An often-overlooked digital marketing tactic involves engaging on question-and-answer websites, such as Quora.
But Q&A websites are a treasure trove of internet users who are seeking answers that you might have. In other words, a possible untapped opportunity for your brand.
Quora specifically boasts at least 300 million monthly users. It’s an information-based site, where users ask and answer posted questions. Of course, questions can range from the silly to the serious, from relevant for your brand to completely irrelevant for your brand. Quora features at least 400,000 topics.
More than anything, you can leverage yourself and your brand as a thought leader in your industry, increasing brand awareness, but with the right strategy, you can possibly boost your organic traffic along the way as well, especially since Quora questions are searchable through Google. That means that internet users can find you simply through their own search queries outside of Quora.
Keep in mind that on Quora, you can:
- Publish your own content like you would any other platform.
- Search for specific topics related to your brand.
- Target your questions to specific users.
- Get inspiration about new content you can create on your own website, based on questions that are being asked.
- Use the site’s paid advertising to get your questions in front of more people.
The following are seven tips for marketing your brand on Quora and other Q&A websites.
Optimize your personal profile
So, unlike social media platforms, you can only create a profile for an individual, not a brand.
But that shouldn’t be a deal breaker. In fact, being a human first is a good thing.
That being said, you’ll want to optimize your profile and highlight your connection to your brand and/or company specifically.
Quora shows the first 50 characters of your profile as a tagline above each answer you post, which makes it an ideal place to talk about your brand. But you’ll also want to be engaging with that space as well. Think outside of the box. Is there anything more you can say that goes beyond your job title and company name? The 50 characters aren’t a ton to work with, but a little time spent brainstorming can go a long way.
Your full profile bio also can include clickable links. Don’t abuse this with a ton of links that will turn other users off and look like spam. Be strategic and use sparingly with the goal of driving some traffic back to the most useful resources on your website.
In addition, you can create topic-specific bios on your profile page if your brand spans multiple niches. Look for the “Knows About” column on the right-hand side of your profile. You can then describe your experience next to each topic you choose.
Additional opportunities to optimize your Quora profile include:
- Sharing your interests as they relate to your brand.
- Using the “About Me” section to offer more context about your expertise with relevant links.
- Selecting an eye-catching profile photo that’s a professional headshot.
- Sharing your employment and eduction, as well as location.
Taking the time to optimize your Quora profile will help you get found on the website and also add to your credibility when you are answering questions and engaging with other users.
Build a Quora page for your company
While you can’t create a business profile, you can create a business page on Quora. In fact, you can create a page about anything on the website.
To do this, search for your business’s name in Quora. On the results page, you can look in the right sidebar underneath the “Add Question” box and click the link to “Create Topic” if you don’t see your business name in the results.
You can then name the topic and add a brief description.
Once live, you can request for the Quora online community to review the topic, aka your business if you’ve set it up as a page for your brand.
By doing this, you can acquire testimonials and additional social proof that you can leverage elsewhere.
Identify the right questions to answer
Can you attempt to answer most or all of the questions you see, whether it’s related to your brand or not? Yes. Should you? Not at all.
Using Quora efficiently means that you want to be selective about the best questions you can answer that are most relevant to your brand, especially since the website offers millions of queries that you can get lost in if you’re not careful.
Plus, one of your goals on Quora likely includes building yourself up as a thought leader in your industry, so it’s important to use a critical eye when deciding what questions bring value to your brand.
We recommend searching for a preferred keyword on Quora to bring up a list of available questions. You can then filter your results to queries from within the past 30 days to see only the most recent questions. Keep an eye for threads that have a lot of “upvotes,” which means that these threads have a lot of views. Balance answering new questions with popular questions, but always keep your brand relevancy in mind.
How you answer a question matters
Once you’ve identified the best questions to answer, you want your answers to stand out.
Some recommendations to post engaging answers that benefit your brand:
- Aim to offer thorough insight with links to relevant blog content, case studies and/or statistics.
- Show your passion for the topic, sharing your brand’s personality as it makes sense to do so.
- Pull snippets from your already-created content to share a deeper perspective that’s quick for you to do. You could also take a quote from a recent piece of your content and build off of that. Either way.
- Add images (such as graphs, charts and other graphics) to better convey your information visually. Keep in mind that people understand visual instructions about 323 percent better than text-based ones.
- Use custom formatting to help break up your text, including bolding or italicizing headings, numbered or bulleted lists of points and tagged mentions of other Quora users or topics.
Clearly, a quick sentence or two won’t do. Strive for better.
Engage with other Quora users
While Quora can feel like a humanized version of a search engine, it’s also truly a social media platform. So, engagement and connection definitely matter.
You can communicate directly with other users as well. Of course, you can track the top answers and followers of relevant topics to identify some of the users you definitely should be engaging with.
But in the end, being an engaged member of the Quora community will naturally present opportunities to connect with other users.
Use notifications to track relevant topics on Quora
Quora is fantastic for research. With just a little digging, you can see what people in your industry are saying.
To begin tracking topics that are important to you and your brand, type a keyword in the Quora search field. You’ll see a list of autocompleted topic suggestions for you to consider and explore. When you click on a suggested topic, you’ll arrive at its page, with an additional list of related topics on the side. Click the “Follow” button to follow a topic of your choice.
To ensure that you receive email notifications related to the topics you’re following, go to your “Settings” page in Quora and select “Emails & Notifications.” You can then adjust the frequency and types of emails Quora will send to you.
Monitor your Quora performance analytics
It’s important to understand whether the effort you’re putting into Quora is paying off. In other words, you should know your return on investment (ROI).
Fortunately, Quora offers analytics for the questions you’ve answered, seeing such metrics as:
- How many people viewed your response
- The number of upvotes you received
- Any shares
If you use tracking links in your answers, you’ll also be able to measure how many click-throughs you’re directly encouraging from Quora.
Use this information to understand which questions are generating the most value for your brand and then make future strategic desicions based on that.
In conclusion
Q&A websites can be an underutilized tool in your digital marketing toolkit. Of course, these recommendations can be applied to other Q&A websites than just Quora. Do your research when deciding where you should invest your time and energy.
Check out our 18 low-cost marketing ideas for small businesses.
