A Little Q And A Goes A Long Way: The Power Of Quora

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A Little Q And A Goes A Long Way: The Power Of Quora
5 Small Business Marketing Lessons from NPR’s Car Talk
Own Your Niche and Remove the Fear of Internet Marketing

Posted: 10 Jun 2012 11:00 AM PDT

Quora is an excellent free resource for business information you need. Your questions will be seen by other professionals and experts, and unlike some Q&A sites, you'll actually get solid advice from people that know more than a thing or two about your question.

Quora is much more than a Q&A site, however. With the right approach and practical knowledge you can apply to your contributions, you can drive Quora traffic to your website. If you have a small business you're trying to develop, and also a wealth of information in your head that others might find useful, you can capitalize on both by applying your expertise to helpful answers.

Don't Promote Directly, and You'll Be Fine

A major no-no on Quora is direct promotion. If you're joining the site solely to spam questions with your website or promotional copy as a "promotional tactic," you'll be looked down upon in the community and will potentially get yourself removed. You can promote your company indirectly through a number of different ways, however.

You can start a question anonymously asking about your own company. This is a sneaky strategy, but it works: users will give you genuine answers as to the worth and validity of your company's services and the question will stay online for other visitors and search engines to see later.

For the non-anonymous approach, you can speak from your company's experience in answers, and discuss how you have applied useful strategies at your business. This leverages your professional knowledge as well as your business, but if you are confident in both, you will gain authority in the process. Authority is a valuable asset on Quora, and will be the driving force behind building more valuable leads on the service.

The Power of Authority

On Quora, you can build a complete profile about yourself for others to see. This is one of the first things you should do after you join—build your profile so that it represents you professionally. Your business can be represented in your profile as a source of your expertise or a result thereof. No matter what your field, you can establish yourself with your business and promote yourself at the same time.

As you continue to use Quora and answer questions, the value of your answer will be determined by other users with up or down votes on your replies. If your replies are deemed valuable by the community, you'll be respected as a more trustworthy authority on the website. This reflects in search engine results, as well; if someone researches a question you've answered and arrives upon your valuable answer through a web search, they will benefit from your posts outside of the Quora community and you'll earn valuable name recognition for the future.

There Are No Stupid Questions

You can almost guarantee that if you've ever wanted to know something, someone else has wanted to know the same thing. If you didn't find any information on the internet through search results, maybe there haven't been any answers to your questions posted online yet. Quora is the best solution to this problem, and if you're promoting yourself as well as seeking knowledge, it is doubly effective.

There is no such thing as a stupid question on Quora, and the likelihood that someone will eventually ask your same question or seek your answers in the future is very high. By participating on the site, you are producing evergreen content that is easily related back to your name and professional brand. From a marketing perspective, this is an excellent deal: long-term, effective content that will attract new leads over time, hosted offsite on a service that adds authority to your brand, with minimal overhead expenses and minimal effort involved in production. By helping others, you help yourself in the process.

SEOMoz founder and young entrepreneur Rand Fishkin is an active Quora member, and commonly answers questions on the service by speaking from his own experiences. Not only does he attract attention to himself online with his valuable responses, he also attracts interest in his company. Rand's success with SEO strategies comes from an understanding that every social outlet is a potential lead-building tool for your business, and you can bet that Quora contributions are part of his personal SEO strategies.

Anyone that has anything worth saying can take advantage of this valuable service for their own business. All it takes is a quick sign-up, and some helpful knowledge that others would like to know, and the road to building new business contacts and leads through helping others can open up to your business as well.

From Small Business Trends

A Little Q And A Goes A Long Way: The Power Of Quora

5 Small Business Marketing Lessons from NPR’s Car Talk

Posted: 10 Jun 2012 05:15 AM PDT

This week the hosts of NPR’s most popular non-news show “Car Talk” Tom and Ray Magliozzi announced in a post on their site “Time to Get Even Lazier” that they would “stop and smell the cappuccino.” Car Talk has been on the airwaves for over 35 years of which 25 years has been on NPR. The Wall Street Journal said that Car Talk had an audience of over 3.3 million every week in over 660 stations quoting Eric Nuzum NPR’s vice president of programming.

