Is social media one of your marketing channels? In other words, do you use social media networks in your marketing campaigns? Unless you’re a start-up, your answer is probably yes.
These days, social media is at the top of all marketing strategists’ Pyramid of Hierarchy. What this means is that platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are facing what we call marketing saturation. We don’t mean market saturation, which is a term used for a market where supply has met the existing demand and no further demand is expected. We mean “marketing saturation” – a situation where marketing messages have inundated the audience to a point that they’ve started experiencing marketing fatigue.
Essentially, what we’re saying is that there is so much noise on these social media platforms that your messages will often get lost in the crowd. What you as a small business marketer need is an edge. To that, we say: have you thought about using Quora for marketing?
The Basics of Quora
What is Quora? Quora is a question – answer website. It is different from all its predecessors simply because it is successful while others failed. Wisecracks aside; Quora is different because it allows the community to decide which answers are good. The mechanism used on this knowledge-centric social media platform is “upvote”. The more upvotes an answer gets, the higher it rises amidst all competing answers.
Other features of Quora are that users can send questions to specific individuals to be answered, users can follow specific questions to get notifications for all answers, and users can pick and choose which broader topics they wish to follow and track. Quora also has a custom feed for every user based on his usage behaviour and chosen subjects.
So, what makes Quora a good platform for marketers?
Why Use Quora for Marketing?
The obvious answer is that it isn’t as well tapped as other social media platforms in most countries. While it is no longer obscure, it is still not used with the same intensity by marketers as Facebook or Twitter. Barring the perceived lack of competition, the real answer why you should use Quora for marketing is branding.
You can’t do hard selling on Quora. Realistically speaking, you can’t even do soft selling on this platform because if you do Quorans would refuse to upvote. Yes, it is that pristine. The best use for Quora in marketing is, indeed, branding. Marketing that revolves around branding isn’t really the forte of every marketer named “Tom”, “Dick”, or “Harry”.
It is something that seasoned marketers of decently sized clients do. However, that doesn’t mean that small businesses and mid-sized marketers shouldn’t consider branding as a part of their marketing efforts. On the contrary, branding is one way through which small to medium sized businesses can compete with larger corporations. For example, personalised responses and attention is something that large corporations cannot provide to their consumers simply because of the scale at which they operate. Smaller businesses, in contrast, can manage this quite easily.
So, let’s accept that the type if marketing you can do on Quora is branding. The next question is why is Quora good for branding? Why shouldn’t you implement branding campaigns on other platforms? Here are some answers.
Tap Into Huge Footfall in Social Media
According to Adam D’Angelo (he answered a question on Quora), Founder and CEO of Quora, the website gets about 100 million unique visitors every month. The interesting bit, though, was that he revealed this stat 15 months ago in March, 2016. You can rest assured that that number has grown significantly by now. It is now estimated that this number is near 400 million currently.
All these users, mind you, aren’t as tapped as Facebook or Twitter users because Quora isn’t as advertiser-friendly as those two platforms. This means that by using Quora for marketing i.e. answering certain questions, you stand to tap into this market for your business. You don’t even have to worry about your copy. All you need to do is make sure that your answer is thorough and accurate.
You Can Use Quora for Authority Side of Marketing
Becoming an authority in your industry should be a goal for most businesses when it comes to marketing. If you sell toothbrushes, you want to be known as the business that not only sells the best toothbrushes but virtually every type of toothbrushes virtually everywhere. While you can’t achieve that perfection when it comes to authority, you should still try for it. Even if one person thinks of you that way, you’ll have a lifetime customer.
If you keep answering questions pertaining to your chosen industry in a thorough, accurate, and helpful manner, you’ll become an authority. People will look to you for solutions and you’ll even start getting requests from unknown people to answer other questions. Once you start getting those requests, you should know that you’re on your way to become an authority. This is also a sign that your use of Quora for marketing is yielding the right results.
Use It as a Customer Service & Reputation Management Channel
Quora isn’t just about generic subjects or subjective topics. It can be incredibly specific and pinpointed. You can see people asking highly specific and specialised questions about specific products and services on Quora. Thus, you can use Quora as a platform where you answer people’s questions about your brand, your company, your business, your product category, and even your industry.
This can take the form of direct customer service or online reputation management which are sides of using Quora for marketing. You can try to answer questions that imply poor service and you have the making of an online reputation management protocol. All you’ll need to do is setup your business name or product name as a topic you’re following.
Connect with Experts and Influencers in Your Industry
Everyone noteworthy is on Quora. You’ll find recognisable people such as Barack Obama, Ashton Kutcher, Sheryl Sandberg, Reed Hastings, and Mark Zuckerberg amongst others actively answering questions on Quora. If such luminaries are on Quora, you can be pretty sure that your industry leaders will also be active on Quora.
There are benefits in connecting with these people. From the perspective of using Quora for marketing, the obvious benefit is the chance to collaborate towards mutual growth and the less obvious is intelligence on what your competitors are like. There is also the bit where you get to learn from industry leaders and then apply what you learnt in your own business.
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