Does your business have the answers? Go to the places where people are asking questions.
Who, what, when, where, and why? These are the perennial questions, and your business tries to answer them on your website and on your social media accounts. As you build your business reputation through blogging and through the services and products that you provide, you become known as a trusted source of information. Today, you can continue to build that reputation by answering questions on Q&A websites as well.
What Are Q&A Websites?
If you have a question, the internet is now a tried and true source of information. "Google it" has become a household phrase. However, going to search engines to find an answer isn't entirely reliable. The answer may be complex or hard to find, and since there are so many people asking questions and giving answers, the data isn't necessarily reliable. Also, not all questions have easy answers, because they're not necessarily based on data. They require an experienced opinion rather than a factual answer. That's where Q&A websites come in. Websites such as Quora, Ask MetaFilter, Yahoo Answers, and Fluther all give users the opportunity to ask a community of people for the answer to a question.
Providing answers to common questions online can build your business reputation.
Lead Generation Tip: Answer Questions and Build Your Reputation
Business used to be about connecting to your local, physical community. If you were the proprietor of a general store, you'd talk with your customers, answer their questions, and give the kids some penny candy as well. Today, a lot of this community is online, but you can do the same thing. You may not want to wait for your customers to come to you: you can go to them, visiting sites like Quora, finding questions in your field of expertise, and answering them with the weight of experience behind you. Those answers are valuable to the person who asked the question, but even more importantly, they're valuable online. The question and the answer are archived on the internet, so that when someone else asks the question, they'll be directed to the site and they'll see your answer.
How to Use Quora
Like any community, Quora has rules. You can ask or answer questions, and you can also target your feed so that you see the specific topics that interest you. Follow topics in your field and just outside it, targeting the demographics that you want to appeal to on Quora. People who enjoy your answers will upvote them, and these answers appear earlier. If you're going to answer, make it a good one that provides value to the asker and receives a lot of potential upvotes.
How to Turn Answers Into Leads
Quora allows you to create a profile, and you can send leads back to your general website, or better yet, to a landing page. This landing page should be targeted toward those who'd appreciate the answer to your question. If you're a printer, you'd have different landing pages for people who are looking for small business startup printing services and those who want you to do printing for their large corporate event. You can also link back to specific pages that are directly relevant to your answer.
The world of inbound marketing is constantly developing. As a business, you need to stay on top of these marketing trends so that you can understand where you need to direct your marketing efforts. Visit Digital Inbound's blog to learn more about marketing trends and receive valuable lead generation tips.