Many freelancers wonder precisely how they can leverage the clout of Quora to boost their freelancing careers. If you are one of those people, then this is the article for you.
In this article, we’ll show how just about any freelancer on Legiit can:
- Use Quora to build credibility and trust on the platform
- Promote themselves but without directly selling anything
- Grow as a freelancer, i.e., Get More Orders!
We strongly encourage you to read through the entire article before shooting any questions our way.
Introduction To Quora
You might already know Quora as a questions and answers site, but there is more to it than meets the eye. Founded in 2010 by Adam D’ Angelo, a former Facebook CTO, it is a community-based Q&A site. However, the goal is to give people a platform where they can provide high-quality responses to build their reputation as experts.
Quora was a near-instant hit, attracting a large user base, many of whom were professionals at the top of their game. The site’s early contributors were venture capitalist Mark Andersen and everyone’s favorite CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Today, Quora has over 200 million unique visitors. According to SimilarWeb, there are over 470 million visitors daily, with the average visitor spending around 2 minutes on the site. So, not only are people hanging around to ask questions but those that are answering them too. That’s one of the reasons why a Legiit freelancer may want to leverage the power of Quora for their business needs.
Why Should Freelancers Care About Quora?
Here are a few reasons why you should care about Quora as a Legiit freelancer:
You show up in search results – Google search results (SERPs), depending on what you search for, are populated by answers to questions on Quora. So, the platform certainly gets a lot of love from the search giant. That means if your name pops up, again and again, as let’s say the SEO professional wyo has answered SEO-related questions with a fair number of *******, and followers well, then it’s safe to say you know your stuff.
Lots of referral traffic – The second most essential reason ties into the first one. Since people can see you’re an expert, they can quickly click to check out your profile and hire you on Legiit if you have a link that points back to your Legiit profile. If anything, people who continue asking, “how do I get sales on Legiit” should roll this out as part of their strategy.
Quora is built around expert opinions – Many of the questions posed are for people with experience and knowledge to answer. As an expert, you are most likely the best person to answer these questions, and your answer will be highly relevant. Not to mention that apart from the person who asked the question, several hundred other people may find it useful, and a few dozen of them may “upvote” it. Not only does it stroke your ego, but it reinforces your image as an expert while making your answer rise to the top.
Quora is home to hundreds of business owners – That’s right, and it’s business owners who are looking for help too in many cases. Some need help with a legal issue, others with their website, and some people need assistance setting-up advertising. As an expert, this is your chance to help, be found as a result, and build credibility, which is the currency for long-term business growth. For instance, helping people get past a YouTube ban by walking them through the appeals process. If you are an expert, you’ll have many people coming to you for help.
The One Drawback That Can Break You!
If you are not an expert or are just starting, and don’t understand much about the industry or the subject matter, your answers could be detrimental to your reputation. Quora emphasizes quality over everything else. So, users can “downvote” responses as much as they do to “upvote” them. That’s why you’ll always want to double-check your facts and cite your sources.
What You Should And Shouldn’t Do On Quora?
Use your common sense when answering a question or asking a question. There are certain things that they would find acceptable and others that they will not. The standard of what Quora accepts and does not accept is pretty uniform across all other social media platforms like Facebook, for instance.
Here are a few things to keep in mind:
- Quora members are asked to use their own legal identity.
- You shouldn’t violate the intellectual property rights of other individuals or businesses. That means no copy and pasting answers from someplace else. If you mention other authors’ works or papers, cite them and add a link.
- Be respectful
- No harassment or bullying allowed (pretty obvious)
- No malicious, spam, or illegal activity
- No hate speech or veiled threats
You should avoid spamming Quora with messages, answers, questions, posts, and comments. Anything that blatantly tries to direct traffic to an external commercial site with no value will get you into trouble.
In the next section of this article, we’ll go into how to establish yourself as a credible and reliable expert on Quora to boost your Freelance business on Legiit.
How Do You Build Your Freelance Business On Quora?
In a nutshell, there are five steps to marketing on the platform, and they all involve building credibility so that people want to do business with you.
The first steps include:
- Creating and completing your profile
- Tracking topics that are within your niche
- Finding questions relevant to your experience to answer
- Answer the question with authority
- Format your answers for readability
Creating and Completing Your Profile
While creating your profile is one of the most important steps to start building credibility on Quora, we will not go into it too much, especially since it is like any other platform.
