Marketing on Quora: A beginner’s guide

There are many goals that brands have when it comes to social media marketing, with multiple ways to achieve each of them. But if you’re looking to establish your brand as an authority on specific topics, the best way to do it is by simply answering people’s questions. Doing this can help you establish brand awareness, build new connections, and sometimes even generate leads for your business.

This has become a lot easier for brands nowadays, with many sites on the internet now dedicated to helping people get their questions answered. One of the most popular of these sites is Quora.

Much like Reddit, Quora is inherently community driven, but that’s pretty much where the similarities end. Just like any other social channel, you’ll need a well-devised strategy to succeed on Quora. But before we get into that, let’s learn a bit about it.

What is Quora?

Remember Yahoo Answers? Simply put, Quora is a more professional, mature, and authoritative version of Yahoo Answers. On this platform, anyone can ask questions, and anyone can answer them. The questions can be tagged with topics, as well, so that they’re classified appropriately.

However, you’re a lot less likely to get dubious answers from therealbatman024 on Quora. The names are verified, and people usually add their experience and their areas of expertise in their bios as well. In fact, you could ask a question as generic as a list of people’s favorite books, and get an answer from the Prime Minister of Canada.

• Apart from this, there are some other things you can do on Quora:
• Create new topics that people can add questions to
• Take questions about a specific topic
• Publish content in a blog format
• Use Quora Ads to promote your content
• Follow specific topics so you can keep an eye on the discussions important for your brand

Why is Quora important?

• Exposure and traffic: Quora is one of the most popular sites for user-generated content, and with over 300 million active monthly users, you’re likely to get exceptional reach for your content here. If you’re linking back to your site on the answers you write, you’re likely to get a large amount of traffic off of Quora, too.
• Thought leadership and brand awareness: You can demonstrate your expertise on almost any topic, and join the ranks of several high-profile writers who are already on the site. You’re likely to get several thousand views on the answers you write, and your answers can be viewed many months after you’ve written them. This means that Quora is great for building awareness for your brand.
• Insights: Do you have a question? You’re likely to get answers from experts regardless of the topic. Alternatively, you can follow relevant topics and get insights about trends based on the type of questions that keep cropping up. You can even use the site to curate future content ideas.
• Support: You may sometimes stumble upon someone asking questions about your brand. Use this opportunity to directly reach out to these people and offer support.
• Searchability: Quora’s questions are searchable on Google. This means that for any question you answer, you’re likely to get views from outside Quora’s user base, as well.

How you can use Quora for marketing

On sites like Quora, your brand will only find success if you’re providing real value to your audience. It’s not about offering discounts or other incentives—it’s about providing so much value that they genuinely want to follow you. And by its very nature, the platform affords you plenty of opportunities to do this, since you’re going to be answering their questions anyway.

This is why it’s important to keep in mind that your approach on Quora should be to answer questions as meaningfully as you can, rather than using it as an advertising platform to reach as many users as possible. This means you’ll need to spend a bit of time getting to understand the nuances of Quora’s community. But how do you get started?

1. Create a great profile

Just like any other social media channel, having a great profile is key to your success when marketing on Quora. However, you won’t be able to create a profile for your brand itself, so you’ll need to identify who’s going to answer questions on your brand’s behalf.

Every time this person answers a question, a bit of the bio will be viewable just above the answer. Quora uses the first 50 characters of your profile—your name and credentials—as a tagline above every answer. You can use this to do a little bit of branding. Mention your brand’s name as close to the beginning as possible, and it’ll be visible in every answer you make.

There’s also a full bio that you can add, that’s visible whenever someone visits your profile. Spend some time and create a great bio, and keep in mind that you can add clickable links, and even mention other users here, as well. While it’s advisable to keep these links to a minimum to avoid coming off as spammy, it’s a great way to drive traffic to your website.

A great feature of Quora is that you can use different credentials for different topics. For example, you can have one bio with your job title for questions related to your industry, and a bio that talks about your passion for travel if you also want to answer travel-related questions. To create topic-specific bios click on your profile page. On the right-hand side, you’ll see the Knows About column.

Next to each topic you add, you’ll be able to describe your experience in that area. Whenever you answer questions on these topics, the respective credentials will appear. You can also set a default credential for when you answer questions on topics that you haven’t set any specific credential for.

Once you do all of this, make sure you complete your Quora profile by filling out:

• Your interests
• A detailed “About Me” section
• Your employment and education credentials
• Your location or the cities that you visit regularly
• A profile picture

2. Follow relevant topics and users

Once you’ve created a complete profile, you’ll need to start following topics that are relevant to your industry. Your Quora feed will be comprised of questions from these topics, and you’ll get suggested topics based on previous ones you choose. You can find topics with the search box—just use keywords you think will be relevant for your brand, and Quora will give you a list of autocompleted suggestions. When you click through to a topic page, you’ll see an extra list of related topics along the side. You can even follow specific users and get notified when they post answers.

This does two things for you—first, you’ll be able to find relevant questions that you can answer directly on your feed, and second, you can also use this for market research. Identify trends in the questions that people ask on Quora, and you can use that to curate new content ideas for your blogs, as well.

Here’s a suggestion: if you go to your profile, and edit the Knows About section, you’ll find a search bar that allows you to search for new topics to add. Here, you can type in your brand’s name, and then create your brand as a topic. This is a great thing to do, because people who are asking questions about your brand can add them to this topic, and other users can also browse through this topic to learn more about your brand.

Quora will provide you with email updates, but you’ll want to make sure that these are set up properly. Just go to your Settings page and click on Email & Notifications. Here you can customize the frequency and specificity of the emails you receive from Quora.

