This post is based on a podcast with JD Prater. If you’d like to listen to more #FlipMyFunnel Podcast episodes, you can check them out here and listen to this episode below!
For today’s episode of the Flip My Funnel podcast, we spoke with JD Prater, Quora Evangelist at Quora.
JD and I talked about why Quora needs to be part of any marketer’s arsenal.
Here’s what we’re unpacking today:
- From Quora Believer to Quora Evangelist
- How an Evangelist Measures Success
- Why Marketers Need to Take Quora Seriously
- Sangram’s Summary
- JD’s Challenge
From Quora Believer to Quora Evangelist
In Prater’s earlier life at AdStage, he participated in a pilot program of Quora advertising where he got to know the platform very well.
His agency got great advertising results that were cheaper than Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn. AdStage did a case study with them, then a webinar, and a podcast, and the relationship strengthened over the next year and a half.
When Quora realized that they needed an evangelist to help with the storytelling to marketers and advertisers, Prater’s experience with performance-based marketing made him a natural fit.
How an Evangelist Measures Success
Guy Kawasaki, who was the first chief evangelist at Apple, defined his role this way: ”The meaning of evangelist is someone who brings the good news.”
Operationally, what does that mean?
Prater sees evangelism at the center of the Venn diagram of three traditional roles:
- Content marketing – written material (blogs, FAQs, answering questions on Quora, product descriptions, etc.)
- Demand gen. – outreach through podcasts, white papers, conferences
- Brand marketing – storytelling
Why Marketers Need to Take Quora Seriously.
Quora is growing in size (300+ million monthly visitors) which should be enough to put it on the radar of most marketers. But quantity isn’t the real reason to commit to Quora, quality is.
Because it is centered around answering questions, Quora’s visitors show very high intent. They are in the middle of a knowledge journey, perhaps all the way down the sales funnel to the decision point. This makes Quora a place where marketers can reach their personas at their most influenceable moment.
People come to Quora to research, learn, and share knowledge which makes it a very different audience from platforms like Facebook.
According to Quora research, 62% of B2B buyers want more insights from thought leaders and analysts, and they will spend around three hours a week looking for it.
Marketers also need to be in Quora because it focuses on demand-driven questions about a topic. You can see your audience’s concerns and put your company’s thought leadership in that space. You want to be seen as the answer to your prospect’s problems.
Quora creates a space where the specific question can be answered by those with specific, sometimes product-specific, knowledge that your team can deliver to a larger audience who is hungry for it. It is hard to overestimate the sales value of this.
This high intent content is why Quora has high domain authority in search engine results. Quora can help your company’s SEO strategy.
Sangram’s Summary
Number one, think about the content that you create as a marketer, as a sales team. Is that content high intent for your audience? People care about something like Quora, because there’s a high intent audience. They are in it because they want answers.
When you look at the content you have created, is it thought leadership with deep insights, or something that a reader is more likely to scan?
The second big idea, is that most marketing executives want to establish their organization’s audience. To be successful, you either need to partner with other thought leaders, or by yourself create deep, intentional content.
If 62% or more people are looking for insights, you need to be creating content that is worth going deep into.
I’m going to do that myself.
JD’s Challenge:
I’m gonna be a little bit selfish in my challenge. It’s go answer a question on Quora.
Some people are scared to put it out there and to be vulnerable with their answer. So I’m gonna say give value, and give graciously.
Go find a really high intent question that you want to be a part of.
