7 reasons why you need to use Quora in your digital marketing strategy

At first glance, Quora doesn’t seem like it would be an important tool for a marketer. However, underestimating the value of Quora can be one of the worst mistakes you can make for your brand. Quora has 1.5 million visitors every month. That’s 1.5 million visitors who have the potential to discover your brand and become prospective leads. This is why one of the biggest digital marketing trends of recent times has been the growing focus on Quora. Quora has a distinct edge over other question and answer forums because of its highly monitored content. User profiles are strictly verified and content is routinely checked for quality. Building your brand’s presence on Quora can help increase awareness of your brand, increase traffic to your site and even generate leads. Here are seven crucial reasons why your brand needs to make use of Quora in its overall marketing strategy.

1. It Helps Your Consumers Find and Learn About Your Brand

The biggest advantage Quora offers is that it is made up of a large community built on trust and whose members rely on each other for information. When you provide informative answers to questions users pose, you’re automatically increasing the credibility of your brand. Quora allows you to engage in meaningful conversations with your target audience and establish your brand as an expert in your field.

However, it’s important that you never attempt to oversell your brand on Quora. The community on Quora is distrustful of marketers and hates self-promotional material. When you’re marketing your brand on Quora, ‘less is more’ is a strategy that always works. Instead of speaking about your brand in great detail, focus instead on providing informative answers to the questions being asked. This will gradually build your brand credibility and bring users organically to your site.

2. It Can Improve Your Search Result Rankings

Google search results often include Quora posts among its highest ranking sites. This makes Quora a powerful SEO tool to drive organic traffic to your site. You could even increase your chances of showing up in the top results by strategically using important keywords with the help of keyword research tools. However, you need to make sure your content is relevant. Dropping keywords with abandon and speaking extensively about your brand with little to no connection to the actual question will decrease your chances of showing up in search results.

3. It Helps You Find Crucial Influencers

One of the biggest digital marketing trends this year has been the growing importance of influencer marketing. If you’re struggling to find key influencers for your brand, Quora could be a great resource. There are many users who are identified as key contributors by Quora because of their highly informative answers. Users rely the most on these key contributors because they have repeatedly established their credibility. You can engage with these contributors by answering their questions or by providing comments to their answers. You can even directly reach out to them and ask if they would be interested in helping you promote your brand.

4. It Can Help You Market Your Content

If you have excellent content and blog posts on your brand’s website, then Quora is one of the best ways to amplify your content. Again, the key here is to be subtle about promoting your website. Instead of replying to a question with, ‘Visit my website for information about this’, introduce it slowly within your answer. Your answer needs to cultivate interest that will actually make users curious enough to visit your blog. Provide key information within your answers and link your content to it by saying that you’ve written about it in more detail on your blog.

You can also use Quora to crowdsource information for your article. You can mention that you’re writing a blog on ‘How to Improve SEO Rankings’ and ask users for their tips on the subject. When users feel like they have actively contributed to a blog post, they will even be more likely to share it themselves.

5. It Helps You Gain Insights into Your Target Audience

You don’t need to conduct expensive, complicated surveys when you have a simple resource like Quora at your disposal. Instead of guessing what your target audience needs, why not let them tell you directly? The questions on Quora are an invaluable source of information about what type of content your target audience will find engaging. If a number of people are asking questions about the same problem, can your brand be the solution to it? Questions (and their answers) are great ways to learn more about your customers, the way they think, what they use and what they need. By actively catering to their problems, your brand can continue to stay relevant.

6. It Can Help You Come Up With Content Ideas

If you’re stumped for new content ideas, trawling through Quora can help you ideate. A good blog post needs to provide answers to relevant questions anyway so what better place to find these questions that Quora? For example, if a number of people are asking, ‘How do I increase my Instagram engagement?’ then you immediately have an idea for a relevant blog post. Using questions on Quora to ideate for your blog also serves up another advantage. You can link the blog post you’ve written along with your answer to the question and amplify it further.

7. It Can Help You Establish Thought Leadership

Thought leadership is a coveted badge every marketer wants for their brand. Establishing thought leadership makes your brand an authority in its field and increases trust in it. Building thought leadership can take some time, but the payoff makes it all worth it. One of the best ways to establish thought leadership is through Quora. By providing meaningful, informative answers to your consumer’s questions, you’re demonstrating the extensive knowledge you have on the subject. Many brands struggle with building thought leadership because they don’t know how to steer a conversation in the direction of their brand’s offerings. Quora saves you the trouble because the conversation already exists; you just need to contribute to it.

Clearly, no marketer can afford to ignore Quora if they want to successfully build their brand’s digital presence. Quora is even more essential when it comes to marketing for a start-up because it helps new consumers come across your brand. So take full advantage of this site for a well-rounded digital marketing strategy.

This article was previously published as Quora: A must-have in your digital marketing playbook on Business Line on Campus.