In a nutshell, Quora is a question-and-answer forum of sorts that has morphed into a social media and networking site.
Why do I think every small and local business owner should know about Quora? Because it’s a great way to build a name for you and your business that identifies you as an expert in your industry.
Some of the best-known names in business, such as AOL CEO Steve Case, Bump Technologies co-founders David Lieb and Jake Mintz, Launch Media’s CEO Dave Goldberg, and Netflix’s CEO Red Hastings are among hundreds of high-caliber founders, entrepreneurs, and CEOs who 
post answers on the site. If it’s good enough for them, then why isn’t it good enough for you?
Quora launched in mid-2010 and since then has become more and more popular as the place to go to ask questions and receive answers. Per the Company’s About page:
“Quora is a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it. The most important thing is to have each question page become the best possible resource for someone who wants to know about the question.”
As a business owner, not only is Quora a great place to get involved and answer questions as an expert, but it’s also a great place to ask questions and receive responses. By doing so, it’s a perfect way to:
- Find out what the competition is doing.
- Monitor what the general audience is looking for in way of products or services.
- Understand different perspective on a topic that’s relevant to your business.
- Generate interaction that you can engage and get involved with.
To optimize your use of Quora, it’s a good idea to monitor it regularly so you can keep track of:
- What’s going on in general and specific to your industry.
- Where you can get involved.
- Where there might be a demand or need you can service or fill.
- The right questions to ask to provoke responses and communication.
- Questions and responses you’ve posted that someone’s commented on so you can comment back.
Find topics that are relevant to your business, and monitor them by conducting keyword searches within Quora. If your business is about books, then consider monitoring the section about books; if you are a marketer, then you probably should be monitoring the marketing sections.
To reiterate, monitoring topics will allow you to keep an eye out for opportunities to respond to questions and engage an audience with the area of expertise for which you and your business are focused.
Getting started on Quora is easy. All you need to do is set up an account by going to the Quora Home page. You select a user name and password, and you’re pretty much ready to start posting and answering questions. They also make it easy to connect to your Facebook and Twitter accounts from the get go, so you already have a network readily available.
If you’re not currently on Quora, set up a profile today, and started hanging out with the big players in business.
