Why Brands Should be on Quora

Name one brand or business that knows everything their customers want and I’ll give you a dollar. One whole, crisp, brand new dollar bill. Now try naming a company that would like to know everything their customers want and I’ll bet you’re right no matter what brand you name.

In this day and age, businesses turn to Google, Facebook, or paid media platforms to understand and reach their target audience, but the amount of noise on those sites is enormous. It’s difficult for both the user and the brand to communicate directly with each other, let alone establish a solid relationship. However, there is one site that offers those capabilities without any paid ads, character limits, or viral memes.

Introducing Quora

Quora is one of the fastest growing websites out there, with over 100 million monthly visitors, which includes knowledgeable experts. It is the perfect platform to openly talk to your target audience, understand more about they want, and answer any burning questions that may prevent them from becoming your customer if left unanswered.

What Is Quora?

At its heart, Quora is a question and answer (Q&A) platform. Users sign up with their real names and create profiles that can include links to where they work or websites they contribute to. They can then follow certain topics based on interests and get a feed of questions other people are asking about those topics. Users have the option of answering questions or asking their own and each answer can be upvoted. It’s very straightforward and there is an emphasis on honest advice, so brands need to be sure they don’t push their agenda or try to spam others if they choose to use the platform.

Why Should Brands Be On Quora?

1. Build authority in your industry or niche.

As I mentioned, everyone signs up with their real name and can say where they work in their profile. This means that if you work for the brand someone is asking about, you’re able to give inquirers authoritative answers that they’ll upvote above other speculative answers. This builds trust in the business and is a great opportunity to directly answer a popular question your audience might have.

Here’s a great example from the owner of Freedcamp, a project management software. Someone on Quora asked if Freedcamp or Asana is better for project management and the CEO answered the question as objectively as he could. The answer was upvoted to the top and now anyone searching for the same thing will find the thread that he responded to.

2. Grow the organic reach of your product or service by having it discussed on Quora and indexed by Google.

According to SimilarWeb, about 65% of Quora’s traffic comes from organic search. That means nearly two-thirds of their visitors are asking a question or looking for an answer on Google and then finding a search result from Quora. Even if you could write content on your own site that answers the same question and ranks as high as Quora, you’d still want your answer to be on Quora because of the amount of monthly visitors they get. Plus, Google is clearly favoring Quora these days when it comes to specific questions, so why not try to double your exposure?

Going back to the Freedcamp example, a simple search for the same question on Google has Quora ranking #1.

3. Discover Who You Should Be Talking To

Another benefit to using Quora as a brand marketer is the ability to quickly find influencers in your niche. Each topic has a list of the top profiles based on votes and number of answers they’ve given. Those profiles in turn have links to their blogs, companies or social media profiles that you can later reach out to for content marketing purposes.

If you want an even quicker way of finding all of the relevant people in a specific Quora topic, try a site search in Google with the topic as a keyword. Google will give you a long list of profiles that meet the criteria you’re looking for, and you can even scrape the results into Excel.

4. Get Your Brand Directly Into Your Audience’s Inbox

Not only does Quora rank well and receive millions of monthly visitors, but it also has millions of users signed up for daily email notifications. Users can agree to be notified anytime a new or popular question is asked in a topic they follow and Quora will email them a preview of the question. Known as “Quora Digest,” marketers can use this to their advantage by answering questions that get included in the digest right away.

If your answer is solid and gets upvoted, anyone following that topic will be directed straight to you from their inbox—you can’t ask for better coverage than that.

What’s The Best Way to Get Started?

If you own or work for a business that wants to be on Quora, the first thing to do is to create a personal profile and link it to your website. Then you can start answering questions and exposing your brand to more people. The more you get upvoted for quality information, the more exposure you’ll get in both Quora and organic search.

The second thing you’ll want to do is create a topic for your business. Essentially like a Facebook page, anyone can leave questions tied to the topic of your business and Quora will group them under your topic. You can name the topic too so that it’s easy to search. Once you’ve done that, get out there and start answering questions!