Tag: smart people

How to Turn Quora into a Traffic-Driving Machine for Your Blog

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:

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.

The Saddest Truth about Smart People

Many of them, while very smart, have no common sense. They are very smart people though.

Smart people

Are you able to put your head around an understanding of common sense? If you are, do believe that there has been an increase or decrease in common sense within the general populace?

Common sense is what people in common would agree: that which they “sense” in common as their shared natural understanding. Some use the phrase to refer to beliefs that in their opinion they consider would in most people’s experience be of sound judgment, without dependence upon study or research, but based upon what is believed to be knowledge held by people “in common”.

Obituary

Common sense is defined by Merriam-Webster as, “sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts.”[ Thus, “common sense” (in this view) equates to the knowledge and experience which most people already have, or which the person using the term believes that they do or should have. The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as, “the basic level of practical knowledge and judgment that we all need to help us live in a reasonable and safe way”.

Whichever definition is used, identifying particular items of knowledge as “common sense” is difficult.

Common sense

This obituary was published in the London Times over 6 years ago, and was recently sent to me by a friend who knew Common Sense … it is so very thought-provoking, I feel compelled to share:

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as:

Knowing when to come in out of the rain; accidents may happen; If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it; why the early bird gets the worm; Life isn’t always fair, and maybe it was my fault.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don’t spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge).

His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.

Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children.

It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an aspirin to a student, but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.

Learning and refresh learning: Continuous Learning Actions … Skills Everyone Should Refresh

Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses, and criminals received better treatment than their victims. Common Sense took a beating when you couldn’t defend yourself from a burglar in your own home but the burglar could sue you for assault.

Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little on her lap and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.

Common Sense was preceded in death, by his parents, Truth and Trust, his wife, Discretion, his daughters, Responsibility and Integrity, and his son, Reason.

He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers; I Know My Rights; I Want It Now; Someone Else Is To Blame and I’m A Victim. Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone. If you still remember him, pass this on. If not, join the majority and do nothing.

Do smart people know that they are smart?

Smart people.

Let me share the many common signs of smart people I have observed.

Talk only to share information



To them, small talk is simply that. Small. Meaningless even. It’s a waste of time.

They proactively listen to others and digest what was said before explaining their counter-argument.

They bounce ideas and hypotheses off of others rather than discuss random pop psychology or the latest news on a celebrity couple.

In short, they shamelessly focus on what’s important.

Brutally honest with what they don’t know



I think a common trap that many people fall under is trying to pretend we understand something that we don’t know while nodding our heads meaninglessly. We do this because we don’t want to appear uninformed and unknowing. (I’m still working to improve on this myself)

I think intelligent people get straight to the point. They say “I don’t understand this, can you explain it to me like I’m 5?”

They could couldn’t care less about what others perceive their understanding or intelligence to be. What they do care about is catching up and learning so that they can understand in the first place.

They know that without a solid understanding of the basics, there’s no hope for them to grasp the more complex material.

Good sources: Online Resources … 19 to Learn the Best Practical Skills

Consider different perspectives

Truly intelligent people have the ability to inhabit a different perspective, especially a perspective they disagree with. Abraham Lincoln would sometimes argue with a friend from one perspective, and then they would switch and argue from the opposite perspective.

Nothing to prove

They never feel the need to prove to other people how smart they are. They don’t brag about it. Casual acquaintances probably don’t even know. I think this is because they are so secure about their intelligence that it’s a non-issue to them.

My father went to Harvard and had a stunning memory. He never used his IQ as a way to make other people feel inferior. People who want to let everyone know how smart they are—yeah, I doubt they are.

Have patience

Leonardo Da Vinci called it “sfumato” or “smoke.” The idea is that not everything is clear, and the desire to have an answer now can lead someone into error. Intelligent people have patience with difficult, dense, or even ambiguous or vague subjects. Patience is defined as “the ability to endure, ” and in this case, a sign of intelligence is enduring not having a clear, definite answer.

Know how to explain their craft



This especially applies to people who are professionals or experts in their field.

This is because they’ve been through it all. They know what it’s like to come across the topic for the first time. To progressively learn more about it as a student. To having dedicated hours studying and researching and becoming an expert.

They know what the stages of learning are, and can explain their craft to anyone in those respective stages.

Albert Einstein is well-known for saying the following quote:
“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

Good listeners

Good listeners.

They read and go to talks. A sure sign of intelligence is reading and listening. The average CEO reads 50 books a year. Warren Buffett spends most of his time reading. He’s fond of saying “the more you learn, the more you earn.”

Continuous learners

They read a lot and are constantly still learning. My father always took us to historical places or natural wonders during our summer vacations. Battlefields. Museums. Grand Canyon. Stuff like that. Our pleas to go to Disneyland went unheard.

My father wanted to learn things on his days off—and his days on too. He not only read both fiction and nonfiction, but he also watched many documentaries.

Seeking new perspectives

Intelligent people aren’t afraid or ashamed to tell you when they don’t know anything. I’ve had more than one doctor try and fake his way through a conversation when I knew more about a medical condition that he did. When I found a doctor, who said, “I don’t know. I’ll research that.”—I kept that doctor.

More: Important Life Lessons … I Learned These Too Late in Life

Are consistently curious

They ask questions. I guess they realize that the way you learn things is often to ask.