a question may have been popular several years ago, and so it may have received most of those reviews back in 2014, yet the question has not received many views at all in recent times.

Aside from this, you can look at the most viewed writers for a relevant topic. Some writers might have a huge number of views despite only answering a handful of questions. Reviewing these writers will enlighten you to the questions that are gaining the most traction.

Finally, you can also follow the Quora algorithm as well. If you are answering questions, Quora starts to recommend new topics and questions for you to answer.

Post Answers

Now, you need to craft great answers. There are three basic components that you need to get right. Firstly, adding an image to your Quora answer will make a massive difference toward readability and engagement. However, do note that this is only going to be the case if the photo is relevant and adds value to your answer.

The next and most important thing that your Quora answer needs to have is the ability to capture and engage people from the very start. Start with a direct, interesting first sentence that leads into your explanation.

The first paragraph is what people are going to see in their feed, and this is going to encourage them to click for more information. They can’t give you an upvote if they don’t read your answer, and this is why you really need to craft the first paragraph with a lot of care and consideration.

The third thing that you need to make sure your answer has is a good structure. If you simply post a wall of text, this is going to be a massive turn off. Instead, you need to ensure your answer is broken up into different sections. An answer that has bold headings, various sections, and potentially bullet points are going to be a lot easier to read and digest.

Here is an example that uses all three tips to make a highly engaging and attention-grabbing Quora response:

It is also worth pointing out how effective stories are when it comes to writing great Quora answers. The reason for this is that finding factual answers on Google is very easy, and so to differentiate your answer from the crowd it is beneficial to give more of a personal account. Don’t be afraid to get colloquial or conversational if the topic and audience are right for it.

Engage & Interact

Once the answers have been posted, you have to keep on engaging and interacting with other people on Quora and building up your following. There are a number of different ways that you can engage with people on Quora without simply writing answers to questions.

Firstly, you can reference other answers. When you’re writing content on Quora you can link other people’s answers in your response to bring more value to your readers. This effectively adds substance to your Quora answers and helps you tie explanations together into a shorter, concise format.

You should also make sure that you use Quora consistently. This is important in terms of becoming a familiar member with authority on the platform. Answer queries in your field on a frequent basis. Your audience must see you often if they are to notice you and consider you an expert in the field. Because of this, it is important to try and post answers every week, if not more regular than this.

Finally, Quora is a great opportunity to expand your network. Aim to add links to your Quora profile on your other social media platforms as anyone can see your profile even if they do not have one themselves.

To gain added exposure, make sure to comment on answers and give meaningful replies. Commenting gives you the ability to deliver more value to the content that is available, especially if you left out key information in your answer.

The actionable takeaways that you provide in your comments are going to enable people to see you as an authority as well.

What’s next?

Now that you know the fundamentals of leveraging Quora as a content delivery platform, you can consider it with regard to your overall content strategy. You might already have a visible presence on Facebook and Twitter.

Think about what value Quora adds to your brand that is already not supported by your other social media, and what work will need to be done to keep your messaging consistent across platforms.

In thinking about Quora’s place within your broader marketing strategy, you should define what part of the marketing funnel you are targeting to get a clearer picture of how to succeed.

For example, if you want to target the top of the marketing funnel, you’ll need to prioritize answering others’ questions in a manner that increases your brand awareness and visibility. However, if you’re targeting the middle of the funnel, you can post questions that actively seek feedback about your product or product category from users.

Finally, think about what you can do with your Quora results going forward. The answers or feedback you get might help you design more insightful customer surveys.

You may even begin to implement and test the ideas gained from your Quora responses. Just make sure to keep measuring your success on Quora and adapting your questions and answers until you find a format that works for you.

Author Bio:

Vlad Shvets is the Growth Lead at Paperform.

Author

Gaurav Belani

Gaurav Belani is a Senior SEO and Content Marketing Analyst at Growfusely, a SaaS content marketing agency specializing in content and data-driven SEO.