As a freelancer that wants to grow their business on Legiit, you might want to take a few extra steps during the profile creation process. For instance, include links to your Legiit profile or the specific service you want to sell. In our experience profile links are better.
Add long-tail keywords associated with your niche which link back to your profile. That way, anyone reading your profile can click on the link and visit your Legiit profile.
Always add a photo to your profile. Not only do people feel comfortable communicating with individuals with faces, but it adds to your credibility.
Tracking Topics That Are Within Your Niche
Since Quora is divided into communities built across multiple topics, you need to join the right ones.
Some topics that you may want to track as a Legiit freelancer include SEO, Copywriting (if you are a writer), Business, and Design. Just click on the “Follow” button in the center. Usually, Quora will email you when there is a new question posted.
Finding Questions Relevant To Your Experience To Answer
Since our time is limited, we want to answer questions that get us the most visibility. That means being selective. So, you’ll want to start with answering questions that are being followed by the highest number of people. To do this, click on the question and look to the sidebar on the right to check out the “question stats.”
The other thing you’d want to do is start by answering questions that few or nobody else has answered yet. However, you can then work yourself up to questions that other people have answered, but those answers aren’t either correct or don’t go into enough detail.
Since the best answers will get upvoted, don’t waste time answering every question.
Answer The Question With Authority
It is important to understand that if you’re answering questions on Quora, you are going to be considered an expert. So, it is expected that you have a point of view. However, your arguments or statements should be rooted in the data which you share.
Self-promotional answers will eventually hurt your credibility. Instead, keep your answers relevant and valuable, which will help you get more upvotes. Think content marketing but tone down the sales pitch.
Format Your Answers for Readability
Finally, you want to make sure that your answers are properly formatted at the very least. Avoid using the proverbial “wall of text.”
A few things you can do to make your answers more readable include:
- Keep sentences short
- Keep your paragraphs limited to 3 sentences at most
- Use block quotes instead of regular quotes
- Use bold, italics, etc., to highlight important points
The Art of Selling Yourself On Quora
Many freelancers may assume that there is no point in spending time on Quora because they can’t sell their [insert service here]. Well, you can, but it has to be done anything but blatantly.
Here are a couple of things you can do:
Build a Quora blog around your niche – If you are selling blogging or SEO services, a great way to build authority and get business is to set up a blog on Quora. You want to build a blog that matches your topic precisely. It can then match the services you offer on Legiit. To create a blog, go to your profile, click on ‘blog links,’ and then ‘create blog.’ Make sure that you give the blog a catchy title, matching URL, and start blogging about your passion for web design, SEO or writing/writers, etc.
Attract upvotes – Attracting Upvotes means that your answer surfaces to the top with every Upvote. One of the ways to do this is to format your answer correctly (we’ve been through this earlier). You can link back to your Legiit service, but only if it is relevant to your answer. For instance, if you are a web designer answering a question about slow websites, you can go through all the factors in your experience that slow down a website, with a link to your Legiit service that speeds websites up for clients.
Create a niche-related topic – If you search and a topic does not exist around your niche, this is your chance to create one. That way, if somebody searches for the topic, your link comes up.
Ask questions – Quora is a platform for getting answers. So, questions are just as important as answers. What type of questions should you ask? Ask questions that invite or open a dialog. You can post a question that relates to your service or niche. It should be interesting, so people feel compelled to answer. Ensure the question is open-ended, simple, and easy to understand.
Using Quora To Build Your Freelance Business
The power Quora’s community can be leveraged to get ideas for services you can offer. You can find out what potential buyers want and cater to that need.
You can start by asking a question: what do businesses order right after a logo is complete? or why do some businesses outsource to freelancers on marketplaces?
The questions above will help you find new service ideas. You can then create related content and post it to your Quora blog, which details the services you offer. However, hold back some information so that customers feel compelled to contact you.
Build Relationships
In addition to citing influencers in your content to build relationships, you should also follow them. Thank them if they upvoted your answer, and even reach out via a private message to explore business opportunities.
Over time this approach can help you get some free publicity via interviews and mentions. If anything being mentioned by an influencer helps you build credibility and get much-needed exposure.
