Q: Can You Generate Leads on Quora? A: Yes! Here's How...

• Last updated September 3, 2019
• lead generation

For those not yet familiar, Quora is a high-traffic question-and-answer website where you can:

• Post questions and get answers from a range of experts, including some high profile people.
• Answer questions from others and share your expertise.

This post shows you how to use Quora in effective ways to generate leads for your business.

First, let's get down to the nitty-gritty...

How Popular is Quora?

Quora has 300 million monthly unique users, and is growing rapidly. To put that into context:

• That's not far off Twitter and Reddit, both at around 330 million.
• It's more than Pinterest, at 250 million.

Alexa data shows over a third of visitors are based in the USA or Canada (similar to Twitter), and a third from India.

Other demographic info's hard to come by. But it's far to say the site tends to attract an interested, inquisitive, educated bunch, and because of that, likely more affluent too.

Alexa also shows significant audience overlap with sites like Stack Exchange, Medium and LinkedIn. This would indicate users are likely educated to college level or above, and that a good proportion of Quora's users would fit into the 'professional' bracket.

Quora also covers of course a diverse range of interests, from barbecuing to fashion to space exploration, with everything else in between.

To sum up:

• Quora gets a lot of traffic.
• The traffic represents reasonably educated, affluent individuals.
• With such a wide range of interests, you'll likely find a proportion who are a good potential fit for your own business.

So, the question remains...

Can You Get Quora Visitors to Your Website?

The answer is a definite YES!

I've used Quora for years to do just that, though should confess I've barely been on the site for the past twelve months or so. More fool me.

In fact, writing this post has proved a useful reminder and given me a good kick up the &^$% to start using Quora again...

Here's a few background stats about my own usage (you can find my profile here). At the time of writing:

• I've written answers to 235 questions (my first answer was in December 2013).
• I have 197 followers (if you find this post useful, free free to join them!)
• I've so far had over 1.5 million views of my answers, with 647 upvotes and 43 shares.

• My most popular answer has received over 430,000 views and 73 upvotes over the course of 3 years. I'm not sure why it proved so popular, but hey, "I ain't complainin'".

• The average for all my other answers is 4,600+ views, and nearly 2.5 upvotes.

Do you think all these views have generated traffic back to my websites?

Of course.

Others agree who are far more prolific on Quora than me.

If your answers get noticed, you will mark a rapid change in your traffic. And not any kind, but high-quality traffic with people staying up to 5 minutes or longer and browsing through your content.
Bruno (HE) Mirchevski

But, I'll confess, a lot of the traffic you get can be hard to quantify.

From direct links within my answers (which you have to approach in the right way... more soon) I've had relatively little.

I can directly attribute a single click to something like every 10,000 views of my Quora answers.

What?

But this ignores three main things.

Firstly, I show my domain in the credentials for my answers. This is likely to generate more visits to my website than any link within the answer itself. But it's not a link, and isn't trackable.

I know I tend to go look at the website shown in the credentials of Quora users when I find their answers useful or interesting. Other Quora users will do the same.

Secondly, I don't always include direct links within my Quora answers. Where appropriate, I do. But I have plenty of answers where I don't. This gives a healthy balance to my account and keeps me on the right side of their policies.

Thirdly, the 'views' of Quora answers can be a bit misleading.

Quora itself states a view can be counted for an answer if it's simply visible on the viewer's screen. It doesn't mean they actually read it or perhaps even noticed it.

If you scroll down lots of answers, all those answers will register a view.

Let's say one in twenty of my views are actually meaningful. That would mean:

• 76,000 meaningful views of my answers on Quora, a far cry from the 1.52 million.
• One direct attributable click-through for every 500 or so meaningful views of my content. That's a 0.2% click-through rate, roughly in line with what I would have expected.

Remember this doesn't take account of the non-attributable traffic from people seeing the credentials on my answers.

So the actual traffic I've received is likely a lot higher.

What about lead generation?

A small number of my Quora answers have links to this website that I can track in Google Analytics.

I can directly attribute people signing up to an optinopoli account as having originated from Quora.

Even better, the traffic from Quora converts at a rate far higher than average. That's not too surprising when you consider I'm providing education and building trust via the answers before they click through.

(Another reminder to me to get back on the platform!)

And that's only the leads I can directly attribute. There will be many others that don't show up in Analytics.

Again, it's not just me.

We started with posting just a few answers a month, and have since increased our time investment because posting on Quora has added so much value. We’ve been able to not only generate leads, but a conversion rate of 11.44 percent. Jessica Zartler, Taskworld (task management app)

So Quora works for both traffic and lead generation.

(Before we move on, note that these aren't the only benefits of using Quora. I've also found it extremely beneficial for discovering the type of content people in my target markets are looking for.

Many of my answers I've later converted into fuller blog posts, and then returned to the answer to link back to the more in-depth content.

There are many other benefits).

Finally, let's get into some of the mechanics of how to use Quora effectively for traffic and lead generation.

