B2B Marketing is evolving
B2B marketing has hit a wall. Audiences are getting harder to reach and campaigns are fractured across channels. We already know that the B2B journey is powered by content—prospects want to self-educate on their terms—but how can you ensure your content has its intended effect?
Increasingly, B2B companies have turned to thought leadership content to enhance brand reputation, build decision makers’ trust, open the conversation, and help close business—but when done poorly, it can have an adverse effect. Edelman and LinkedIn’s B2B Thought Leadership Impact Study found that the influx of low-quality thought leadership content has actually diluted its perceived value to decision-makers. Of the decision-makers surveyed, 71% said that less than half of the thought leadership they consume gives them valuable insights
Decision-makers seek this type of content to stay ahead of industry trends and position their businesses for success. When done well, thought leadership marketing establishes your domain expertise, offers a unique point of view that will catch their attention, and ultimately influences purchasing decisions. According to the Content Marketing Institute’s 2023 B2B Content Marketing Report, content marketers cited their content strategy as having helped them create brand awareness (83%), build trust (77%), and educate audiences (72%).
So how do you ensure your content does the same?
Why Quora makes sense for your thought leadership strategy
What makes Quora unique is why people come to the platform. It’s not a search engine and it’s not social media. It’s a high-intent destination somewhere in between—where over 400 million people come every month to conduct research, evaluate products, ask for tips, and learn more about the world.
This knowledge exchange is conducive to people who are receptive to new ideas and discovering new products. People on Quora are actively seeking solutions—making it a premiere destination for thought leadership content about your company, products, competitors, and industry.
In addition to having a growing, high-intent audience, Quora works to build a platform and ecosystem that is optimal for readers, writers, askers, and seekers of information. We stand for knowledge and information quality, backed by both machine learning and human moderation that will keep your brand safe. Across 24 languages and over 300,000 topics, Quora personalizes content based on what people want to learn more about, ensuring it is always relevant to them—and that, in turn, your brand’s message is always delivered in relevant contexts.
Quora’s audience
On Quora, your thought leadership content will reach an audience you can’t find on any other platform.
Unduplicated reach
Quora users are the decision-makers you’re looking for—highly-educated with purchasing power.
%
have an undergraduate degree or higher
%
report a household income of >$85,000
The Quora flywheel effect
Unlike other platforms where content gets buried or disappears, the knowledge shared on Quora is evergreen. This means your answers aren’t just relevant for a day, but for months and years. We ensure knowledge share is available and accessible in the long term, meaning you can drive leads and influence years after writing your first answer. This is referred to as the Quora flywheel effect.
Here are some steps you can take to get your flywheel spinning:
- Share: Demonstrate your expertise by adding questions and providing unique answers about your industry.
- Engage: Influence discussions about your brand by engaging users asking about your product or industry through upvoting, commenting, and re-sharing answers.
- Build Thought Leadership: Develop authority and establish trust on topics by consistently providing valuable answers and a unique point of view. Over time this will lead to more followers and people asking you to answer their questions.
For a primer on our Ads Manager platform and how to structure campaigns, check out our guide, Quora Ads Manager Explained.
4 Steps to get started with B2B writing on Quora
Step 1: Contribute to the conversation
Since Quora’s questions are demand-driven, it’s an excellent platform for marketers looking to address their audience’s informational needs. Many Quora users are already well into their consideration phase, which is what makes the platform such an attractive platform for marketers. The first step is to answer questions and turn the flywheel.
Winning with high-quality answers
Content marketing on Quora looks a little different compared to a company blog or a social media post.
On Quora, providing the best quality answer is key for driving success. The following are guidelines you can follow when crafting an answer.
- Answer the question that’s asked. Don’t answer if your content isn’t a good fit.
- Use good formatting. Answers should be easy to read.
- Be thoughtful and unique. Stories of failure can be as impactful as success stories.
- Demonstrate credibility with facts, rationale, and personal experiences.
As a bonus tip, answer a question as quickly as possible after it’s posted. The question will be fresh in the mind of the person who posted it, and they’ll be more likely to upvote your answer or engage further.
Convey expertise with your Quora profile
When you start writing answers, it’s important to convey your expertise and build trust by filling out your credentials and biography. Unlike other user-generated Q&A sites, users on Quora primarily create profiles based on their real identities.
By adding your title, company, bio, interests, and website links, you signal who you are and why readers should trust your answers. It also helps people find you when searching for experts and/or the best people to answer their questions.
Planning on posting answers as your business? Check out our article on Quora Business Profiles.
Step 2: Engage with your Quora audience
Community engagement ensures the best answers surface to the top of questions and get more visibility in user feeds. However, there are some marketers who only use Quora to write self-promotional answers and don’t engage with the community.
Engage with the Quora community and your target audience to establish yourself as a trusted member. For example:
- Follow influencers for topic areas of interest. Observe the questions they’re answering, how often they write, and their writing styles. You can also identify where information gaps exist so you can answer those questions. Don’t forget to interact with them by upvoting and commenting.
