How Quora Can Be Used to Sell Your Idea – 4 Experts Share Their Success Stories
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What if we told you of a way to attract thousands of views to your business or idea with just 15 minutes in hand every day.
You’d surely call us crazy.
One word – Quora.
Quora is the answer to finding a solid online community to sell your idea or envision your business plan.
But before we get into the lead generating portion of Quora.
Let’s take a history lesson and understand what Quora is about.
INTRODUCTION TO QUORA
Quora traces its roots back to 2009, when Adam D’Angelo and Charlie Cheever, former employees of Facebook decided to merge ideas of the internet’s biggest publishing platforms – Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers, and Reddit.
The outcome was a question-and-answer website named Quora.
Quora went public in 2010 and was instantly praised for its clean design and knowledge-centric platform.
Many of the positive praises centered around the quality of answers written by its users.
Quora was made to ensure individuals seeking questions would find only the most experienced professionals to answer their queries.
The system of Quora was a rather simplistic one – filter out unnecessary noise.
Bad answers would be hidden from view of readers instead of simply being downvoted down the list. This system ensured only valid answers were given prominence, unlike other question-and-answer websites.
By 2013, Quora had provided users with tools such as ‘Stats’ to recognize experts that have been providing helpful answers. Quora was integrated into a mobile-friendly app the same year. Users were happy to use Quora with no service fees and free of advertisements.
Today, Quora is used by millions of business owners from around the world to market their services and products by providing answers to people. Quora makes for a fantastic platform for individuals like you to sell their idea and reach out to a community that thinks the same.
Quora isn’t separated by global boundaries, by gender, by politics, or by any form of propaganda. Quora exists on two simple fundamentals –
If you have a question – we have your answers.
If you’ve got answers – help others with their questions.
WHY BOTHER WITH QUORA IN THE GOLDEN AGE OF GOOGLE & SOCIAL MEDIA?
Now you’re stuck thinking, in an age of Facebook. Instagram, and Google, why on earth would someone use a question-and-answer site like Quora to sell their idea?
Frankly, that’s a cracking question. And the answer is – ‘Time Value’ and ‘Expert Advice’.
While popular social-media platforms have experts along with the general populace giving their fair share of opinions, it’s hard to differ from who’s giving you honest advice and who are giving you their biased opinions.
On Quora, experts usually take their time to explain the product or service of the question you’re asking for.
In-depth knowledge is always valuable when compared to a 50-word opinion written on Google or social media sites. Some social-media sites even have a word-limiter such as Twitter.
Experts on Quora have no word-limit and are free to express their views and will be rewarded with upvotes if their answer is favorable by the public.
Not convinced yet?
The following section briefs you on why Quora is a viable source for generating leads compared to the top 3 social media sites on the internet.
Quora vs Google
Yes, Google is the undisputed king of the internet but that’s exactly the main issue that Quora aims to solve.
Google is filled with spam pages and a boatload of targeted ads from your competitors that don’t solve your problem of putting your brand or idea on the spotlight. Instead, it adds to the problem.
Google is an exceptional marketing tool to use when your brand is already well recognized.
Let us ask you this – What is the first thing that opens when you search for electronics or merchandise?
The answer is Amazon, Walmart, BestBuy, and other established shopping powerhouses.
If your brand is new, there’s a good chance it will never show up in the first 10 pages of Google.
Spending money on expensive ads and SEO specialists aren’t going to magically displace the already established brands who will simply spend more to regain their search position.
How do you establish your brand in such a competitive marketing world?
This is where Quora steps in and solves the problem for new businesses. You don’t have to spend a penny and are still able to generate thousands of leads.
Quora is an open community with millions of monthly users.
There are endless topics that have their own experts. Topics ranging from mediocre questions like ‘Are Superheroes real?’ to serious topics such as ‘What are some excellent startup ideas for new entrepreneurs?’.
Quora covers topics from all spheres of the world.
Let’s take an example to demonstrate how well Quora helps to establish your brand.
You’ve just successfully set up your fashion e-commerce store and are excited about selling your brand-new designer clothes.