Setup Google Alerts
Now, this is a 100% free way to stay ahead of the competition. When you set up Google Alerts, with a query such as “Quora Legiit” or “Quora SEO,” etc., you will get email updates whenever someone mentions Legiit or SEO on the Quora.
The benefit of setting up this alert is it will tell you who else is posting, and you can also see who the competition is on the platform. Furthermore, the information can be used to start topics of your own in areas you specialize in (we discussed this earlier).
So, another way to get this type of information is to use IFTTT, which tracks industry news online. There are many guides on IFTTT hacks that are easy to start using right away without needing special skills.
Spend Time On The Platform
If you haven’t realized it yet, executing the strategy in this article will require spending time on Quora. Credibility can take months, if not years, to build. Creating meaningful interactions take time, but it will ensure long-term gains, often exponentially.
Think of it this way, Quora is about quality, and well-written responses are gold. That’s why instead of answering a dozen questions a day, set out to answer two but do it well.
Make Sure To Track and Address
Now you might be thinking about how exactly you can keep track of the number of people that may have found your service through Quora and purchased or at least visited your Legiit profile.
If you had a website, you would be able to track it via Google Analytics. Simply go to Acquisition > All Traffic > Referrals. You should see Quora listed amongst all other sources of traffic. If your answers were gaining traction, you would certainly be able to see the movement here.
If you don’t have a blog, then you will need to rely on Quora’s own stats. Head over to your profile image, then click the ‘stats’ link. Here you will see all the recent stats and your all-time stats.
You should also see a list of answers that are ranked in priority of the most views. The goal here should be to go through your answers and check out which ones did the best.
If a specific answering style or length is doing well, replicate that method. But don’t be afraid to write a different type of response to see how people react to it.
On the Legiit side of things, many people who place an order on Legiit will let you know after finding you on Quora. Some may even start by reaching out to you via Quora. If anything, this is an excellent opportunity to introduce them to Legiit and start getting orders!
Promote Your Quora Topic Via Social Media and Email
As a freelancer operating on Legiit, you already know the importance of continuously promoting your services. After all, we have Legiit Monday for a reason. The same reasoning applies to Quora topics.
An excellent way to promote your topics is via email marketing. It is highly effective and, in our experience, affordable. Plus, with over 90% of people still using email, it’s an excellent way to get your message out.
Use a program like MailChimp to set up your email list, which is, by the way, free to do for up to 2000 subscribers. Then use the templates and wizards to create a newsletter. You can then start emailing all new subscribers (to your newsletter) and offer information about your services on Legiit. That’s one way to get around blatantly promoting your services on Quora.
Your answers to questions and other topical information can be communicated via social media too. However, you need to add your social media accounts to Quora. If you haven’t done it via the profile creation process, do it now.
Click your profile image on Quora, and click Settings on the bottom. At the bottom, you will be able to add Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook profile links. You can then click on the links to follow connections you have built on Quora.
In addition, if you have a website, add Quora to your contact and about pages. This approach makes it easy for people to find and share the information you provide them.
Become A Problem Solver
Quora is home to people who make a living solving problems. Engineers, relationship experts, reporters, lawyers, etc., are all working to solve problems for people who find themselves on the platform, looking for expert help.
Many people, and in particular freelancers, try to game Quora. Some try sending mass spammy messages offering discounts, others link to their websites. If you do that enough times, it will cause your reputation irreparable damage. No amount of “my account got hacked, and the hacker sent those messages” apologies are going to save your bacon.
The art of selling your service on Quora subtly isn’t like it’s done on Legiit Monday. You need to start with answering the question and then mildly suggesting how your service can save them time, effort and frustration.
As you continue to solve problems, you’ll have people requesting your answer to their questions. It means you are one of the people they count on for a comprehensive answer. That’s your chance to also build a relationship.
You then use that relationship to build others. Eventually, with enough credibility, those people will start coming to you for help, in the form of sales on Legiit. It will not happen overnight, but it eventually will start happening.
Final Word
As you can see, it isn’t all that difficult building your credibility and being recognized as an authority in your industry on Quora. We know from experience that it is possible to funnel quite a few clients from Quora who understand and believe the value you can offer them over time. However, being successful means remaining consistent.
If anything, since clients that come through Quora already know you, they don’t need to go through the whole process of vetting your experience. In fact, you stand a better chance of getting paid more and working with a client(s) who isn’t a pain in the groin!
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