To many, the name Quora isn’t as well-known as Yahoo Answers or Reddit. But everyone’s familiar with that red website that starts with a ‘Q’ and almost always has an answer to your questions.
Quora is a Q&A website that was launched back in 2009. Over the years, it evolved from a simple forum layout, where one person posts a question for another to answer, to the site we know today. The rise in Quora marketing was thanks to its many features and components, which made it the ideal marketing tool, especially for tech startups.
So, here are the 9 reasons why tech companies should be investing their time and money in Quora marketing.
1. Massive Online Presence
Quora had approximately 300 million monthly visitors last year, with a large percentage of them being registered and active users. This saves you a big chunk of work gathering a diverse and interested audience in one place.
But all that aside, what makes Quora the perfect candidate for technology marketing is its userbase. Roughly 77% of users are between the ages of 18 and 34, which is the golden age range that consumes the most technology products and services.
2. Easy Targeted Marketing
Quora has over 400,000 different ‘Topics’ that users can follow and visitors can explore. The topics range anywhere from scientific to artistic. However, to this day, technology-related topics are still the most followed and active ones on Quora. Tech topics come as general as ‘Technology’ and more niche-specific like ‘Internet Service Providers’ and ‘Web Browsers’.
In mid-2019, Quora announced a new addition to their site, called Spaces. A ‘Space’ operates similarly to how a Facebook group does. Spaces are even more niche-specific than topics and allow members to engage in open discussions and conversations with one another.
Quora spaces are superior to Facebook groups in term of which provides better value to users over entertainment and socialization. Quora manages its spaces with a user-based moderation system using upvotes and downvotes. This allows hundreds of different spaces on Quora to function without being spammed with salesy links and good morning posts and memes like with poorly moderated Facebook groups.
3. Pre-existing Technology Market
The Technology topic on Quora is the most popular topic on the whole website with more than 80 million followers, (not counting casual visitors). This is a pre-existing market of people asking questions about technology that you could be answering to raise awareness of your product or service.
While the numbers can go down when it comes to more specific topics, a more distilled audience is worth the downscale. For example, Quora has a topic solely for Android Devices with almost 2 million followers.
All it takes, to find the best topics on Quora, is 5 minutes of browsing the site. Picking a handful of topics with a decent following and an interest in what you’re offering is the first and most important part.
4. One on One Connection
In my opinion, one of the absolute best features that Quora has to offer is the ability to form a direct or semi-direct relationship with your audience. By getting a Quora account, you’d be able to follow and interact with other users and answer their questions. It also works the other way around; users would be able to follow you and send you questions they have, instead of publicly posting them.
This is crucial in today’s world of marketing and branding. People seek a connection with the brands they associate with. You can see this in the rise of casual social media accounts of corporations and the use of friendly and relaxed language in advertisements and website copy. Instead of dealing with a company that only wants their money, people started viewing brands as friends offering them solutions to their problems.
5. Discover your Target Audience
Similar to other social media platforms, people on Quora share personal information on their profiles. Access to this information can save you a ton of time searching for your target demographic.
If you’re just starting, gathering the information of people interacting with your posts and ask questions in your niche, can help you create the right buyer persona for your business. On the other hand, if you already have an established persona or demographic you want to target, the information can help you zero in on a smaller slice of people instead of shooting wildly and hoping to hit.
6. Grow a Following
One of the most important things that Quora offers is the ability to grow a following. This means that by offering valuable answers and insight to users, you’d be recognized as an authority in your field and gain a trustful audience.
This will allow you to reach people that are genuinely interested in your product and not just general technology enthusiasts. It’s similar to growing a following on Twitter or Instagram; it takes time and effort to make it happen, but the results are always worth it!
7. The Voting System
This is one of the first things people notice about Quora. Similarly to Reddit, it has an upvoting and downvoting system. It’s a self-regulating tool that’s run by users and not by some hidden algorithm.
With the downvoting option hidden behind a drop menu, Quora encourages its users to either leave an upvote or skip the post altogether. The system determines a post or an answer’s position on the page; the more upvotes it gets, the higher it ranks on the page and vice versa.
Used in marketing, this stands in the way of spam and straight-up advertisements in the answers section by only allowing useful information to move up the page.
8. Social Media Sharing
This motivates users to answer questions properly and straightforwardly. The better your answer, the higher the chance someone will use the embedded function and share it to Twitter or Facebook, earning you more traffic.
9. Paid Ads
If you want to invest in paid ads anywhere, then Quora is the right place, especially if you’re a B2B company, as they make up the majority of all ads on Quora. What differentiates Quora’s ads from other paid ads is that they reach people who are already seeking answers and solutions to their problems.
Not to mention, a 2018 report found that businesses that used Quora’s paid ads had 4x more conversions than their counterparts. This is the reason why more and more markets intend to increase their investment in paid Quora marketing.