Quora Tips for Best Questions and Perfect Answers

Quora can be a freelancer's secret weapon. The site's Q&A format is an excellent way for freelancers to promote themselves – but only if they provide authoritative and useful answers. Here's how to identify the questions with the most potential for exposure and craft your answers with masterful expertise that will promote your brand as a thought leader.

How to find the best Quora questions.

To find the questions with the most potential for getting leads and conversions, search for and choose the questions within your niche of expertise, so that you can answer in an authoritative way. (Also look for the threads whose questions have generated a lot of views but that have relatively few answers provided.)If you work in web design or digital marketing, for example, look for question threads featuring those topics. Two ideas for topics could be:

• How do you evaluate the most skilled web designer for a site redesign?
• What digital marketing strategy produces the most leads?

Ideally, these topics are areas in which you've already exhibited some form of authority – such as by having authored a blog post, article or opinion piece on the subject.

How to craft the perfect Quora answer.

Now that you've located the question thread with lots of views and few answers that's also in your niche, this is your perfect opportunity to make your answer count and drive leads and conversions to your site. Stand out from the majority of Quora answers – which are usually poorly worded, unclear or irrelevant – by editing and proofreading your answer. Ensure your answer is concise and authoritative. It's also important to break up your response into smaller, easily digestible paragraphs.

Tip - Use the usual arsenal of good writing, like:

• Bullet points
• Bolding important parts
• Italicizing key segments
• Including links that fit naturally within your sentence.

Finally, ensure that the content of your answer is extremely substantive and very helpful. A good Quora answer includes the following:

• Direct and relevant information for the question asked
• Actionable knowledge for the question asked
• Rationale that supports the answer
• Credibility by including reliable sources, stats, etc.
• Clarity to avoid misunderstandings.

Here's a successful Quora answer.

The whole point of leaving a Quora answer is to build your online authority and drive traffic back to your gig or Fiverr profile, which you can only do if people vote up your answer enough times because you've provided value. This is harder than you may expect because Quora removes links that are irrelevant, fail to answer the question, or are too self-promotional.

To see what a successful answer looks like, consider Sarah Kathleen Peck's answer to How do I attract the first 1,000 subscribers for a content website?, which has more than 200 upvotes.

Note that she's able to keep the links in her answer, even those to a site she's plugging.

Takeaway - A successful Quora answer must:

1. Directly respond to the question
2. Be relevant
3. Provide helpful information
4. Give actionable ideas
5. Must be clearly formatted
6. Offer great value to people interested in the question

Make the most of Quora.

Using the Q&A format to highlight your expertise as a freelancer is well worth the effort since Quora has more than 200 million monthly unique visitors. By taking the time to find questions you know a lot about and crafting answers that provide deep value to anyone reading the question, you'll increase your authority and acquire more leads.

‍Have you ever used Quora? Tell us about it in the comments below!