How to Promote on Quora as an Agency Owner
- Quora can be a valuable platform for businesses to establish thought leadership, connect with potential customers, and drive traffic to their websites.
- To effectively use Quora, businesses should focus on providing high-quality answers to questions relevant to their industry and expertise and building a following.
- Quora can also be used for market research, content ideation, and identifying industry trends and pain points.
When it comes to content marketing, one of the lesser recommended channels is Quora, as opposed to social platforms such as Facebook or LinkedIn. This is surprising, after all, it’s the most suited platform to answer questions related to your business, and a great way to strengthen your position as an industry expert.
If you’re just starting your own agency, or running an established on that you want to scale, read on to find out how you could use Quora for your lead generation.
The potential of Quora for marketing strategists
How do agencies get clients? Some focus on writing blog posts, and promoting them via different channels; others rely on paid ads. There’s another option that should be a part of your marketing mix: Quora.
This platform isn’t like any other. What makes it unique is why people visit it. The Quora business page for agencies gives detailed insights into the potential this platform brings:
more than 300 million monthly unique visitors
67% of Quora users searched for products/brands
Quora users are likely to be a senior decision maker
average time on the platform is over 4 minutes
It’s clear that there’s a reason why many companies dedicate a big part of their social media marketing activities to this platform. Those who use it are looking to get their questions answered, and you can easily target them.
With that being said, marketing on Quora requires a proper strategy. Your goal should be to have the best answer, which strengthens your profile as a thought leader, and increase your brand awareness. The best answer (which usually has the most upvotes) is positioned right below the question, increasing your chances of being noticed.
6 best practices to follow on Quora
Quora isn’t like any other platform. While it’s inherently community-driven (like Reddit), promotional content will usually not succeed. Only those providing real value will gain followers and their answers will be pinned.
Don’t answer questions that are not part of your expertise. Nobody is interested in following a generalist, instead, become an expert in your niche. If you’re an SEO agency owner, focus on that specific category to establish your presence on Quora. Depending on the niche you’re active in, you might not find that many questions to answer, but patience will eventually be rewarded. Content on Quora needs to be built with a long-term strategy in mind—and it might take you months or years to become a recognized expert.
Let’s look at a few ways to build your Quora network, and how to provide useful answers.
1) Create a good profile
This advice has been given time and time again, yet most people skip this part.
A profile isn’t just a page with information. It showcases your achievements, what you’re currently doing, your authority and your personality.
Make sure to add a descriptive profile that talks a bit about your agency and the things you’ve achieved.
It’s also important to add your designation, school you’ve studied in, place of work, and other information. Most importantly, don’t forget to add your contact details.
A good example of a person with a good profile is, Josh Fechter.
In the profile, you can clearly see:
a good profile picture
job roles
a brief about his startup
call to action to one of his content pieces that will add you to the list
contact information
It’s crisp, to the point, and there’s no unnecessary information. It establishes authority as well.
2) Be casual
When writing answers on Quora, your tone and style are very important, especially when you are writing something that can be considered “boring” to most people. Never forget the importance of storytelling.
Write answers like you are speaking to one of your friends, and you will be accepted by the Quora community.
If you are too rigid and formal, then your content will be relegated to the parts of Quora that no one touches.
Good storytelling keeps users engaged till the end, and it is highly likely that you’ll earn a follow. Use analogies that are relatable to explain your point of view.
An example of casual writing is from a top writer named Asim. He starts off most answers with a story or experience from his life. This keeps the user engaged from the start to the end.
If you’re not sure about your own storytelling abilities, consider using an agency specializing in short-form content to get engaging Quora answers written for you.
3) Build a following
On Quora, it’s possible to write a lot of content and not get rewarded for it. Rewards, in this case, are followers, click-throughs and views.
You can’t gain followers on Quora without writing popular answers. Although you will be inclined to talk about your company all the time, refrain from it and hunt the popular questions down.
Popular questions that are trending and highly controversial bring about a lot of views and upvotes if answered well.
Treat your Quora profile as a platform for expression, that includes your personal thoughts. This is a sure fire way of gaining a following on Quora.
Intersperse a bit of promotional content every once in a while, and your followers will help you promote and share the content.
4) Don’t promote, be helpful
Although the title of this post says promote, that’s the LAST thing you should do when it comes to Quora. You can promote your agency without being blatant about it.
The number one metric you should be looking at is if you’ve helped the questioner with their problem.
Nobody wants to see a blatant promotion on Quora, everybody wants to see the value. Provide insightful, well-researched, original answers, and you will be considered a valuable writer.
5) Build relationships
There is no point in going solo in a socially connected world. Build relationships with people you like on Quora by commenting on their answers and engaging with their content. When people interact with you, they are likely to follow you and help you promote your content.
When you increase your interactions, more people are aware of you, and you can become a mini-Quora celebrity.
6) Think long term
The biggest mistakes most marketers make is thinking for the short term when it comes to marketing channels. It takes a certain while to build a reputation and some standing. Google rewards older domains from an SEO standpoint because they’ve been around for longer.
The same applies to Quora. The best way to go about it is to put your head down and create content, engage with people, tweak your strategies until you are happy.
The rewards will come!
Experimenting with Quora ads
At this point, you should have a decent Quora marketing strategy that is mostly free if we ignore the time you need to invest. There’s another paid option to make the most out of this platform, namely ads.
Quora allows you to create a business profile, and they even target agencies specially.
To find your audience, follow these steps:
Search for industry-specific keywords and look at their follower audience.
To kick-start your research, check out the Quora for Business Agency Kit mentioning which topics have the most followers.
Look for competitors and see if they are active on Quora.
If not, there’s a lot of potential to find new leads; otherwise, you can still reply to the same questions, and provide alternative answers.
Create a Quora for Business account and install the Quora Pixel.
For easier tracking, use Google Tag Manager instead of a manual installation.
While you could upload your email list, it might not be worth your while. Many Quora users have not signed up with a business email. Instead, let the audience slowly build up through pixel events. Once events have fired, you can even build lookalike audiences.
With the setup complete, you can start running ad campaigns. Quora recommends a daily budget of at least US$5, and to let the test run for one month or more. Experiment with different ad formats, such as promoted answers, lead gen forms, video ads.
Frequently asked questions about Quora marketing
When is the best time to post on Quora?
According to this answer from Erica Friedman to the same question, she has noticed that there’s an increased activity from those replying in the early morning, after lunch, and in the evening. This indicates that those answering do so in their free time.
What are the benefits of Quora marketing
Quora delivers visitors and users that are actively looking for an answer to their question. Registered users are often very active, making it easy to find leads. Additionally, there’s a traffic potential from your Quora profile and answers.
How to use Quora for Business?
Those looking to spend their marketing budget can take a closer look at Quora for Business. Paid advertising on Quora works similarly to Facebook and other platforms. You can pay to display video ads, get featured as promoted answers, and more.