Q&A Sites Can Build Your Online Influence and Reputation
Filed Under Social Marketing
Question and answer sites are one of the most overlooked tools that a business could be using to engage customers. Utilizing these types of sites, like Yahoo Answers, can bring more traffic and potential users to your own website and social media sites.
These answer sites allow people from various demographics to post questions about any topic under the sun. Questions about life experiences, business needs, cooking techniques or even how to set-up social networking sites. Any question can be answered by anyone with a solution or opinion. These types of open forums help bring the right answer to the right question.
When you first look at them, question and answer sites may not look like something special, but businesses looking to establish themselves as an expert in their market can use these sites as a way to get their expertise out there.
Here are some great reasons why Q&A sites can be very helpful and beneficial to you and your business.
You Become a Helping Hand
Having quality online content is one of the best ways to generate more online traffic. If that content is helpful to those who read it, it’s a big plus for you and your business. With question and answer sites, you get a point of connection for anyone looking for answers and those who can give them. These sites will help give your company a greater reach.
You Can Increase Your Audience
When you help someone out by offering your expertise, there will be a bond of trust formed. That person could very well decide to sign up for your blog or email list. With the wide reach of search engines, anyone else with the same question could also come across your answers and be lead to visit your own site as well.
Up Your SEO
When you answer questions, don’t forget to leave your link with it that will send users to your blog or a certain page on your website. This will increase your SEO for search engine sites like Google. Only send people to sites that will actually be helpful.
Drum Up New Blog Topics
When you start answering questions, you’ll be surprised to find a well of topics that you can blog about. Knowing exactly what others want to learn more about and need help with can give you plenty of new and varying topics to write about.
Different Question and Answer Sites to Explore
Yahoo Answers is just one of the many Q&A sites available.
- Twitter- On the search page, you can limit your search queries to questions. This is a simple tool you can use to find a variety of questions to answer.
- Answers at business.com- This is a great place to look for questions that center on business and marketing. It’s not a huge site, but the questions that people ask on it are of a higher caliber.
- Mahalo Answer- This site doesn’t really focus on business questions but it’s still a great place to look for more general questions. Most of the questions are “how-to.” This is a good way to help people connect to the content they are looking for.
- Quora- One of the newer sites available, it has had explosive growth and a large number of high-quality questions being asked. Online businesses and technology companies should definitely make their presence known and participate on this site.
Becoming proficient on question and answer sites will take an investment of your time and talents. You won’t have a tidal wave of new customers beating a path to your door, but you will have a place to connect with your target audience. You can expect to have long-term success when you venture into answering questions on these sites.
Have you tried your hand at answering questions? Have you noticed any benefits to your company or website?
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Dawn Pigoni, IVAA Member