Unfortunately, your e-store is in the middle of a cyber forest with no directions for your customers to follow.
This is where Quora steps in and creates inroads to your eCommerce store by announcing to the world that your store is live.
Here is a simple 6-step process to give you the full breakdown on how convenient it is to market your products and services.
- Log on to Quora and create an account.
- In the search field, type your desired industry. In this case ‘Clothing’.
- Questions related to your field will now show up.
- Click on any one of them and begin to answer concisely.
- Don’t forget to share links back to your website while you answer.
- And that’s it.
Your customers will proceed to be redirected back to your website and will upvote your answer to be listed as a top answer for other new readers to be redirected.
All questions that you answer remain indefinitely on Quora. This means you’ll always have customers reading your answer for years and in turn, be redirected back to your site. Easy peasy!
The best part of redirecting customers in this way is that you narrow your customers related to your industry which converts into a high percentage of sales.
Quora is an exceptional way to find customers or clients targeted to your idea of business and redirect them back to your site.
Quora vs Facebook
Facebook under all its marketing makeup is primarily a social media platform that connects people and their family and friends.
While Facebook is a leading marketing tool for both – new and old businesses, at the end of the day, you’ll make your way through a puddle of images and other social media campaigns just to attract your customers.
Starting a Facebook page related to your business doesn’t offer much if you’ve got no way to attract your customers. Facebook marketing is exceptional but also incredibly costly and will eat away at your financial resources.
Top comments on Facebook aren’t necessarily written by experts as there isn’t an intelligently designed structure to filter nonsensical comments.
It isn’t surprising to find ‘Sarcastic humor’ ‘Insults’ and other wishy-washy comments fill up your Facebook posts.
Quora is a knowledge portal. If a top answer is chosen by the public, it’s almost always filled with excellent writing skills and has an in-depth and detailed explanation behind it.
It’s no wonder writers with a good grasp of the English language find themselves on Quora putting their literary skills to the test.
Facebook has ads thrown into the mixture while Quora is a clean slate with expert answers to keep your eyes occupied.
There are no gimmicks like click baits and memes slipping in. Quora is strictly professional and helps you in generating high-quality leads.
To put things into perspective, think of Facebook as the local grocery store that everybody visits – housewives, students, professionals, etc. You’ll waste precious time waiting in the queue to get exactly what you need.
However, Quora is like a farmer’s market hosting only the finest produce. It may take a while to drive uptown and get your product but rest assured, you’re always getting the most organic produce for yourself.
It all comes down to – Fish at the same spot with millions of fishermen and hope for a catch or fish at a peaceful and secluded location at the lake and take home your prized trout.
Which option would you choose?
Quora vs Instagram
Like Facebook, Instagram is an image sharing platform that was primarily built with teens and fashion-conscious people in mind.
Businesses do find success in promoting their brands on Instagram, although it isn’t suited for everyone.
Let’s say you deal in selling medical devices.
Do you think Instagram would be the ideal place for doctors to gather and ask questions related to medicine?
We didn’t think so either.
While a photo is worth a thousand words, Quora doesn’t have any restrictions against photos either. Quora allows answers to be listed with photos along with the information.
The same can’t be said about Instagram which limits users from posting beyond a word-limit and is generally built on hashtags to guide people.
Instagram is a competitive race while Quora is made up of an entire community that helps each other grow. Every product or service idea will have questions from the customer.
These questions can be answered with images and detailed information on Quora.
On Instagram, business owners are forced to redirect their customers to their personal email or website and hence, another medium creates complications to generate sales.
It doesn’t help that Instagram brand owners usually repost the same image multiple times over weeks, months, and years. A question after being answered on Quora remains relevant through the years.
Let’s say you’ve answered a question about ‘The best way to peel potatoes’ in 2013, the answer will remain relevant to someone in 2019 and so forth as Quora doesn’t have a spotlight system like Instagram in which your images will be less relevant after some time has passed.
Like Google and Facebook, Instagram builds its branding on advertisements and hence, the cost per customer ratio is quite high.
Quora is free for any new businesses to set up and start with no thought given to their financial budget.
