Quora and LinkedIn Groups were introduced into my promotion strategy when I was working at an internal comms tech company in 2019-2020. Before that role, I’d never even heard of Quora, and I’d only been a member of a couple of LinkedIn Groups that were tied to my alma mater. Once I learned the power of each channel, the game was changed forever. Even now, when I bring up using Quora or LinkedIn Groups as means of organic content dissemination, eyes light up. I’m going to get into some basic tips on how to make these channels work for you if you haven’t tried them already.
Let’s start with Quora, since I feel like that one might be less obvious and therefore more exciting to those who might be reading this.
On Quora, you can use key phrases or questions to surface ongoing conversations on certain topics. For the sake of illustration, let’s say you just wrote a blog post on how to structure a blog (how meta, right)? The best advice I can give is to put yourself in the shoes of the people who are looking for information on the topic that you’ve created content about. Pretend like you know next to nothing on the subject. If that were the case, what sorts of questions would you ask to get to where you need to be?
Here are some questions or phrases that might be good to start with:
- What is a blog post?
- What makes a good blog post?
- Blog post checklist
- How to write a blog
Once you feel like you’ve searched enough relevant questions or phrases, open a separate Document and copy the link to each question into the document. That way, you don’t have to have too many tabs open or if you have to pivot to another task, you have all of the folks you want to respond to set aside. When you’re ready, go ahead and start answering the questions to the best of your ability, and use your content as a “learn more” call-to-action.
Here’s how you might structure your response to ‘What is a blog post?”
By definition, a blog post is ‘a piece of writing or other item that is posted on a blog’ and a blog is ‘an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries.’
If you want to learn more about what a blog post is, check this out: [INSERT YOUR CONTENT LINK HERE].
Simple, yet effective. If you’re using UTMs, you can trace traffic to your blog back to Quora and over time, you’ll understand if this is a channel worth pursuing.
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Now, let’s discuss LinkedIn Groups. If you’re working with a team, put your heads together and search for LinkedIn Groups that are relevant to space that you’re in. Keeping on the meta content wave, you might want to search up groups that are relevant to marketing folks, specifically in the content marketing space. Once you have your shortlist of groups, join (or request to join) and then you can start promoting.
Beforehand, make yourself aware of any rules that the group has. Sometimes, promoting content or selling in any way is prohibited, so you want to make sure that you don’t give the group admins a reason to remove you. If you’re anticipating that you’ll be posting in that group often enough, it might be helpful to craft a template that follows the rules but still gives you a place to tastefully and discreetly include your content.
Between LinkedIn and Quora, the former will require a more… custom approach, but you’ll likely find your ideal customer base a lot faster through that platform. LinkedIn is inherently a network for professionals, while Quora is open to anyone who is looking to find a solution to a problem or an answer to a question.
Let me know in the comment section which method you’re planning to try first 🙂
Khadijah Plummer Consulting 