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Quora for Supply Chain Part 2: How B2B Businesses Are Successfully Using Quora

Quora for Supply Chain Part 2: How B2B Businesses Are Successfully Using Quora

by | Oct 3, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy

Learn how a mobile advertising network and an inbound marketing agency tried Quora as a marketing tool.

Last month, I gave you some tips on how supply chain and logistics marketers can use Quora to build their brands. If you’ve forgotten why you should be incorporating Quora into your marketing strategy, here’s a quick recap:

  • Research: Quora offers amazing insight into what thought leaders in the supply chain and logistics industries are focused on. Just by tuning into the conversation, you can gain extremely valuable knowledge.
  • Connections: This social media platform gives you a perfect space to connect with peers in your industry and with potential buyers, as well.
  • Reputation building: Quora is one of the best tools out there for reputation building. It allows you to participate in and contribute to conversations that can shape the future of your industry. Using this platform effectively gives you the opportunity to become a resource for others in your industry and for your target buyers — and there’s no better reputation builder than that.

Plenty of business are already using Quora extremely effectively, seeing ROI and more. But supply chain and logistics companies have yet to jump on this untapped opportunity. Let’s take a look at a few success stories.

2 B2B companies successfully using Quora

Kiip

This mobile advertising network has a unique business model that “redefines how brands connect with consumers.” Back in 2014, the marketing team did a series of experiments — one of which was answering questions on Quora — to figure out which growth strategies would be most beneficial for the business model. Read about Kiip’s Quora experiment here.

Kevin Fishner, Kiip’s director of growth, said that his goal in answering Quora questions was to “build our brand presence in the mobile advertising space while driving quality leads to our site.” He offers the important insight that there is a fine line between offering valuable answers and blatantly pitching your product.

“If the question directly pertained to Kiip,” Fishner says, “I’d drop a link at the bottom of my answer. If it was a more generic mobile advertising question, I’d use insights from our campaigns at Kiip and leave it at that.”

Fishner points out that answering questions thoughtfully takes a significant time investment. But in the end, this investment is worth it for your business in all kinds of ways.

As you join the Quora conversation, keep Fishner’s insights in mind. Promoting your brand isn’t always about pitching your product. Becoming a thought leader can be just beneficial, if not more so, for your brand and, ultimately, for your bottom line.

IMPACT

Impact is an inbound marketing agency based out of Connecticut. Earlier this year, IMPACT blogger Carolyn Edgecomb wrote about how the company used Quora marketing to build brand awareness. Like Fishner, she points to following core advice for using this platform: “Hustling or selling is exactly what you shouldn’t be doing on Quora. Instead, aim to spread knowledge.”

Based on IMPACT’s experience on the site, she suggest that “by regularly engaging with other members, you’re able to gain key insights from leading experts, target your audience, and even repurpose your content while answering and asking questions.”

For IMPACT, Quora was less about generating ROI and more about “increasing brand awareness and establishing thought leadership.”

Supply chain and logistics companies can take inspiration and insight from these two Quora marketing success stories. The field is largely open. Start looking for questions you can answer, become a part of the conversation, and aim to become a thought leader.

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Quora: An Untapped Opportunity for Supply Chain and Logistics Marketing

Quora: An Untapped Opportunity for Supply Chain and Logistics Marketing

by | Sep 5, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media

Use Quora to answer potential customers’ questions, and they’ll perceive you as a valuable source of knowledge and an industry thought leader.

Despite gaining popularity over the last several years, Quora’s potential as a marketing tool for supply chain and logistics companies remains largely untapped.

In case you haven’t jumped on the bandwagon yet, Quora touts itself as “a place to share knowledge and better understand the world.” It’s a simple premise, but one that’s been highly effective since its founding in 2009: “It’s a platform to ask questions and connect with people who contribute unique insights and quality answers.” Essentially, the site is a community-generated question-and-answer forum.

How does Quora work?

Anyone can ask or answer questions on Quora. A key feature of the site is voting feature: community members vote on which answers are most helpful, boosting those responders’ visibility and credibility. A few other things the site allows you to do:

  • Target your question to specific users;
  • Publish content (much like LinkedIn’s publishing platform);
  • Search for questions or topics relevant to your business, and follow these keywords to get notifications of new questions.

You might already be starting to see the exciting potential in this social media platform. But let’s talk about three specific ways you can use Quora to build your brand, generate leads, and engage with your potential buyers.

3 ways supply chain and logistics marketers can use Quora

1) Research

Using Quora is about gaining and spreading knowledge. Your peers and competitors might be talking about their new projects with an audience that’s actively offering feedback on what it wants or doesn’t want. Before even jumping in with your own content, just staying attuned to the conversation can be a valuable resource as your business builds its marketing strategy.

2) Building and maintaining connections

Relationship-building is a key benefit of using Quora. While sites like LinkedIn and Twitter are valuable for quicker engagement, Quora offers a forum for substantive conversations, a crucial building block for lasting buyer engagement.

The site also offers a great opportunity to reach beyond your normal sphere. Emma MacAnnally of Torchlight suggests: “Don’t be afraid to ask questions and engage in conversations with others you respect and admire.” She points out that doing this will broaden your audience, offer new insights, and give you recognition with thought leaders in your field. “Networking can happen anywhere,” she says.

3) Reputation building

Quora offers you the ability to run a quick search of your business’ name, and tune in to what’s being said about your brand. Also, by answering others’ questions with substantive, reliable content, you can become a resource for potential buyers, as well as others in the industry.

Your business is more than its product. You can offer your audience valuable knowledge. Quora gives you a direct way to answer the questions that your potential buyers are asking, building your reputation as a resource for knowledge and as an industry thought leader.

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