4 EXPERTS SHARE THEIR SUCCESS FORMULAS ON ADDING VALUE TO A BUSINESS UTILIZING QUORA
Now that you understand how Quora is an exceptional way to strike the right chords with your business.
We will learn the deepest secrets from the leading marketing experts themselves on how Quora can be used to brand your business and how their own brand has changed for good.
1. Brian Schuster (Co-founder of Hivergent)
Can you believe Brian received over 1 million views on Quora in just a span of a month’s time?
Before he used Quora, Brian’s professional journey started out as a data scientist and a developer. He created a Blockchain technology business called Hivergent. Brian was introduced to Quora as a place where he could hone his writing skills while simply helping people with queries related to his field.
Little did he know that Quora was going to change his future for good. Brian began to understand that his knowledge in Blockchain technology was simply too valuable.
He used Quora to spread information on Blockchain and Ethereum and soon gained a large following of people that were interested in his posts.
His growth on Quora was staggering enough to land him as the best writers in the cryptocurrency section.
This allowed him to gain awareness and soon the word around the block followed that Brian was the man to see about information related to cryptocurrency.
Boom! And one day it happened.
Over 3500 upvotes in total and over a million views.
Brian Schuster was living the dream he never thought would see the light of day. He had become a Blockchain tech expert.
Brian shares with us the tips used to gain such incredible success on Quora.
- Brian Schuster states that if you want your business to be the best there is. Post on all holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. Holidays are when questions are answered rarely by experts as most of them are out with their families. This time should be taken advantage of to put your brand on the map and answer as many questions as possible.
- Brian stresses to keep your topics of interest to a few. Expanding on every general topic portrays you as a general expert who is knowledgeable about everything. This type of expert is rarely seen as a specialist and hence, it limits your ability to be taken seriously as a professional
- Brain strictly recommends formatting. Bolding headings, utilizing pictures to make your point, and the right font to give your answer a crisp and polished look that stands out.
- Brian recommends posting multiple times every day. This allows your content to spread far and wide into the Quora database to keep up with the inbuilt Quora algorithms.
2. Carolyn Edgecomb (Talent manager of Impact BND)
Carolyn Edgecomb and her marketing team weren’t new to the concept of experimenting with various marketing strategies, after all, they had performed over 40 experiments.
The single striking fact that came out of all these experiments was that Quora stood out like a shining knight in armor among all others.
What made Quora stand out for Carolyn and her team compared with other marketing tactics?
Carolyn and her team found that when a question was searched on Google, the first result would often be a Quora answer.
This finding led the team to believe that brand awareness that was heavy on “FAQ” or Frequently Asked Questions led the results straight to Quora.
When a customer wants to know about a service, product, or a brand, what do they do? They ask Google a question of course.
And the question leads them to Quora, thus creating a series of brand awareness through a loop.
Customer with a question -> Customer Googles the Question -> Customer finds their Answer via Quora -> Brand Awareness achieved! -> Customer has another question -> Loop recreated
With multiple questions leading back to Quora and with experts providing their answers in an insightful manner, Quora was a distribution channel that served brand awareness established through a series of knowledgeable responses.
This revelation led Carolyn and her team to highlight Quora as their #1 marketing strategy.
To achieve maximum effectiveness in Quora marketing. Carolyn has the following tips for you.
- A splendid Quora profile is critical to establish yourself as an expert. Ensure you provide links to all your social media sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Quora allows ‘Topic Specific Bios’. This option allows you to target industry-specific audience and provide credentials related to only that field and no other.
- In your Description field, don’t just write an essay about your achievements. Write a small concise paragraph and don’t forget to link back to your website.
- Don’t waste time answering questions that have already received a top response or have several top responses. Concentrate on contributing to questions that have yet to be answered or have newly been added for maximum impact.
- Make sure to always keep answers updated to their latest information. Outdated answers are likely to be ignored and hence, the upvotes won’t see daylight.
- Questions with over 1000 views and with over a week’s duration are considered as a minimum criterion before you begin answering.
- Notifications should be turned on with relevant questions being emailed to your inbox. This way you’ll always be able to answer questions related to your industry.