3. Find the right questions to answer

The most important part of using Quora is answering questions. But how do you find the right ones to answer? There are thousands of questions on the platform, with new ones getting asked every second—and not all of them are going to serve your brand.

If you want to achieve your goals on the network, you’ll need to know which questions to answer, and which ones to let go.

The best way to find relevant questions for your business is to type in a keyword in the search box and hit Enter. Look for questions that were asked in the last month or so, and answer them. You stand a greater chance of having your answer show up at the top of the list if you answer quickly. While searching for these questions, be sure to use keywords that are trending right now, so you get more visibility, and you can also establish authority for yourself in completely new discussions.

Apart from answering the most recent ones, you can also find questions to answer in other ways, For example, searching for new topics that are relevant to your business will often unearth questions you’d previously missed. And you can also look for threads with lots of upvotes. A high number of upvotes indicates that this is a popular question on the site. An answer here could potentially gain a lot of views, and it’s a great way to establish brand presence.

4. Write great answers

Writing good answers on Quora is an art, and there are quite a few things you’ll have to keep in mind. Remember that you’re here to provide value to your audience, so it’s important that you write detailed, useful answers with references wherever possible. A couple of lines of a vague overview won’t impress—or help—anyone. Here are some things to keep in mind while writing answers on Quora:

Edit and format well

The most popular answers on Quora are always edited and formatted well. Take time to edit your answers the way you would edit an article you were publishing. A well-edited answer will make a great impression on readers.

Quora also comes with a lot of tools you can use to format your content appropriately. Break down large paragraphs into bulleted or numbered points for easier reading. Be sure to bold or italicize important segments of your answers to highlight them. Wherever possible, add a hyperlink, and ensure that it flows naturally within your answer.

Use images

Another feature of good answers on Quora is that they use images to convey their points more clearly.

Well-chosen images can improve your answers and make them more popular among readers. And, as is the case across all social media, visual content appeals to people far more than huge blocks of text.

When you use images in your answers, the first one you use will show up as a thumbnail in the answer preview for the user. This makes it more likely for people to click on your answer and read what you have to say.

Provide evidence for your claims

Popular answers on Quora usually back up their claims with relevant research and evidence. When you do this, you establish credibility on the platform, and you can then begin to emerge as a thought leader on the topic.

While editing your answers, look carefully for any claims that you’re making. Wherever you find them, add links to supporting evidence. If the claims you made are based on research you conducted, you could add a link to a post where you elaborate on your study.

Tell stories

One of the most popular kinds of answers on Quora are ones with personal stories involved. Everyone likes reading a good story, and if you’re telling a great one, your answers will begin to see upvotes.

Just ensure that the story you’re telling is relevant to the question being asked—don’t try to force it when it’s not natural.

Don’t spam

Finally, to avoid being banned or downvoted by the community, don’t spam. Make sure you’re not stuffing your answers with tons of links—only use them when necessary.

And also try not to add similar links in every single answer you write. If all your answers are linking back to the same site, your profile might be flagged as a spammy account. Instead, focus on providing value to your audience and building real connections. Only link back to your website when it’s natural.

5. Using Quora Blogs

A great way to get involved in Quora beyond the question-and-answer format of the site is to use Quora Blogs to publish content.

All you need to do to get started is head over to your profile and click on Blogs. Now, you can create a blog, and customize its name and URL. It’s highly recommended that you create content that’s relevant to the industry you’re in. This is particularly useful for creating long, in-depth articles about particular topics that will be of use to the community at large. The blog that you create will be circulated along the Quora network, and is likely to get traction on the site.

Another way to use Quora Blogs is to repurpose content from your brand’s blog and publish it on Quora, with a link-back to the original piece.

6. Keep an eye on the analytics

Like with any other social media campaign, you’ll have to keep an eye on the analytics to see how well your answers are performing. Luckily, you can do this natively within Quora.

If you visit your stats page—www.quora.com/stats?—you’ll get a detailed graph of how many views all your answers have gotten, the total number of upvotes you’ve received, and how many times these answers have been shared, along with a graphical representation to show these stats over time. You can even view these stats for each individual answer.

By default, these statistics are provided for a 30 day period. However, you can also choose to view them for the last 7 days, 3 months, previous year, or all-time.

When you track these statistics, you’ll be able to see which topics are adding the most value for your brand. You can then choose to focus your efforts on these topics, or change your approach for answers in other topics that may perform better.

7. Quora ads

From any page on Quora, you can click on your display picture icon in the top right, and then hit Create Ad to create a new ad. This will take you to an ad creation page, and once you click Create a Campaign, you’ll be asked to choose an objective for your ad.

There are four different objectives you can choose when creating an ad on Quora:

• Conversions
• App Installs
• Traffic
• Awareness

After choosing your campaign type, you’ll have to set your campaign budget. You can set values for daily maximum budget and lifetime budget.

Daily maximum budget: The maximum amount that can be spent in a single day for a campaign.

Lifetime budget: The total amount that can be spent over the lifetime of a particular campaign.

After this, you’ll be asked to create an ad set for your ads. Ad sets are useful because you’ll be able to optimize multiple ads at the same time. You can create the ad set and then define the targeting that you want to set for it. Targeting options are powerful on Quora, and you’ll be able to target based on topics, questions, keywords, interests, or even broadly target to cover the most number of people.

Once you’ve set your targeting, you’ll be asked to choose the format of your ad. You can go with image, text, or even promote an answer that you’ve previously written.

After you’ve done this, simply upload your image—if needed—and your content. Your ad is ready!

Using Quora for marketing can provide your brand with lots of benefits. It’s a great way to create brand awareness, establish thought leadership, and even drive traffic to your brands. Hopefully, with the tips in this article, you’ll be able to do just that.

Know of anything we’ve missed, or have any questions? Leave a comment below, and we’ll get back to you asap!