Quora is a platform where anyone can create a profile, ask a question and share an answer to others’ questions on nearly any topic. Much like Reddit, Quora may not be a platform many small business owners have considered using for marketing purposes. Yet Quora is one of the best ways merchants can show their expertise, collect feedback and interact with customers. Here’s how to market your business on Quora.
Establish expertise in your field
Customers want to shop with merchants they trust. Who better to trust than a small business owner who can answer questions with confidence, insight and depth?
Quora is a great place to establish your experience. Search for topics related to your industry and show your passion on Quora’s messaging boards. For example, a hardware store owner might search for “How to build a fence” and browse through variations of this question to land on “How do I build a fence around my backyard?” This is a good opportunity to share information from your website; if you have a blog post about building a fence, pull information from that article and share the link. Avoid being overly promotional, but give a detailed response to a user’s question. In your answers, try to always include a visual; research shows that people follow visual instructions up to 323% better than written ones.
Get content for your marketing channels
Quora is a great place to generate new ideas for your marketing campaigns. If you run a blog, newsletter, or post informational content on your social media channels, use Quora to listen in on what people are already talking about. As the experts at Buffer suggest, “Ask people their opinion on a topic and collect all their answers into an article. With Quora, you can ask for stories or experiences that people have had (rather than a specific, closed question with a single right answer).”
Quora can give you insight into your customer’s pain points, and also give you material to use when generating your own content. For example, if a cafe owner notices a lot of chatter on Quora around the differences between a latte, cappuccino, and flat white, it’s an easy leap to develop an infographic or quick blog post to share with their followers.
Quora is a great place to keep an eye on trends changing your industry, as well as some competitor research.
Send traffic to your website
Your best strategy for marketing on Quora is to use it as an educational opportunity, rather than a direct sales platform. Nevertheless, actively posting and answering questions on different boards can help you send a ton of traffic to your website.
Be diligent about regularly answering questions in a thoughtful way. When users find your answers helpful, they will usually click through a link to learn more about your company. In one case study, Quora links generated 2,000 new sessions on one company’s website after just three months of posting. That’s a huge amount of traffic in a short amount of time, and a brand-building tool that can lead to significant sales.
Explore Quora for competitor and trend research
Quora is a great place to keep an eye on trends changing your industry, as well as some competitor research. Check in on Quora and follow specific topics to stay on top of discussions around competing brand and new product ideas. You can follow topics with notifications and set up alerts around specific users, making it easy to listen in on tastemakers in your vertical. Down the road, this can help you develop new products, bundle and upsell at the right time, and position your brand to stay ahead of the curve.
One word of caution: experts warn not to participate in Quora boards that discuss your competition. Remember that Quora is not meant for promotional purposes. “You don’t want to post that people should check out your site instead of the competition. However, participating in a generic discussion with your own take never hurts.”
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