BernieBorges.com Blog: Social Media and Web Marketing

3 Reasons to Use Quora for Personal Branding

I recently wrote a blog post offering three reasons for marketers to avoid Quora. However, I also mentioned that Quora (IMO) is a valuable tool for job seekers and business development professionals.

If you’re not familiar with Quora, I encourage you to become familiar with it. Quora is a new social destination site that serves one purpose: Q&A. Think of it as a standalone LinkedIn Answers with more robust features. Here’s how it works….

You create your account and connect through your Facebook or Twitter login. This allows your friends or followers to be accessible to you in Quora. But, you still have to select people to follow in Quora.

You can view questions asked by people you follow. And, of course you can ask questions. While you type your question, Quora displays similar questions to see if someone has already asked the same question. This is very helpful.

3 Reasons to Use Quora to Build Your Personal Brand

Your Answers Can Get Voted Up

Quora has social networking attributes including a voting feature, similar to the Facebook Like button. If you contribute intelligent answers to questions and your stuff gets voted up, you’ll build influence in the Quora community, which of course builds your personal brand.

Demonstrate Professional and Social Credibility

As mentioned above, Quora is part social networking too. You follow people and you interact with them through questions. You get to show your social prowess with an intellectual bent. The way you handle yourself can get noticed. Be sure not to come across as arrogant or know-it-all, even if you know everything about a topic. Allow prospective employers or clients to observe how you interact with people to communicate answers to questions and problems.

The Early Bird Syndrome

Quora is still a shiny new object and its polish has not worn off. In fact, its polish is pretty bright in the social media world. Therefore, it’s getting a lot of attention which is creating a growing awareness for it. By participating in Quora early in its existence and through productive engagement you’ll be part of an early adopter crowd. You can follow influential people and don’t be surprised when influential people follow you.

Quora is a tool for individuals. Unlike LinkedIn and Facebook, each one having its own version of a company page, in Quora you create your individual profile and engage as you. You have a content rich, networking rich, engagement rich online social environment to connect with people that can open doors for you.

As always, the social etiquette rules of engagement are in play. Give, give and give and when an opportunity presents itself to move an engagement offline to a one-on-one situation, the ROI could be meaningful.

My take on Quora is that it is a tool worth experimenting with for personal brand building. I recommend it for job seekers, business development professionals, entrepreneurs and perhaps even customer service folks. I don’t see it as a viable marketing tool for corporations. But, if you know of examples that prove otherwise, I’d like to learn about it.

If you haven’t tried Quora yet, give it a try. I hope you’ll come back here to share your experience.

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