With over 100 million monthly unique visitors, Quora can no longer be ignored as a potential traffic source for your blog. But in truth, Quora can do so much more. It’s not just a website where you can get answers to questions. It’s a multipurpose platform where you can form relationships with influencers in your niche, plan and research blog content, and stay up to date with industry developments. Quora is a perfect marketing tool for your blogging success.

Why Quora?

Quora
Image Source: Screenshot – Quora.com

Why is Quora a blogger’s secret weapon? And why should you definitely use it for your blogging efforts? Its effectiveness as a traffic source is explained by the two key things it gives you:

  • A searchable platform where you can demonstrate your expertise.
  • And a social proof mechanism to establish others’ confidence level in that expertise.

Quora also self-selects people who are already interested in your topic so you connect with those people you’re aiming at already in a seamless way, in the moment when they’re actively looking for the expertise you offer. What’s more, major publications and sites browse Quora for content ideas and research, which means quite often popular users will get featured in major features on those sites. How’d you like to be cited as an expert on Huffington Post or Forbes?

Setting up your profile

User profile
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Get started with Quora by first creating and then optimizing your user profile. You’ll get around 80 characters for your headline. Mention your brand as close to the beginning of your tagline as possible. Give yourself a killer headline bio. Use all your copywriting skills to make this zing. It’s crucial to get this part right, because it gets displayed everywhere along with your image.

You can get more creative with the summary, since others will only see this on your profile page. Quora offers some rich text formatting options in this section, including bold, italic, clickable URLs and bulleted lists. Most of all, focus on telling your compelling story. Highlight why your readers should trust you and your answers.

User avatars
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Overall, the more info you fill out the more optimized your profile will be. So provide as much information as possible, and add your other social profiles in the Settings menu. Click visible on profile to show the links on your Quora profile page. Select a good profile image; the ideal size is 200 x 200 pixels, but Quora should resize larger images fairly well.

Next, click on the “what topics do you know about” square on your profile and add topics you’d like to answer questions in; these should, of course, be connected to your niche. Check this list of the most followed topics for 2016 in order to get some insights and inspiration.

After you select a topic, you’ll see an “edit bio” text link underneath that topic name on your profile. Click that to edit the bio that will display when you answer questions in that topic on Quora, so you can have different bios for each topic. Highlight the most relevant qualification or experience for each, to increase readers’ trust in your words.

Stay up to date in your niche

Now that you’re up and running on Quora, it’s time to put it to work for you. The first thing you should do is to start browsing your topics of interest and exploring the FAQs and popular questions in each. Explore available topics on Quora through the search function. Topic results will be clearly designated as such, as shown in the screenshot below:

Quora Explore Topics
Image Source: Screenshot – Quora.com

Follow these topics, then head over to Settings => Email & Notifications to configure your account so that you’ll get email notifications of the most popular questions in your followed topics.

Quora Notifications Emails
Image Source: Screenshot – Quora.com

Be proactive in building a following. Follow users who ask and answer interesting questions related to your topic, and make sure to upvote their answers. They’ll get notifications and be more likely to follow you back. Building a following on Quora isn’t really any different from building an honest, legitimate following on any social network. Connection and authentic engagement go a lot further than just churning the numbers.

Find blog post ideas

Unique blog post ideas
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Quora is also a valuable platform to find and plan future content for your blog. Start by periodically reviewing each of your followed topics to see what gets asked and discussed most often. Note what readers are most interested in, as reflected in the numbers of followers and upvotes. Use those questions as seed topics for your blog content.

Another way to use Quora for content planning is to search for case studies in answers that you can build content around. For example, if you write about social media marketing, browse popular “how-to” questions in related topics for answers that share personal experiences with different strategies. You can then incorporate those accounts into your blog content; just make sure you credit and link back to the source.

ResearchSource: Pexels / Pixabay.com
Image Source: Pexels – Pixabay.com / License: CC0 Public Domain

You can also ask a question of your own to help flesh out an idea you’re planning to blog about. Craft your question carefully, using correct grammar and making sure to proofread it before posting. Also, categorize it correctly; otherwise it’ll get ignored by the people you’re trying to reach. Finally, make sure your question doesn’t resemble too closely a question that’s already been answered elsewhere; if it’s too similar, you’ll just get referred to that question.

To increase your response rate and make the answers more useful, tag other Quora experts in your topic and ask them to answer. You can do this simply by typing the @ symbol, then beginning to type the person’s name. Quora will provide usernames via autofill. Make sure you let those who’ve contributed to your post know about it by linking to their sites and dropping them a quick email with a link. They’ll likely share it with their audiences, which can only help broaden yours.

Grow your brand’s audience

Quora can expand your audience dramatically when you use it strategically. Start by getting a handle on your Quora analytics at Quora Stats:

Quora Analytics
Image Source: Screenshot – Quora.com

Then, get active. A great way to start is by contributing to the topic’s FAQ:

Quora WP Topic FAQ
Image Source: Screenshot – Quora.com

To increase your reach on Quora, be diligent about answering questions in your niche. Search for questions on the rise in your topics, with stats that are increasing (views, responses, votes). Aim to craft compelling, authoritative answers with the following tips:

  • Look for a strong story to incorporate.
  • Be succinct. Cover the subject, but be as brief as possible.
  • Use images. Most people won’t, so this will automatically set you apart from the crowd.
  • Don’t give it all away. Remember the purpose is to drive traffic back to your blog.
  • Look for other ways to stand out from the herd. Be contrarian. Offer a conflicting viewpoint if you can back it up sufficiently.

Above all, provide a readable answer by using formatting appropriately. Break your text into shorter paragraphs, and call out key phrases and words with bold and italic formatting.

Conclusion: Use Quora to grow your blog audience

Remember, blogging is all about expertise — what you know and what others perceive you to know. With a little attention, time and effort on your part, you can turn Quora from a Q & A site into a secret weapon that can amplify your reach and grow your audience. What’s your favorite Quora tactic for growing your blog? Share it in the comments section below.

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