Quora is the hot potato of the moment being passed from one social media geek to the next . The concept is simple ask a question and those who are 
knowledgeable will answer it. The answers are then stored, tagged, improved and summarised until you are left with a comprehensive guide to every question imaginable. A social aspect has been added to the mix with users receiving followers a la Twitter, you can then see questions that people you follow have answered. This generates your personal homepage that is made up of followers, areas you follow and questions you are following.
In the spirit of Q&A here is a quick run down of some of the questions you’ll be asking about this new social media monster that is sweeping through our Twitter pages.
Q. Should I be integrating Quora into my marketing?
A. Social media marketing is about monitoring what is said about your Comapny in the public-sphere and ensuring that your brand has the strongest representation possible. If someone has a question on Quora about your service/product you want to be the one answering is not Margret from Dursley who had a bad experience in ’97. Ensure you have someone who you are happy to speak on behalf of your Company and can answer any questions that are posted.
The secondary purpose of Quora in your marketing is to position yourself as experts in your industry. There are countless examples of Silicon Valley geeks who have been relentlessly answering questions since the site went public last June, all competing to prove they have the biggest brain. This can be beneficial for making people think your company are the epitome of know how; saying that time is precious and could be used more constructively.
Q. Why should I trust the answers on Quora?
A.The answer system is an excellent feature of this site and one that the developers deserve credit for. Answers are rated and edited by other users until all the information is on the page. This is then summed up in handy bullet points at the top that mean you can grab the answer to your question in ten seconds flat or take the time to read through various experts answers down the page.
Q.I’m having deja vu, isn’t this the same as Yahoo Answers?
A. I don’t think Quora was ever promoting itself as a original concept it was more saying - ‘that’s good but look isn’t this better?’ It is much like questioning the existence of Facebook when Myspace was already in situ and widely adopted. Yahoo Answers has now outgrown its training wheels and has become ridden with spam and business owners who exploit it by having multiple accounts.Quora has a searchable architecture and works hard at not allowing repetition of questions plus wiki editing that allows for consistently improving data.
There is no denying they are similar but I think Quora will supersede Yahoo Answers and I’m not going to even give characters to Aardvark (if you don’t know what I’m on about fear not it’s nothing you need to learn about).
Q.How quickly is Quora growing?
A.Extremely quickly. It has been given a massive kick in the past few weeks thanks to question posts making it to Twitter and social media types blogging about it (guilty). Here is a snazzy chart that shows its growth:
(source www.quora.com)
Q. What now should I do next?
I would recommend having a scoot around the site every now and again to check that your brand isn’t being spoken about, especially with the site growing so rapidly. Get your profile set up so that you have a presence and be prepared for an inbox full of follower notifications. Finally get prepared to be sick to death of hearing about this latest phenomenon over the next few months, there is a mildly unjustified level of buzz around Quora – I fear this for social media nerds what Twilight was to tweenagers.
