Is Quora the Right Site for Me? How Can I Use It?

Can I use Quora and what will I use it for? Everyone has heard of Quora over the last few days, some say it's the "new" Twitter. What can you do with it and what makes it so special?

What does it take to make a site go mainstream?

With Twitter it was it's use by celebrities and the easy interaction, and then it took until 2008 to hit the non-technology focused newspapers. The early adopters were the tech crowd, followed by the bloggers and the social media cool kids. Although Twitter is approaching it's 5th birthday in 2011, it took two+ years to reach tipping point.

Quora has evolved much faster. It opened from private beta to the public in June 2010 and in the last 6 months it has grown extensively. Now "Question and Answer sites" are not a new concept. Recruiters use LinkedIn extensively to source good candidates and Yahoo answers is also popular for general questions. Even Facebook has a questions page (Facebook Questions), although it's not public just yet.

So what is so special about Quora?

Never under estimate the power of the crowd, in this case the Tech crowd, when Robert Scoble asks if Quora will out Amplify Amplify, people will sit up and take notice.
And where the tech crowd leads, the bloggers and social media rockstars will follow. Especially when the SEO benefits are good and Quora results start to show up in the search engines. They already appear in Google.

But that is nothing new so let us look at what is really special about Quora. One of the sexy things about Google Wave was watching the real time responses, Quora has that. You can see who is answering the questions you have posted. Did I mention that it was in real time? Tremendous community engagement power taking place right before your eyes.

Following is what some people to do (ever since Twitter) and if you have ever been a member of a forum, you'll know there are always lurkers. Following questions allows you to keep up with the conversation, keep track of the competition and monitor the responses publicly. Listening becomes easier with Quora so the marketers and brands will be beating a path to the door, after the bloggers!

Learning from Digg and a raft of other sites, Quora allows votes to be cast on the answers given. Whereas LinkedIn only allows the best answer to be rewarded, here all answers can be voted up according to their quality. Now this could be 'gamed' with groups tactical voting on answers and it's one thing to watch out for. I am sure the support people at Quora have a solution in place to stop this should it happen, it will be easy to spot as the same people do the same thing every time. Yes, there is public accountability, your image is attached to your responses and users are encouraged to login with Facebook or Twitter which means you'll be easier to keep track of.

You no longer are restricted to following people, as I mentioned earlier questions and topics can be followed providing powerful competitive intelligence. Recruiters will also love this as it means they can assess the depth of a candidates knowledge before approaching them. By following their chosen topics they will source a candidate faster than they can on LinkedIn.

What makes Quora a marketers dream is the people that visit the site, it has the potential reach of Facebook - people love answering questions and voting. It's entertainment as well as business, that brings in a diverse range of people. All the best social media tools are that - social, so the Wiki aspect will also be a crowd-puller.

While that all sounds very familiar, there is the threaded comments section that allows the community to interact with each other. No more character count restrictions, more in depth relationship building can take place on the site. The images and visuals allow it to remain authentic.

As a casual user, I am sitting back,watching and waiting. For me the advantage is the search, I can search through previous answers and track the responses. I can see who is leading in certain fields and I can see the influencers in my industry and in turn tailor my blog posts and responses accordingly, Quora is the ultimate in research tools.

What will you be using it for?

Guest post by: Sarah Arrow is the author of advanced blogging, she can also be found on Quora, observing.

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