- Ask questions. You can hear directly from your audience, and perform market research to gauge interest in potential products or services. If the question isn’t on Quora, add it and provide the answer.
Step 3: Gain authority and establish trust with your followers
Your flywheel is picking up speed as you consistently answer questions and actively engage with the community.
If you’re an expert in productivity tools, don’t just write about how much you know. Write answers tackling specific challenges in the world of team productivity tools. Not only will your audience be more interested in reading an answer that could help them, but you’ll earn their trust and gain credibility.
Take project management software company Asana, for example, who built a presence on Quora through its co-founder and head of product, Justin Rosenstein. His answer to a 2015 question on top productivity tips has been viewed 474k+ times and was featured in Forbes, Inc., Time, and Quartz. Read about Asana’s success on Quora.
Content distribution and amplification
Distribution can be neglected in content marketing, but it’s crucial to success. According the CMI report, actively promoting your content is the third most important differentiator for a successful content strategy (behind producing better quality content than competitors and covering topics that competitors are not).
Quora can become your source of truth for content and FAQs related to your organization. If you have content you’ve already written on your company blog or website, easily repurpose it into a helpful Quora answer. Ask and answer your list of FAQs on Quora, and link to them from the FAQ page on your website. Or link to Quora answers that serve as testimonials for your business. If there’s content on Quora that helps people understand what you do and promotes your business, make sure they find it by linking to it.
If you’re looking to increase awareness of your Quora content, consider these two ideas:
- Amplify distribution across other social networks. Share your Quora answers with your existing social media audience. You can do this easily by clicking the social share icons below the answer.
- Direct your customers to your answers. Share links to your Quora answers with visitors to your website or email subscribers. It’s a great way to help them learn more about a question or topic without having to fit all of the information in a small text field.
When you’re evaluating the ROI of writing on Quora, don’t forget: Your answers aren’t just available through our site. Quora pages consistently rank highly in Google searches, generally on the first page of results, and oftentimes, as the number one result. Quora’s strong SEO directs people from Google to your answers so more than just the established Quora community can read it.
Measure performance
How do you figure out where to spend your time on Quora?
Quora offers a free analytics tool that allows you to track your content by clicks, views, shares, and upvotes. Use this information to determine what works best on the platform so you can focus on sharing content that engages the community.
Step 4: Accelerate growth with Promoted Answers
Promoted Answers take Quora answers to the next level by pairing them with Quora Ads’ targeting suite for strategic distribution. The best part? You can tell your story, influence customers, and boost product consideration without worrying about character counts. Businesses can use Promoted Answers to share detailed information about their product or service. Thought leaders can boost their existing content on Quora to bolster their presence and build a following. Add infographics to illustrate points, or link your latest YouTube tutorial for a in-depth answer (and additional views). With the Quora Pixel, you can measure conversions directly from your Quora Ads Manager or through our Google Tag Manager integration.
With Promoted Answers, your organization can:
Reach a coveted audience
Quora has a worldwide audience of 400+ million unique visitors.
Target for greater efficiency
Choose from 10 contextual, behavioral, audience, and broad targeting types.
Maintain brand safety
Our content moderators are dedicated to maintaining Quora’s high quality standards.
Here are some Promoted Answer best practices to boost your content:
- Establish thought leadership. Quora users respond best to authentic answers. Avoid writing for the sole purpose of linking your company website.
- Write useful answers. Provide reusable knowledge that accounts for different people (ex. “If you’re a startup, I recommend X; if you’re an enterprise I recommend Y.”)
- Hyperlink only when necessary. Less is more, so only use hyperlinks if they provide additional information or if they’re relevant to the question.
- Quality over quantity. It is better to have a few well-crafted answers than 100 low-quality answers. Answers can always be edited, so take your time to write them.
To get your first Promoted Answers campaign off the ground, check out our article on Getting Started with Quora Promoted Answers.
Thought leadership on Quora can be a fun, interesting hobby or personally rewarding, but it also is something that every business should be investing time in. Marketers focused on delivering high-quality, engaging, and inspiring content can strongly shape the narrative around their business and drive buyers to a decision.
Adding Quora to your marketing mix will help you:
Build your brand
- Get exposure to over 400 million monthly visitors on Quora, reaching a large audience from day one, without having to build up a large following.
- Content written on Quora is evergreen, delivering leads and driving influence even years after being written.
Engage your audience
- Personal and Business Profiles can be used to answer questions about your product or service.
- Establish your brand and leaders within your organization as experts by answering questions about your industry.
Influence with Quora Ads
- People come to Quora to research important decisions. Questions on Quora are organized into topics and there is a wide diversity of topics on the platform today.
- Use Quora Ads to influence high-intent prospects during the research and consideration phase.
Book a consultation with a Quora expert
