Lead Generation Tips from a Quora Addict

When we first heard about Quora we couldn’t possibly imagine the impact it was going to have on our business.

We knew many marketers were using the platform to generate more traffic (and leads) to their websites, so we decided to test it as well.

We had a lot of valuable insights to share about our business, so we started answering the most burning questions about our industry, expecting great engagement as a result.

But we weren’t successful.

Quite the opposite, actually.

For a few weeks, we didn’t see any impact.

The reason? We made all the mistakes I’ll advise you against in this post.

We thought about giving up, but our learning-by-doing attitude kept us going.

We observed.

We adapted.

We upgraded our strategy.

Except for Google, the results came and Quora became our second main source of “social” traffic.

However we were VERY much interested in generating new leads, so we slowly started to optimize our Quora strategy to achieve our goals.

I’m about to give away all the insights we gathered in the first months of trial and error.

Take a pen and a piece of paper, these are 8 tips to get more visibility and scale Quora as a lead generation source for your business.

Let’s start.

Answer the actual question

If you read a bunch of threads on Quora, you will notice that quite often the submitted answers are not addressing the actual question. Driven by the desire to bring traffic on your website, you might forget that you are actually on Quora to properly answer users questions.

Focus on giving a specific answers to the specific question asked before anything else, otherwise your input won’t be considered as relevant, and your effort – no matter how valuable – will be for nothing.

Only after you have answered the question in a clear sentence or paragraph, you are allowed to develop your text with further considerations, tips or information you think they might be relevant for the readers to know about.

Stand out from the crowd

Quora wasn’t that popular in the beginning, but it’s becoming an increasingly crowded platform, especially since marketers discovered its potential.  That means that unless you are a well-known influencer, you probably need to fight for visibility. There is a quote that says:

“The easiest way to get someone’s attention is to break a pattern.”

There are two ways you can apply this principle on Quora.

Be controversial

Play with words to create a strong emotion in the reader. If you sense that they are expecting a certain kind of answer, say the opposite. This will create enough confusion and curiosity in them to actually read through your answer. The goal is simply to catch the attention, whereas in the text of you answer you honestly say what you think about the matter.

This is an example of how we successfully implemented this strategy and gained 4k+ views with one single answer.

Use eye-catching images

There is A LOT of text to read on Quora, and users can get easily bored by it.

One way to relieve their pain and bring their attention back, is to use either colorful, emotionally strong or cool images in the beginning of your answer. Ideally, you can add some text to it, recalling the question you have been asked.

Example of a catchy intro image.

You can find plenty of beautiful, free-to-use images from stock websites like Pexels.com or Unsplash.com, or create an account on Canva or Stencil to add text and edit the images.

Now, let’s be clear: catching the user’s attention without having anything valuable to offer, it’s useless. Always back it up with some quality content.

Be short and effective

Generally speaking, when users ask a question about “x”, they don’t want to read an in-depth story about why “x” is such an important factor to consider in their life or business.  They simply seek practical help in the shortest amount of time possible to move forward with the issue.

The best way to answer then, is to be short and effective. Answer straight to the point and use bullet points so that it’s easier for the reader to digest the content and take away what they need.

Let’s have a look at how Noah Kagan, influencer and CEO at Sumo.com does it:

Answering with brief and relevant points is a sign of confidence and knowledge and it is highly appreciated by Quora users.

Answer as if you were a human

Oh wait, you ARE a human.

One of the easiest mistake you can make online, is to forget that there are people reading your words behind the screen. Salesy copy won’t get you very far. That’s why, when typing your answer, you should leverage the same emotional intelligence that you would leverage offline talking to another person.

How does that translate into a practical example?

First of all, take time to properly edit your profile. Use your real name, choose a nice profile picture and add a few lines to describe who you are and what you do. This action alone will dramatically increase your credibility as a user and contributor.

Secondly, add some personal touch to your writing. Share your own frustrations about the matter, make jokes or use emojis or GIF’s to simplify concepts and make the readers feel more comfortable with your writing. It allows them to know that there is a fellow human being on the other side of the screen trying to help them out, and it’s going to make a difference in building trust with them.

Link to relevant external sources

Every time you mention some external information to build your answer, whether it’s a stat, a trend or just some product or service you refer to, link the url in the text so that the reader doesn’t have to look it up himself.

The most important thing to consider in this regard, is that whenever you send people to your blog posts or free resource, they have to be highly relevant to the matter or otherwise the visitors will just bounce off and your chances to convert them into leads are gonna drastically decrease.

Post consistently

Answering a few questions now and then is not gonna help you to leverage Quora as a sustainable and steady source of traffic and leads.

Ideally, you should be answering minimum 8-10 questions per week. If they are valuable, you will soon find yourself ranked among the “Most Viewed Writers” of your niche market categories. That is gonna increase significantly your authority and generate even more traffic to your website.

Even better is to employ several of your team members to generate answers, in order to multiply your presence and dominance within your niche market.

Our profiles on Quora ranking among the Most Viewed Writers for “Lead Generation”.  Adding our results, we generated  13’868 views to our content.

Optimize your profile to drive traffic

Regardless of how many good tips you are giving away, if people visit your profile to dig deeper about yourself, and it’s shallowly edited, your work will be for nothing.

It’s key to optimize your profile page as if it was your personal website “welcome page”. You can talk about your story, share your mission, display social proof of your achievement or anything else that can instill trust in the readers.

Then you share a few links to drive traffic to the landing pages, free resources or website pages you desire.

Check out our CEO’s profile to see how we have implemented this strategy. As you can see, we also shared other social media platform where readers can follow us, as well as a promise of what kind of value they will get once they hit “Follow”.

Track everything

If you’re a marketer or a business owner operating online, this concept should be quite familiar to you. As in everything else, tracking is crucial to the success of your strategy.

By using UTM parameters you can track Click Through Rate and Retention Rate in order to understand which one of your blog posts, video, or free resources has been appreciated the most. This will allow you to optimize your answers by focusing particularly on what you know the readers value the most about your contribution.

You can also track which days of the week you get more traffic and release your answers on those days.

In our experience, Quora is almost never the final step in converting a visitor into a lead, but it’s a fundamental catalyst to facilitate it.

Conclusion

There is no doubt about it: Quora is an incredibly valuable asset for your lead generation strategy.

Being part of its community means participating to the discussion of your industry and if your contribution is lit, you can position yourself as one of the leaders. That will likely help you generate highly qualified leads for your business.

Plus, Quora is an organic source of traffic. That means that all the good seeds you sow in it,  will keep growing in the future. And if you sow well enough, you’ll have plenty to collect.

This is our experience with it and I hope you can take something valuable away from it.

Do you also use Quora for your business and what is your perspective about it?

Let us know in the comments.