If your niche or industry involves being an authority on a given topic, Quora might be right for you.  Quora is a fast-growing website that allows millions of users to ask and answer questions. Many of the people answering are professionals, like you, who are on the site to find new social leads, to build their online reputation, and/or to generate interest in their services. 

Quora pulls high in Google search, so even if there are not that many people on the Quora site itself who are interested in a given topic, what you say can still be found years later by entirely new people unrelated to the site.

Whether you’re a plastic surgeon, a lawyer, fashion industry insider, or a toy company, there are questions that need to be asked and answers people are dying to know. 

You don’t have to be the most knowledgeable person in your industry in order to set yourself up as an authority. You just have to be willing to answer questions with polite, well-thought-out answers.

Setting up

The first thing you’ll need to do when starting out on Quora is to set up your new profile. There is no point in spending your time trying to show people why they should come to you for advice/answers if you aren’t going to give them a way to get in touch! Start by clicking on your picture or initial, in the upper right corner. The icon is directly beside the ‘Add Question’ button. 

From there, you’ll want to click on your name. 

Clicking on your name will bring you to this page. Here, you can enter all the pertinent information about yourself and your company.

Be sure to fill out all the information and include links to your website and social media accounts.

Answering Questions

There are two well-established paths to building brand awareness and generating sales through Quora. Since one of these methods involves advertising dollars, we’ll start instead with the one that will only cost you some of your time.

This is a pretty straight-forward process. You can either search for questions pertaining to your industry, or you can ask them yourself. Either way, there are a few best practices to keep in mind when using Quora.

• Over-promotion: First off, don’t over-promote yourself. You can add any and all information about yourself, your company, and whatever projects you’re currently working on in your profile. You don’t need to announce any of those things to users unless that information would add value to the answer you are giving. We aren’t saying that you should never mention your products or services. Just don’t do it unless there’s a good reason for it.
• Engage: Set up a Google Alert so you know when someone on Quora has asked a question you know the answer to. This will give you an edge by making it more likely you’ll be the first industry insider to see the question and help ensure you’ll be part of the conversation. Become engaged and stay engaged. Set up additional Google Alerts to let you know when you or your business are mentioned, so you’ll always be able to respond.
• Discover new ideas: The newest, unanswered questions on the site are top-of-mind. This means they are a perfect way to research your market, as other users are telling you exactly what is on their minds. If you can contribute anything of value to a question, you have the chance to subtly market yourself as well. In some ways, Quora truly excels as a marketing research tool, so it’s important to use that to your advantage.
• Ask the best questions: You can’t get a good answer without asking a good question. However, there’s more to it than just asking a good question. You need to word that question carefully, in a way that encourages people in your industry to answer it in a thoughtful way.

Simply by asking great questions and giving thoughtful answers and feedback, you can build a stunning online reputation. Just keep in mind that it is vital that you be polite and that you honestly know the answer to the question. Do not plagiarize from other sources and no matter how silly or inane a question might be, resist the urge to say anything snarky. You must give your real name when using the site, and all results on Quora are searchable through Google. Simply put, that means the reputation you build there will literally follow you around the rest of your life.

Advertising

Advertising on Quora is a straightforward process. There are some great options to choose from and can be as targeted or generalized as you want them to be.

The first thing to do, from the Home Page, is to click on the ‘Businesses’ link on the left-hand side of the screen. It is located under the Quora and Home buttons as seen here. 

Clicking that link will take you to this page. It is a self-explanatory sales page, urging you to try out their advertising options. There is not a lot of information on this page, but it will only take you a few moments to read over if you are interested. 

At the top of the page, you’ll want to click on the ‘Start here’ link under Advertise on Quora.

By clicking on that link, you’ll be whisked away to a page where you can start immediately working on your advertising campaign. 

You will have a variety of options that all stem from the choice you make for your campaign objective. For many businesses, choosing Conversions is a given. If you’re using the site to build up brand awareness, you’ll want to choose either Awareness or Traffic. If you have a new app you want people to try, you are in luck because they do have an option for Ap Installs too. 

Conversions

The first thing you will need to do if you want to advertise for Conversions is to create a Quora Pixel for your website. Selecting Conversions gives you the option of choosing conversion types. You can choose from Generic, Purchase, Generate Lead, Complete Registration, Add Payment Info, Add to Cart, Add to Wishlist, Initiate Checkout, or Search. 

App Installs

Quora has integrated with TUNE, Branch, Singular, AppsFlyer, and Kochava for their mobile-app installation performance measurements. That makes it easy to track your results and see how much good your advertising dollars are doing for you.

Traffic

The Traffic option is straightforward. It allows you to send users to the landing page of your choice.

Awareness

Awareness is a little different from the others and an exciting option. You can choose this option if you want to advertise your expertise. If your objective is to get more attention on the Quora site and have more uses see your question/answer, this is the best option for you.

After selecting your objective, it is just a matter of selecting how much you wish to spend each day and when you want to start. 

On the next page, you will then get to make a few more choices. You can go with Contextual Targeting, Audience Targeting, Behavioral Targeting or Broad targeting. 

Targeting can get far more specific from there. You can choose to target people on specific user platforms, location targeting, and Demographics. You can opt to have your advertisement go out in the Quora email. You can even select questions or audiences to exclude. 

Summary

Using Quora answers/questions to build your brand is the right way to go if the product you wish to sell is yourself, your knowledge and expertise, or if you’re trying to get the attention of niche markets and industry leaders. If you are more interested in the advertising option, it can be used effectively both selling products as well as for selling yourself. Regardless of which path you choose to go down—or if you decide to go both routes—Quora can be an effective marketing tool if you take the time to use it properly.