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Table of Contents An intro- What is Quora? ................................................................ 3
Unique features ............................................................................... 3
How to use it .................................................................................... 5
Tracking content performance ........................................................ 9
Summary ........................................................................................ 11
About the Author ........................................................................... 12
An intro- What is Quora? Quora is a growing user generated Question and Answer community co-founded by two former Facebook employees, Adam D'Angelo and Charlie Cheever launched in US in June 2009. Quora works by members asking questions and Quora delivering you answers and content from people who already know the answer from real marketers, economists, screenwriters, police officers, and military veterans.
Mission Statement Quora’s mission is “to share and grow the world’s knowledge” by connecting people who have knowledge to the people seeking it. It is designed around the premise that a vast amount of knowledge, and in particular specialist knowledge, is potentially hugely valuable to many people but is often only available to a few either locked in people’s heads, only accessible to select groups or people simply not having an incentive to share it. The wide range of different perspectives enable users to learn subjects in greater depth so they can understand each other better and in turn encourages empowers a perpetual wheel of sharing for the benefit of the all community members across the world
Unique features it is key to understand when you are evaluating its marketing value that while there are well established question and answer sites, such as Yahoo Answers, Quora can be distinguished from others in a number of fundamental ways: 1) It is designed with a heavy emphasis on encouraging the quality of questions and answers. Top writers are recognized by the ability of the community of readers to ‘upvote’, similar to a facebook like, the answer. Exceptional writers are rewarded with a Top Writers status which recognizes the importance of the writer’s quality, expertise, knowledge, authenticity, and empathy. Some people in the Top Writers Group are experts in specific fields, while others are simply great writers with a talent for describing the human condition and the world around us. Some of the winners are professional writers but most are not.
All winners have contributed immensely to Quora and the community. See link here to 2016 top writers: https://blog.quora.com/Announcing-Top-Writers-2016 2) it allows users to vote on answers and encourages accountability and reputation amongst its community of users, see this excellent answer on why Borders failed upvoted by the community; https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Barnes-Noble-performing-well-as-a-business-while-Borders-has-filed-for-bankruptcy/answer/Mark-Evans-9 3) it allows users to follow topics and control the subjects that interest them giving users full control 4) The design and user experience is simple, intuitive and users can easily follow their topics of interest (rather than searching like Yahoo! Answers) The navigation is logical with clear hiarchy 5) Quora has inbuilt networking by default, sign in via Twitter or Facebook, which automatically connects with other networks
How can Quora help your marketing effectiveness? It is fantastic research tool enabling users to not only gain access to expert answers across the world but also, and most significantly as marketers to really understand the key questions being asked around your topic of interest. Enables you to build real subject authority. Quora is about being authoritative on a subject, and building relationships based on your competency over the course of multiple questions with the people who share similar interest. The extremely tight subject matter focus and smaller scope allows for greater intimacy, and lowers the barriers to being a consistent and useful contributor over the long term Improve your writing skills. Using Quora will improve your written communication skill sets. It enabled you to write concise, clear responses to questions instead of waffling. This is invaluable.
Asking good questions which engage your audience. The marketing value is in the fact that you need to ask an interesting and intriguing question to get feedback from all those people out there. A lot of the work in content strategy is focusing on asking the right question and answers will arrive. For a marketer having the knowledge of which are the key questions provides a fantastic advantage Inspiration for headlines for your topics of choice. Quora search can be filtered to only display the questions, which is a way to get inspiration for article headlines. Access to a growing and engaged audience. Quora has approximately 80 million monthly uniques, 42% coming from the US, 20% from India and 2.7% coming from the UK. This equates to just over 2million active users in the UK, a small number compared to Facebook and Twitter but growing consistently
How to use it 1) Build your profile Your profile bio is an excellent means of branding, and should be both professional and catchy. It should also be short, since Quora will show only the first 50 characters of your whole tagline (your name and bio) above the answer you post. Mention your brand name as close to the beginning as you can and make the most of your 50 characters. Quora allows 80 characters to be displays so this needs to be concise as shown below
Fig 1 The author’s Quora profile
Complete your Quora account by adding a well-written detailed profile firstly the About Me section which should include areas of expertise, interests, education, previous companies and your other social media accounts. Leonid S. Knyshov, CEO of Sendlinks, offers these valuable tips for creating your own profile: - Set your topic-specific bio to convey your authority and verify that Quora shows the correct short bio on your answers. - Do not mention your business directly in your answers. Feel free to mention it in your Quora profile and in your topic bio. - Comply with Quora's "Be Nice, Be Respectful" policy and policy on disclosing affiliations in answers. - Refrain from adding a "signature" at the end of your posts. They look tacky, will get you noticed in a negative way, and are redundant when you use the topic-specific short bio correctly. Note: Think carefully about your tag line. Quora will show only the first 50 characters of your whole tagline (your name and bio) above the answer you post.
Fig 2 The author’s Profile heading
Use the Employment section to add your company details and Logo’s as shown in the example below:
Fig 3- Add your employment history to your profile 2) Display your areas of expertise Once you have completed your Bio the next step make sure populating the ‘knows about’ section . Think carefully about these subjects which should reflect your mission areas of expertise and your company proposition
3) choose topics to follow by editing the “Feeds” section,
Fig 4- Your content feeds in the left navigation Once you have completed your subject choices in‘feeds’, Quora will personalize your news feed with a combination of recent questions and popular answers from the followed topics. You will not be able to answer all these questions.
Getting active: Submitting Questions & Answers Once you set up your account, go on Quora and start examining the content and your areas of interest. Read through various questions and answers, follow people who participate in discussions and up vote their updates of answer you like and start getting active. Your upvotes appear on your public Quora profile, so this is a good way to show there’s some relevant activity going on, even if your account is relatively new. Your follows and upvotes appear in users’ Quora notifications, so you have a much higher chance of getting followed back. You can start submitting questions at the top of the navigation bar here
Note that Quora offers an excellent drop down menu of similar questions already asked and answered Quora also offers this great feature when you ask a question to ask specific subject matter experts to opinion on the question asked By clicking on the Ask the recipients will then receive the question in their newsfeed as defined by their own areas of expertise in their personal bios:
Share Your Quora Expertise on Other Social Media Networks Quora allows you to auto-share your answers on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr and WordPress.com. To do this, just connect any or all of the above to your Quora account using Settings.
Tracking content performance Quora’s free basic analytics, accessible through the stats tab allow you to analyze your content performance on the platform.
Quora analytics shows you most clicked, shared and upvoted content within different periods of time: last 7 days, last 30 days, last 3 months and all-time. This feature will help you to find your most popular content in terms of clicks and see what works best with the Quora community.
Figure 6. Showing the authors stats page
Summary Quora is a brilliant source of ideas and inspiration for marketers To get the most out of Quora, make sure your account profile is complete and professional, read through the discussions to get a feel for popular topics in your industry, communicate with others and then start using it.
About the Author
David Reilly is a Digital Strategy Consultant and Trainer who writes about digital innovation, new technology and runs the digital future networking Group, Future Thinking in Digital Marketing [email protected] Contact 0208 299 0557
