Question and answer platform Quora was founded in 2009 by former Facebook employees Adam D’Angelo and Charlie Cheever. For several months after the tool’s public launch, it was near impossible to traverse tech and marketing blogs without hearing about Quora being “the next big thing.” But that was a few years back. Aside from a new blogging platform released in January and an impressive (yet semi-mysterious) announcement about metrics, the buzz has quieted a bit in 2013.
Ideally, Quora would do wonders for thought leadership. But crafting great answers requires time, not to mention a careful commitment to being genuine rather than self-promotional. That begs the question: is Quora really a worthwhile platform for thought leadership and content marketing? We collected a few stories from the real world to help assess whether these questions are worth answering. Here are their stories.
Daniel Hurd, Content Developer at Prima Supply
We currently approach Quora as an authority on commercial restaurant equipment, with limited knowledge of the residential side. For example, we answered several questions about residential refrigeration, though we sell commercial equipment, prefacing the answer as such. Answering these questions placed us on the radar of those who Ask to Answer (A2A) questions on Quora. Upon being asked to answer a question about refrigeration, we posted an answer which has provided increased brand presence, and several leads (check out the answer here).
While typically not promoting our own products, interested individuals have visited our site from this answer, as it received over 300 upvotes. We occasionally receive A2A, and when in our domain of expertise, we seek to answer it as best as possible!
Nishadha Silva, Online Strategist at Creately
Quora is our third best referral traffic source behind StackOverflow and Facebook. As you probably know Quora answers rank very well for question type searches. And since almost everyone has questions about diagrams we quickly identified this a a good traffic source. The first thing we did was answer almost every question related to diagramming. Then we followed relevant topics like diagrams, flowcharts, UML, Visio, etc. so whenever someone asks a relevant question we can answer them. We even encouraged our devs and QA’s to join Quora and answer questions. After all, it’s fun and a good learning platform.
We also use Quora questions when creating content. If many related questions are coming up in one, we try to create a blog post or an article around it because we know people are looking for answers to these questions.
Al Chen, Founder at The KeyCuts
I sell a Excel keyboard cover product and have had good success with generating leads through Quora. I look for questions about using Excel and then I try my best to answer them. Then I state I own a company that creates a product to solve this problem (learning Excel shortcuts) and I have received a decent amount of traffic to my site as a result of that answer on Quora.
What is your brand’s Quora for thought leadership story? Have your answers generated any leads or otherwise valuable momentum?
