Answering questions on Quora to drive traffic and users?

Discussions
#1

Hi all, I have seen a few people say that answering questions on Quora is a surprisingly good way to get initial users or interest in a product, particularly for those of us who do not have a large following to begin with.

@SteveMcLeod:
http://discuss.bootstrapped.fm/t/feature-upvote-2-months-after-launch/5161

@scottw
http://discuss.bootstrapped.fm/t/bootstrapped-episode-28-special-guest-ruben-gamez/833/2

I’m wondering if others have had similar experiences (or opposite experiences).

I found this, which seems like a good resource even though it is geared towards blogs:

What are your tips for using Quora as a marketing resource?

Thanks, O.

#2

Here’s a pretty good strategy for promoting your site or product on Quora.

  1. Create a Quora account, if you haven’t already. Use it as a consumer for a few days. Notice the ways people answer, which answers get you reading, and which answers get sent to you in the Quora digest email. Use these answers as inspiration for your own answers.
  2. Spend some time crafting your Quora profile. Your profile should show your authority and experience in the area in question.
  3. Find 10 questions to which your product is a good answer.
  4. In your preferred editor, draft a good answer to each question. Don’t post them yet. Your posts should be at least a few paragraphs long, they should include at least one screenshot or relevant image, and they should offer your product as a solution. Don’t be scared of self-promotion. Include a link to your product. Writing these 10 answers will probably take you a couple of days. If you find it boring and repetitive you are probably doing it correctly. :slight_smile:
  5. Let the articles sit for a couple of days in draft form.
  6. Revise the articles. Get them proof-read, preferably not by you.
  7. Post the articles, at a rate of one every second business day.
  8. Once you’ve posted all 10 articles, which will take about one month, repeat from step 3.

Quora has some built-in stats for you to use. But make sure you’ve also got Google Analytics set up on your site, as it will show you referral traffic from Quora.

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#3

Do you expect it to work best for B2C products?

#4

I think this strategy should work well for both B2B and B2C.

#5

Thank-you for that Steve.

What gives better results in your experience: answering a very popular question where there are lots of answers to compete with (but lots of traffic), or answering more “long-tail” questions?

#6

Have a mix of both. It is worth posting on crowded questions if your answers are going to bring values. Sometimes you see older answers being updated. That’s another aspect to think of, 3 years from now you will probably need to update some of your answers :wink:

I came across a popular question the other day where a competitor answered twice (I guess they did not even took the time to read the previous answers). I mean felt like “really?”.

Finding the balance between bringing real value to the question and promotion is the key I think.

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#7

We have answered about 20 questions and included some quite modest mentions of our product.
The links are indexed in some way by google (shown in search console) but the new traffic is barely visible.
We have received maximum 2 new daily visitors in average.
I don’t expect the traffic to grow much from this channel, even if we answer 10 new questions every month.
Our niche has quite wide audience but all the relevant topics are never “hot” for the major crowd.
It does not hurt to put the good answers on Quora, but it is not a magic wand.

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#8

I don’t have enough data to be certain. So I’m trying both.

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#9

Thank-you for your answers. I guess I will also try both the long-tail questions and the popular ones and see what works for me.

@nordbad I think you’re experiencing what I am anticipating too: that success on Quora depends heavily on whether you have a product that is the direct answer to common questions on the site.