Posting new content and getting virtually no traffic can be incredibly frustrating. It’s like giving a well-planned presentation to an empty room.
What good is your insight if your audience can’t experience it? There are countless ways to promote your content and your website, but it can be ongoing and involved process.
It can be exhausting, quite frankly.
That’s where Quora comes into play. Quora isn’t a standalone perfect answer for passive promotion, but when you use it properly you’ll see a tremendous lift in relevant traffic that is a perfect supplement to the other content promotion you’re doing.
Quora: The not-so-secret traffic source for savvy marketers
In case you haven’t heard of Quora, the idea is pretty simple. It’s a Q&A platform where anyone can post a question and get answers from experts within the community.
Questions are typically categorized by industry/topic to make it easy for those asking the questions to be found by experts who want to provide an answer — even experts like university professors, Ashton Kutcher and even the POTUS.
So let’s look at how you can start gleaning serious traffic from Quora.
Step 1 – Create a Killer Profile.
New users to Quora often don’t take the time to fill out their profile completely which can be a big mistake. You want to stand out from other users and you want to create a feeling of trust with the people reading your answers.
Start with the headline.
Your bio acts as your headline and shows up beneath your name in your Quora profile. When you create this section focus on the topics you want to be known for. Put them in a pipe format. For example: “Content marketer | Entrepreneur | Brand Strategist”
Your bio appears next to any answers you create so it tells readers why they should tune into what you have to say. It’s about the credibility.
Fill out the summary.
This is seen by people who click your profile and rich formatting is supported to make it look great, use lists and insert clickable links back to your site. You should use this field to tell a great story, mention publications and build your social proof. This is your chance to stand out.
Claim your core topics.
Quora allows you to add topics to your bio where you consider yourself an expert, so find relevant topics and get them added.
Now it’s time to start hunting.
Step 2 - Go find the high visibility questions.
This is where a lot of users fail to leverage the website properly. You can still get traffic from answering any of the relevant questions in a topic, but you want to find the questions and answers that are attracting the most views and upvotes. Get into your topic of choice and look for the Topic FAQ. This shows you the top questions being asked at the moment. You’ll see top questions listing a large number of answers.
That’s what we want. It’s OK if people answered already. The more the merrier.
Click through to any question and you’ll see option to write an answer. This section also shows how many people are following this question. For high-profile question this number is often in the thousands. That’s thousands of people who will be notified of your answer. It’s like having a mass email list at your disposal.
Continue to do this research and for each question choose the “Answer Later” option. You can find it under the “…” option next to the follower and comment count of a question. This way you build a database of questions that you can jump into. Don’t answer yet. You need a basic strategy first.
Step 3 – Crafting amazing answers.
I can’t tell you how to answer questions. That’s entirely up to you, what you know, and what kind of information you need to provide.
You do want to craft answers that greatly increase your chances of gaining attention, upvotes and link clicks.
Here are some tips that can help improve your chances of success with your answers:
- Tell a story – It’s been scientifically proven that when we hear a story our brain activates the same areas used as if we were experience the event ourselves.That’s why stories of tragedy, struggle, success and personal perseverance do exceptionally well here.
- Use visuals – You can place images in your answers, and you should. Buzzsumo studied 2 million articles and discovered that content with an image every 100 words or so got double the amount of shares of articles with fewer images. Leverage that to create more engaging answers that get more upvotes.
- Dig deep – Set out to create the absolute best answer for question that is long and thoughtful, but don’t give away the farm. You want your answer to withstand time and be considered evergreen content, but the key is to generate traffic. Provide enough to capture their attention and then link back to relevant content on your website for more information.
- Answer outside of your topic – Keep an eye on the trending topics on Quora. They may fall outside of your target expert area but providing answers here is a good way to grow your view counts in a short amount of time, build visibility, and grow organic traffic.
These are hot topics, similar to Twitter Trends, which are getting a large volume of views on Quora. You can only benefit from getting involved in the answers.
Conclusion
Quora is a terrific source of relevant, targeted traffic that you can drive toward specific content on your website. It is a massive reservoir of opportunity and conversions just waiting to be tapped.
The user base is currently encountering an issue that you can provide an answer for.
They are waiting for a solution.
The sooner you add Quora to your social strategy, the sooner you’ll start seeing a steady climb in organic traffic to your website.
Have you had success with growing leads or traffic from using Q&A sites like Quora?
