Question: How Does Curiosity Help me Get Customers?
Curiosity, as the old saying, is what killed the cat. On the internet, however, the cat is very much alive, kicking, and playing the piano, and curiosity has found its own space, allowing both curiosity and felines to happily co-exist online.What does all this have to do with customers though? Well, curiosity is a valuable facet of a person's identity, and we know that people who are driven to share or search for information tend to be the experts in their field. Take a look on Quora, the social Q&A site and you'll find scores of experts and notable people giving away their information and knowledge for a slice of the social and professional cachet that goes with being a Top Writer, or at the very least one with thousands of followers. Even Barack Obama has an account.
You may not have heard of Quora, but the site is a more highbrow, intelligent version of Yahoo Answers and has a lot of expert users, happy to share their knowledge and insight into everything and anything.Because of the format of the site, specifically the question and answer format, results from Quora tend to rank highly on Google thanks to their current outlook on question based searches. The content on Quora is also usually very accurate and crucially, unique, so it does well on search engines. Writing as yourself, representing your business is one organic, authentic way to catch the attention of interested customers and people looking for the answers your business can provide. The social aspect works like Twitter – you can follow people, share their answers with your followers, (like re-tweeting) and message people on the site, which also has its own app.You'll have your own feed of topics you're interested in, and each day the “daily digest” email is sent out featuring top rated answers to questions you're interested in or which match your preferences.
Quora also has its own advertising platform. At the time it was announced there was some grumbling among the user base that ads had been brought in, but this, as with many changes to social media sites, was quickly accepted. The format of adverts on the site follows the format of the core content – it's phrased as a question with an answer.For those content marketers who keep up with search engine trends you'll be familiar with the move towards question and answer searches and Quora Ads is very much in this vein.
Quora Ads allow for targeting in the same way as other social media ad platforms – who sees your advert is based on who is interested in that topic (or similar ones – you decide). One of the great things about the (relatively) late monetisation of the site through advertising is that the user base is well established and receptive to content on the site. You can target by device, so if you know your customers are always on the go then your ad will work best on mobile. There is also the option to target by audience type, so if your product appeals to a certain demographic you can target just these people.
Quora isn't likely to replace Facebook Ads or AdWords, but it is definitely worth diversifying your social marketing spend to include some activity on Quora. The platform can work incredibly well for B2B companies, as well as niche B2C companies, due to the nature of the site and it's users, who tend to be experts themselves, as well as naturally curious; and that's how curiosity gets you customers.
