What sets you apart from your competition?
If you’re a service professional, it’s your specialized expertise. Whether you’re an accountant, a lawyer, or a freelance designer, you have knowledge and experience that your customers seek. The challenge in attracting prospective customers is to let them know just how much you know, so they’ll hire you.
One vehicle for sharing knowledge that we’ve previously mentioned is the LinkedIn Answers section. Another is through a website devoted exclusively to answering questions: Quora.
Share Your Knowledge
Quora declares that its mission is to “share and grow the world’s knowledge.” It’s the place where you can “ask any question, get real answers from people with firsthand experience, and blog about what you know.”
Providing answers to difficult or technical questions will enable you to establish authority in your particular field. To be as efficient as possible, you’ll need to be mindful of how you spend your time. Try setting aside an hour or so each week to search for question topics related to your business on which you can share your expertise.
For example, small businesses may want to know what to look for when hiring an accountant. If you can help supply a good answer, chime in. Once you offer an answer, everyone who follows that question will be notified. If your answer is a good one, users may “upvote” it to give it more prominence.
What does this mean for your business? More awareness and more leads. Since your name and profile information are attached to your answers, people who want to learn more about your business can look you up and contact you for more information.
Improved Mobile Search
In recognition of the growing trend towards mobile search (such as with “showrooming”), Quora recently announced the addition of new mobile search capabilities for iPhone and Android. Users only need to search for a topic word or multiple words, and search will produce a list of popular questions and answers. As the site explains, “It’s like being able to generate FAQs for any subject.”
The Quora team believes that mobile usage of Quora will become more important in the coming years. “As our mobile audience grows to a majority of overall traffic, we want to make sure people can continue to get great answers quickly, regardless of where they are asking.”
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