Quora as a marketing tool

Quora can be used as a great marketing tool.It is better than Facebook, Google+ and other Social Media Marketing platforms for long-term strategy of  "Content Marketing" or "Inbound Marketing".

What is Social Media Platform?

In this modern age, it is the invisible media surrounding us twenty four hours and seven days. It is  like air which you can feel it every time. It has easy accessibility with finger touch because of smart phones.

Most of the Social Media Platforms are Web 2.0 Internet based applications controlled and driven by central servers on the Internet. The main driving force of these media platforms are User-Generated Content (UGC) which is generally in the form of comments about people , products and services,
emotional stories and content of real people's stories,life-event drama,information sharing and real-world news.

The nature of social media platform

Social Media Platform is a gathering of people on INTERNET. Every person needs to have identity on the platform with his/her own social circles  which are generally in the form of groups or communities. Most of the Social Media Platforms are driven by User-Generated Content (UGC) and are based on the philosophy of sharing information to attract people in order to increase it's reach of network breadth-wise and depth-wise. People share lot of  information on Social Media in the form of text,images,video and in other formats. Most of the time , their opinions and feelings are honest, frank, just and up to the mark. Since it is driven by User-Generate Content (UGC) of viral nature which spreads like fire, it offers vast opportunity for business communities to do:
 

1.    Market Research for their products/services
2.    Sales Forecasting for their products/services
3.    Understanding the need of new products/services
4.    Understanding the brand image of existing products/services
5.    Interacting with existing customers of products/services
6.    Understanding consumer psyche and behavior for existing products/services
7.    Solving customer complaints and grievances
8.    Competitive analysis of rival products/services

Types of Social Media Platform

There are many types of Social Media Platforms:

• Community or Group Based e.g. Google+
• Informal Social Media Platforms where business is not supposed to be conducted like  Facebook,Instagram, Pintrest and Twitter,etc.
• Question and Answer based or Knowledge Based Social Media Platform e.g. Quora.
• Profile or Identity Based where sharing,chatting,commenting and friendship  is prime concerned  e.g. Facebook,Google+.
• Social Media Platforms for Professional Linking to advance in career e.g. LinkedIn.

 
The above are just broad classification. Eventually , it must be understood that wherever there will be large gathering of people somehow business will be conduced formally or informally. Google+ is also community based social media platform which is driven by profile identity. It is gaining popularity among businesses  for Digital Marketing. It is more or less like Facebook and late entrant as far as Facebook is concerned.
 
 Even popular platform like Facebook has started allowing people to create their own pages (personal or professional) and  on-line stores in order to transact business. It also offers advertising services in the form of Page Boosting and liking at economical rates.

LinkedIn is profile or identity based social media networking website where focus is on career opportunities.It also offers facility to create company or business pages to establish professional identity of organization.

Social Media Sites

 

Some major players among Social Media Platforms

•      Google+
•      Facebook
•      Twitter
•      Instagram
•     LinkedIn
•      YouTube
•      Pintrest
•     Reddit
•      Quora

The fundamental comparison is between a Social Media Platform where community based profile identity is created and "Quality of content is not given utmost important" and a platform where "Quality Of Content is given utmost important". So we will shift our focus of discussion between
Facebook and Quora for comparative analysis. 

How Quora strategy gels with the fundamental principle of Digital Marketing?

"Content is King" in Digital Marketing. It is the content which pulls eyeballs and generates leads which can later be converted into satisfied customers.

Quora is a Social Media Platform which offers some unique features to do this. For example:
 

1. It offers question and answer based knowledge sharing where most of the time answers are created by the people who have  deep knowledge of the subject in question. Quora platform monitors the answers given in real-time and has authority and capacity to remove answers or content which are not appropriate and generally of  nature such as "one line comment" given as answer.
2. It maintains the quality of content with out any restriction on topics.
3. Since answers are "upvoted" or "downvoted" based on the readers or users , naturally top quality of content gets the highest position. It also remains on the top position based on "views or eyeballs" for an answer.
4. Readers or users can follow individuals or topics of their interest.
5. Readers or users can themselves ask questions.
6. If a good quality of answer is written, it remains on the top and it keeps attracting eyeballs for very long time.
7. Unlike Facebook posts and other Social Media Platform posts, where your content is pushed down after some time irrespective of it's quality.
8. Generally, people do not bother about quality of content on other platforms. Facebook posts have tendency to settle down at bottom unless it is extremely eye catching,bold and unique in nature. 
9. We can say people have become desensitized up to certain degree with Facebook posts because
10. content quality is rarely moderated.
11. Facebook , Google and Yohoo also have question and answer based Social Media Platform , but somehow they could not make great impact in this segment. Quora emerged as the winner.

You can find lot of statistics about Facebook regarding user demographics and traffic here:

Facebook Statistics

Facebook Penetration In the World

Advantages for Social Media Marketing People and Business Community

Quora is driven by quality content and quality content is heart of Digital Marketing. The impact of answers given on Quora given by business owners  regarding their products/services is huge in terms of :

1. Content remains trending at top for long time. Quora content which is generally in the form of answers can have images,text, videos as well as links to other websites.
2. If product/service reviews have lot of  "upvotes" and positive comments along with comment "upvoting", it servers as good quality content for Inbound Marketing.
3. For negative comments or feedback , specific customer's grievance can be addressed and closed transparently on the spot where negative comment is written by solving customer's query.
4. It is possible to redirect customer's attention to the website of the concerned product/service by specifying website links.
5. The content provides source of good inbound traffic for product/service website or blog.
6. It also provides full-text based search on any topic. If questions and answers are present as per relevant topic searched, it presents results in the format as per other Search Engine.
7. It has facility to create blogs where content can be generated for products/services.
8. Answers or Content of Quora can be shared on other Social Media Platforms like Facebook and Google+.
9. Some of the best answers on Quora are shared very often on other Social Media Platform like Facebook.

Following website gives some statistics which will justify the impact Quora can make for businesses:
 
12 Interesting Quora Statistics And Facts
 

Summary