As a freelancer doing marketing, you’re often looking to provide value through information. You want to answer relevant questions to your field and show your expertise, making the content an advertisement of your skill. What is the perfect platform to do that?
As any freelancer will tell you, popular social networks like Facebook and Twitter have various constraints when it comes down to that kind of marketing. But there is a platform that has essentially been created for the very purpose of bringing answers to relevant questions in different fields – it’s Quora!
Whether you’ve heard of it or not, Quora can be a great tool for your freelancing marketing. In this article, we’re going to cover what it is, as well as highlight some ways to utilize the platform to your advantage.
What is Quora, anyway?
Quora is a site that, simply put, allows people to ask questions and receive answers by experts. The community, as a whole, can up and down vote answers and questions alike, determining hot topics and relevant information. There are also user profiles and different topics you can follow. These can be pretty much anything – gardening, aviation, SEO optimization – the possibilities are endless.
Quora was created about 8 years ago by two ex-Facebook employees. Adam D’Angelo, one of the co-founders was previously the chief technology officer and the vice president of engineering at the biggest social network. Since then, the site has taken off. It has 190 million monthly unique visitors and has been evaluated at 1.8 billion USD as of April this year.
Convinced yet? Here are our tips for utilizing Quora as a marketing tool:
1. Creating your profile
Creating a Quora profile is in many ways similar to creating one in professional networking sites like LinkedIn (Would you like to know if you are also making the most of your LinkedIn profile?). You will want to use a real picture of yourself, preferably one that you also wouldn’t mind putting on your CV. You can also include a short bio of yourself as well as include a link to your other online presences (like a dedicated blog, for example). There is a credentials and highlights section, where you can say where you studied or list other things that back up your expertise.
Additionally, according to the topics you pic, you will get a little section that indicates stuff you “know about” . These will be the fields to which you provide answers more often.
2. Identifying what people want to know
Quora is a great place for freelancers focusing on marketing via providing information because it answers the first and biggest question of that process: What do my readers want? When you go to Quora, you can see exactly what people are trying to have answered. First of all, look through the top questions on a certain topic, like say HTML.
Quora will tell you when that question was posted, how many answers it has and how many people follow it. This is all very relevant information. It will help you accomplish the next step.
3. Picking the right questions
Now that you see all those questions in front of you, you’ll have to pick your battles. Quora has hundreds of thousands of questions being asked daily, you won’t be able to get to them all. So how do you decide which ones are the best targets? First of all, you want to aim for posts that have a lot of followers. That means that your answer is going to be seen by a good amount of people straight away.
Additionally, look for recent posts that don’t have many good answers – if someone has already beaten you to a question and delivered all relevant information, there isn’t much point in doing the same.
4. Writing concise, simple answers
If you want your answers to get noticed, they have to be clear and come straight it to the point. Think about what you do in a situation when you need answers – do you like to read through multiple lines of unformatted text without any structure or clarity? No, nobody wants that.
A good strategy for Quora is to summarize your answer in 2-3 sentences as the first paragraph and then go into the details. Using lists and aiming for short, understandable sentences is also a huge plus.
Summarize your answers in up to 3 sentences and then go into the details. Use lists and aim for short.
5. Ask questions
Last but not least, a proper use of Quora means engaging on both fronts. You can’t just see yourself as the know-it-all who sorts through questions and answers everything.
Engage with the community, especially with your followers and don’t be afraid to ask questions yourself. Being part of a great discussion can sometimes be worth just as much as being the person that provides the best answer.
Do you have questions or feedback on this article? Let us know in the comment section below, we’re always happy to hear from our audience!
