With at least half a million topics and nearly one million monthly visits in the United States alone it’s time to stop pretending Quora doesn’t matter for your personal brand and your business. We list 10 red-hot conversations on Lead Generation so you can jump right in and establish your thought leadership without all the legwork.

What is Quora?

Chances are you’re reading this guide because you know the importance of building your personal brand; both from a personal and business perspective. But what is Quora and what are the numbers that back the case for investing! your time and effort there?

Quora is a ubiquitous online platform where people ask pretty much everything under the sun. You can also get some incredible free advice from industry star names such as SEO guru Rand Fishkin and lead Generation expert, Alan O’Rourke.

Aside from the fact that there’s a staggeringly great party happening at Quora, there is also plenty of evidence to show that Quora works for generating new business and is an incredible platform for establishing your authority.

And of course, if your job matches your passions it’s even easier to spend time writing on Quora.

According to LinkedIn, salespeople who market themselves effectively and offer value for others see immediate personal benefits and drive new business for their company:

• Sales reps that exceed quota get 35% more pageviews than those who don’t exceed quota;
• 81% of buyers are more likely to engage with a strong, professional brand;
• 92% of B2B buyers engage with sales people if they are known industry thought leaders.

It’s clear that Quora is not only good for business but also for your professional development. Plus of course if your job matches your passions it’s easy to spend time writing on Quora.

How does thought leadership on Quora actually drive new business?

For a start you’re creating conversations that can organically turn into sales discussions. Then if you’re in B2B sales you probably already know that the buyer’s journey has changed and these days salespeople need to act as consultants, entering channels where customers are discovering and learning. Quora is just another channel, albeit a very significant one.

So how would this look from a potential customer’s perspective:

–Hmm I need to do more sales, but how do I get more leads?

–I know, I’ll head to Quora and see what the experts are saying.

–Ah, look this guy seems to know his stuff and he works for Leedwomble. Maybe it’s worth trying out Leedwomble.

Result: a new customer.

And consider this from the hiring perspective:

–Hmm most of these job applications suck and I really need to find someone who knows about lead generation.

_–I know, I’ll head to Quora and see who’s an authority on lead generation.__

–Ah, wow this guy’s so helpful and he writes brilliantly too. I’ll contact him.

Result: you get headhunted as a Thought Leader.

Why discuss lead generation?

Aside from the possibility that you simply find it interesting here are 3 possible (and strategic) reasons:

• Your job is sales so it pays to show that you understand how prospecting and lead nurturing processes work.
• You want to get your B2B company in front of as wide a public audience as possible and you figure that a discussion on lead generation is a great way to slip in how successful you are at generating new business.
• Your business is online lead generation and you want to prove that you and your company are experts in this niche.
• With all this in mind we decided to put 10 lead generation conversations on a plate for you so you can jump right in without having to search Quora.
• As an added bonus we’ve summarized the first 4 conversations so you can add a comment without needing to read the full discussion.__

Jump in here:

1. What are the best lead generation tools?

This discussion is dominated really by 3 things: inbound marketing techniques, the widespread belief that cold contacting is not dead and the persistent suggestion to buy cold leads from company database providers.

What has been slightly overlooked is the fact that inbound marketing rests heavily on your website visitors identifying themselves somehow and the fact that it takes 8 attempts to get through to a cold contact – and even then the success rate is low.

What’s missing?

Targeted social selling and the fact that website visitor tracking actually works. I mean, if you’re into cold contacting you should at least know the company is interested first.

2. How can I find out who visited my website using Google Analytics?

We’ve covered before how Leadfeeder uses Google Analytics and bests it for usable sales data on the companies that visit your website, so the answer to this question is simply use Leadfeeder, as lead authority Alan O’Rourke explains.

What’s missing?

Images and description of what the visitor data actually looks like in Google Analytics once you’ve taken the time to find it versus the better data quality provided by Leadfeeder. It’s pretty clear from this discussion that not a lot of people know that simply plugging Leadfeeder into Google Analytics enables you to track your website visitors.

3. How can I identify who has frequently visited my website?

Like the discussion above, there’s plenty of space to contribute your own experience of using website visitor tracking software here.

What’s missing?

Comparison of different website visitor tracking tools and how this data can be used to add vital behavioural intelligence to your CRM, such as Pipedrive. Insights about what visitor tracking software actually shows and what conclusions that data enables you to draw. Plus, there’s no mention of the advantages of website visitor tracking software built on Google Analytics versus one that requires you to get your webmaster to install new script.

4. Aside from Leadfeeder what sales lead generation tools would you recommend?

It’s nice to see your name in lights isn’t it? It’s also very useful to have a handy guide to your competitors and know what they’re up to. In this discussion, contributors suggest two alternative approaches to Leadfeeder: marketing automation and buying huge company databases to sift through.

What’s missing?

The current grip by content marketing doesn’t suit everyone and there are thousands of companies with salespeople begging for quality leads right now. As one of our customers in the Nordics put it: “no one wants to download a f*king white paper or ebook about my industrial tank.”

6 other hot conversations:

Once you’ve contributed your knowledge and experience to these four conversations then check out these 6 other fascinating discussions:

5. Is there such thing as a good B2B lead generation company?

6. What are some best practices for SaaS lead generation?

7. What is the best way to generate business leads from LinkedIn?

8. What are the most common challenges with respect to online lead generation?

9. What is the best B2B lead list company?

10. What are good ways to generate quality B2B leads?

More content on sales lead generation coming up. Stay tuned!