Frustrating, isn’t it? Have you learned from Quora? You work tirelessly on your content – but no one reads it.
It’s like giving a presentation to an empty room. No matter how much insight you have to share, nobody’s there to even notice.
You feel certain that if you could only get some more traffic to your blog, the content love would flow.
But even when you promote the heck out of your latest post, the following week you have to start the process all over again.
It’s exhausting.
But what if there was a strategy that could drive traffic not just to your latest post, but future ones too?
And what if that same strategy was as effective as guest blogging for getting new visitors, but was quicker, easier and didn’t require you to pitch your ideas to anyone?
What if by using that strategy you’d be rubbing shoulders with some of the biggest names on the web?
Wouldn’t you want to know what that strategy is?
Quora – The Surprising Traffic Driver for Savvy Bloggers
Have you heard of Quora?
It’s the Q&A platform where anyone can post a question and get answers from experts in the community.
Even though Quora was launched way back in 2009, you might not have encountered it until recently.
If so, you might be surprised to learn that Quora can be a major source of traffic for bloggers.
Don’t believe me?
Right now, Quora is the number-one traffic driver for my blog.
Along the way, my answers on the platform have hit over 1,000,000 views, and I’ve been featured three times in the Quora Daily Digest that goes out to up to 2,000,000 people.
And all of this has happened in just six months.
The Benefits of Quora for Smart People with Answers
When you think about it, Quora is the perfect platform for bloggers to demonstrate their knowledge and expertise..
After all, most of us blog to help our readers with the problems they wrestle with, and a Q&A format is the purest expression of helping people with their problems.
As a blogger, not only will you find Quora a natural community in which to participate, but you’ll get several benefits from doing so.
Benefit #1: Quora Is a Source of Long-Term Traffic
I’ve already mentioned the traffic potential of Quora, but an additional benefit is that answers posted on the platform can continue to drive traffic months after being created.
For example, I still receive significant traffic from one post I wrote back on August 23rd, 2015:
Nearly three months later, people are still finding my answer to this question about passive income, and when someone “upvotes” it (the Quora community’s way of giving support for an answer), my answer appears in their feed and is visible to all of their followers.
The result? More traffic comes back to my blog as well as a ton of new opt-ins for my email list.
Quora’s Stats page shows how my answer has received 83K views from the community.
Benefit #2: Quora Lets You Establish Yourself as an Authority
How would you like to be known as the most viewed writer in your topic area?
That’s what I was able to do in Self-Improvement, a seriously competitive topic.
When you appear in the most viewed writers list and start to earn badges, you’ll find that people begin to ask you questions (called Ask to Answer – A2A) on the topic under which you are featured. And that’s the true sign of authority, right? When people approach you for your expertise completely unprompted.
Benefit #3: Quora Can Get You Noticed by Major Publications
Continue writing on Quora and you also have a good chance of being featured on a big site like Forbes.
That’s because major publications are now sourcing content directly from Quora and publishing selected answers verbatim on their websites.
This has happened to almost all of Quora’s top writers. One of the most successful is Nicolas Cole, who has been featured in TIME, The Huffington Post, Business Insider, Forbes and many others.
How to Start the Engine on Your Quora Traffic Machine
At this point, you must be asking how can you tap into all this Quora goodness.
Fortunately, there’s a simple three-step process you can follow to dominate Quora in your topic and start driving traffic to your blog.
Step #1: Create a Traffic-Optimized Profile
New writers on Quora often don’t take the time to fill out their profile in its entirety. But that’s a big mistake because you’ll fail to stand out from the thousands of other profiles on Quora.
The perfect Quora profile starts with the perfect profile bio.
Give Yourself a Killer Headline with the Profile Bio
Your profile bio is the “headline” that appears immediately beneath your name in your Quora profile.
When completing this, you need to decide what topic you want to be known for and consider the type of questions you’ll be answering.
Your bio should signal to your audience that you’re qualified to answer those questions.
Choose your words wisely because space is limited – you only have 80 characters to express yourself.
One popular format is to give a list of descriptive roles separated by a “pipe” character.
Your profile bio is important because it appears next to your name in any context where your profile appears, e.g., above any answers that you create.
Note that any links you put in your bio will not be rendered as clickable links, so you might want to reserve those for your profile summary.
Add Detail Using the Profile Summary
Under your profile bio is your profile summary, where you can provide more information about yourself.
The summary field is only shown when people click to view your profile in full, but on the plus side it is far less restricted in length and format than your profile bio.
Rich formatting like bold, italic and underline is supported, together with lists and blockquotes. Web addresses will also be correctly rendered as clickable links, so this is the perfect place to link to your blog.
Here are some of the ways you can use your profile summary field, inspired by top Quora writers:
- Tell the story of your life and professional experience.
- Link to your blogs and social media profiles.
- Mention publications you’ve written for, to build social proof.
- Share any quirky or interesting facts – this is your chance to be different.
Above all, don’t bore the reader. Try to be interesting and inspiring – humor works well too.
Claim Your Core Topics and Add Custom Bios
Quora allows you to add specific topics to your profile and provide bios for each one. (These bios override your main bio when answering questions on these topics.)
To add a topic, simply click on this panel in the sidebar of your profile:
Then search for relevant topics to add to your profile. In this case, we’re adding Blogging as a topic that we know about:
Once you’ve selected a topic, you can edit the bio that’s used when you answer questions on that topic:
Creating a custom bio for each of your main topics allows you to highlight the most relevant aspects of your experience for each topic.
Once you’ve added some topics that you know about, they’ll appear in your public profile.
Here’s a preview of Nicolas Cole’s list:
Step #2: Go Hunting for “Big Game” Questions
This is the step that 95% of Quora writers miss and it’s the difference between getting 50 versus 1,000 views on your answers.
Are you ready?
Before you write a single answer, you need to find the answers that are attracting the most views and upvotes within your topic of interest.
So start by looking for a relevant topic. You can use this list of the most followed topics on Quora for 2015 to find the ones getting the most traffic and views from the community.
You’ll notice in this example that 1,613 people have answered the question, “
Click through to the question’s answer page and you’ll find out:
Notice the number of people following this question – over 35,000!
And many of these folks will be notified as soon as your answer is posted.
It’s like having a huge mailing list at your fingertips.
How awesome is that?
Since you’re just researching questions at this stage, not answering them, click the “three dots” icon and select “Answer Later.”
This will help you build a database of questions you want to answer. When it’s time to dive into the writing process you can take a clear run at it, rather than go looking for new questions to answer each time.
As you browse Quora, whenever you find a popular question you could answer, be sure to add it to your “Answer Later” list.