10 Tips for Using Quora for Lead Generation

1. Optimize your profile

Before you get started on Quora, optimize your profile. Upload your picture, and provide some background information that helps illustrate your expertise and adds credibility to your answers.

Try using your profile to provide a Lead Magnet offer (LMO) — include a call-to-action (CTA) with a link back to a lead gen page.

2. Find relevant questions to answer

Search Quora for keywords relevant to your business, and look for the type of questions your target market might be looking for answers on.

You may have a crazily unhealthy interest in felines, but answering questions on those will be of little use if you're selling financial services.

After you've been on Quora a while and answered a few questions, Quora will start making suggestions and you'll find people start to request answers from you directly.

3. Use credentials wisely

When you answer a question, you can choose an existing credential to go with your answer, or add a new one.

Make sure the credential you're using is relevant to your answer, or sometimes Quora can block or suppress your answer until this is rectified. (After all, they want to show answers from people with the appropriate experience to do so).

Check your notifications on Quora for suggestions they make to ensure your credential is more relevant and increase your views.

To get traffic, be sure to mention your domain name in the credential you use. That way, those interested can quickly type the domain name into a browser and visit.

4. Provide as much value as you can

It's crucial to directly answer the question, and to be as helpful as you can. Don't scrimp on your answer—willingly share your expertise and add as much value as you can.

By doing so, you attract more engagement with your answer such as Upvotes. This increases the number of views your answer attracts.

5. Include images in your answers

I've found I get more views for answers where:

• I've included one or more images.
• At least one of those images are within the first two or three paragraphs—that way, it's viewable without the user needing to click and More link, and attracts more attention to your answer as the user scrolls down.

In fact, by adding an image, I've managed to get answers that were previously languishing lower down to one of the top-most answers to a question, attracting many more views as a result.

6. Add links into answers where relevant

Where you're adding links to your answers and sending traffic back to your website, it's crucial to take care in how you do this.

Quora is not a platform where you can be self-promotional. It's seen as spamming, and Quora ban accounts where you blatantly disregard their guidelines.

So you have to approach any backlinks in the right way.

Here's what I do, and I've yet to experience any issue from over a million and a half views of my answers on the platform:

• Provide value first and foremost. Don't say something to the effect of, "Here's some of the answer, get the rest on my blog", and add a link. Answer as fully as you can on Quora.
• Don't link back to your website from every answer you give. This is a bit of a red flag. Only add a link where relevant, and intersperse it with answers where you don't link at all.
• Often a question demands an answer that can only really be summarized on Quora because they're simply isn't the room. This is an ideal situation for a link. Use language to the effect of, "There's only a limited amount of room here to provide an answer, so that's a brief summary. You can find a more in-depth post I created on the topic here...", and provide a link. Back on your blog, add Lead Magnet offers (LMOs) to convert visitors into leads.

The key is really to show a high level of respect for Quora's platform and their users, and focus on how you can add value.

[Twitter=The key to effective #leadgeneration on #Quora is to focus on how you can value]

Very occasionally I might link back to a lead gen page for a specific Lead Magnet where directly relevant to the question and where there's a high value-add.

But you have to do this even more carefully, and I'd recommend avoiding doing so until you have more of a history on the platform.

7. Include YouTube videos

A subtle but effective way to generate leads from your answers on Quora is to include a relevant YouTube video in your answer.

Ensure the video contains one or more lead generating CTAs.

You can add YouTube videos to answers by simply copying and pasting the link into Quora's answer box.

Recommended: 7 Ways to Grow Your List Through YouTube

8. Answer questions regularly

Yes, I've largely failed on this one of late—it's easy to get out of the habit.

But the benefits start to really stack up as you answer more questions.

A couple of years ago, I challenged myself to provide 2 answers a day on Quora over a 30 day period, measuring my results as I went.

I found the increases in views over that time began to exponentially accelerate. It perfectly illustrates the benefits of consistent action on Quora:

Also, it's not possible to know when an answer for some unknown reason goes viral and attracts a wildly disproportionate number of views. But the more questions you answer, the more you increase your chances.

9. Measure your results

ot all directly attributable but look for jumps in direct traffic and leads coming through when you start using Quora

10. Advertising

Finally, I'd be remiss not to mention that Quora offer advertising. I've not used it personally so won't comment on it much.

WordStream have used it, published a review, and found it very useful for generating leads from Quora:

I like Quora a lot... While Google Ads is still the best source of high-intent leads, Quora is in the same ballpark.
Aaron Doherty, WordStream’s Director of Lead Acquisition

You can find more information on Quora's advertising options here.

To Conclude

Start taking advantage of Quora's 300 million visitors to siphon valuable traffic back to your website and generate leads for your business.

In this post, we've seen how it works, how effective it can be, and how to put it into action.

So open a Quora account if you don't already have one and give it a go. It can literally take just a few minutes a day to answer a question or two, and can be a very enjoyable process.

steve shaw

Steve Shaw is the CEO of optinopoli™, next-generation lead capture and sales conversion technology—click here for more info.