- Network with Quora users and begin to form a connection with them. Socializing with people related to your industry can have several surprises.
- Utilize the ‘Stats’ portion of your profile to get a deep understanding of the analytics of your answers. Here you can find important information related to View count, Upvotes, User Shares, and other relevant information.
3. Alexis Silvers (Precision)
Alexis believes that Quora can be used as an exceptional blog post without needing to go through the painful process of setting up your own website.
The traffic is already with Quora, you simply need to redirect it back to your business.
Alexis states that unlike Google, the answers of Quora remain appealing for a long time and hence, this causes visitors to always consume your content. Your brand will glimmer like a lighthouse and help individuals seeking answers in your relevant business.
Ultimately, Alexis likes to treat all her Quora posts like she would as if she were writing a blog on her website. The answer should be lengthy and provide as much information as possible to cover all aspects of the question asked.
Alexis shares her top tips to writing a top blog post to ensure your post gains several views in no time.
- While posts should be long, unnecessary fluff will only cause the reader to lose track of your answer. Eliminate clutter.
- Reposting stuff that’s already posted on your website as a Quora answer allows you to save time and promote your blog.
- Images are eye-candy. Use enough to get the attention of the reader. Just don’t spam too many.
- It’s critical to cite sources and backlink any information from third-party sources to avoid getting a ban. Copyright infringement is not cool.
- Self-promotional answers should be subtle. Always answer the question without spamming your website all over the post. Restrain yourself from spamming your product images either.
- Don’t be shy, introduce yourself, tell your story in your biography, and share your personal name. Readers like knowing who they are talking to and if they like your post, you’ll have followers lining up.
- Always take the time to respond to any questions that your reader might have. No matter how simple.
- The ‘@’ symbol on Quora is used to tag content creators. When you’d like to offer credit or add credibility to your post, be sure to use the @ followed by the name of the creator. g. @BrendonTyler
- Quora takes time to get around. Once you’ve got the hang of how to publish quality answers, you’ll always find readers.
- Quora isn’t just for business alone but for recruitment as well. It’s a good idea to include the type of talent you’re looking for in your posts.
4. Cara Tarbaj (Wish Pond)
Cara swears by Quora as her 2nd highest traffic generation source compared to all other traffic generators.
Using Quora, Cara’s team managed to pull over 23000 views to their posts in just a month. This went to attract 13,470 visitors to their website.
Cara’s main strategy is to avoid all the general questions related to her industry and stick to the most important questions that target her business.
For E.g. If you were a digital marketer and had enough time to only answer one of two questions –
- ‘Can someone tell me strategies on how to rank higher on Google search engines?’
- ‘Would like to know the top 5 basic tricks of SEO.’
You should go for the 2nd one. The 1st question is too generalized, there are different ways to rank your website higher on Google. The 2nd question specifically mentions ranking using only ‘SEO’, answering this question is much more critical than the first.
If your new to Quora, the below tips are a winning formula that helped Cara gain her success on Quora.
- An actionable strategy is a must on Quora. Users only click links if they find your answer appealing if not, they move on to the next best answer. Plan the structure before you answer a question.
- Examples are a great way to demonstrate what would happen in a scenario. It gives them a real-life example of what to expect.
- Always start the answer in a helpful manner and then link back to your website at the end of the post.
- Pronouns are an exceptional way to add a personal touch to your answers. Using ‘I’ and ‘Me’ is recommended.
- Google Analytics is a tool to record visitors to your website and track their sources. You can keep a count on all the visitors that are being sent back by Quora in this way.
- Utilize the ‘Recent Questions’ option on the search bar to get a list of all the industry-relevant questions newly posted on Quora.
- The ‘Follow Topic’ option will allow you to follow all relevant topics to your interests. This allows you to filter out unnecessary topics out of your Quora feed.
CONCLUSION
Quora is no magic spell. You won’t automatically draw traffic within a day or even a week’s time of utilizing Quora. But don’t let that weigh you down.
To gain the trust of your social circle, be consistent and provide professional answers related to your profession.
In time, you’ll gain a following that will only grow and gain you direct leads to your business with no investment.
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