My whole family are fans and will miss them having listened to them for 15 years. Every time I have heard Car Talk all these years, this post has been on my mind. Here are my views on what small business can learn about marketing from the ” Click and Clack. the Tappet Brothers.” i.e., the Car Talk guys:

Humor : Use humor to make your marketing messages more interesting.

Tom and Ray Magliozzi turned a difficult and complicated subject — car repairs — into a humorous show that interested both the people who wanted to learn about repairing cars and also those who wanted to laugh along with them.

Self-deprecation : Don’t be afraid to use this to make your audience laugh with you and not at you.

When used with humor in my opinion the audience feels safe and not talked down to. Even people who are not experts enjoy the show as the hosts of Car Talk make fun of themselves and sometimes their audience in a very friendly manner.

Dumbing Down: Making your message clearly understood no matter what the expertise of your audience is. Ann Wylie, a well known communication expert, says your writing should be understood at the 6th Grade level.

The technical details of car repair and parts are made so easy to understand on the show that people at any level of expertise can understand. This is also reflected in the type of callers who call in to the show — they have all levels of expertise.

Refresh and Recall: Use examples of your past successes and testimonials from your customers, past and present.

At the end of every show the hosts ask a previous caller to let the audience know if the recommendation from them had worked or not.

Call to Action: All messages should have a clear call to action of what you want the audience to do.

Throughout Car Talk the audience is spurred for a call to action- donate a car, participate in NPR efforts or visit the “Car Talk Shameless Commerce” part of the Car Talk website (their e-commerce site where they sell T-shirts and other items).

Are you a fan of Car Talk? Will you miss them? What tips did you get from shows these like this or others you listen to? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

Photo courtesy Flickr User WBUR Boston’s NPR news station

From Small Business Trends

5 Small Business Marketing Lessons from NPR’s Car Talk

Own Your Niche and Remove the Fear of Internet Marketing

Posted: 10 Jun 2012 05:00 AM PDT

If you ever wanted build your business with internet marketing, but immediately felt overwhelmed and didn't know where to begin, Own Your Niche – Hype-Free Internet Marketing Tactics to Establish Authority in Your Field and Promote Your Service-Based Business is your step-by-step field guide.

Own Your Niche

Published in January 2012, "Own Your Niche" is the latest installment from Stephanie Chandler and Authority Publishing. Stephanie has a longstanding relationship with Small Business Trends and, in fact, our very own Anita Campbell is featured as one of the first success story interviews in the book.

Nevertheless, when I received a review copy of the book, I was immediately impressed by the amount of useful content. The number of resources and services listed were invaluable and my copy is already thoroughly bookmarked and highlighted.

Where other marketing books only touch on connecting with your audience, "Own Your Niche" makes sure that the needs of your niche always come first in each and every chapter. This reminds me of a comment I heard recently that, while your services may be able to help everyone, your marketing efforts can't reach everyone, so it pays to be specific.

The book is easy to read and well organized by topic. I recommend that you take time to read it once through and then go back and implement each chapter step-by-step over the course of several weeks.

Why Use Own Your Niche?

Some of the many benefits promised in "Own Your Niche" are:

Identify your target audience and authentically connect with them
Building website and blog traffic
Using social media effectively and quickly each day
Establishing yourself as an authority with valuable content
Generating a PR campaign that drives media to you
Creating online products and other sources of income

Beyond the benefits listed above, the book includes several interviews with business owners on how they built their service-based business and connected with their target audience. Plus did I mention the mountain of internet marketing resources provided?

Own Your Niche – The Breakdown for Busy Entrepreneurs

"Own Your Niche" has thirteen chapters, each one filled to the brim with marketing tips, but I feel that the book can be summarized in three main areas:

Targeting Your Niche
Internet Marketing
Traditional Marketing

The book begins with the benefits of targeting your niche, establishing yourself as an authority in your field and engaging your audience.

The second part covers the variety of internet marketing strategies available and helps you to prioritize where you should spend your time and why. One strategy is how to structure your website so it is intuitive and makes it easy for your audience to buy your products. The book then covers the SEO basics and why you need a blog. An important part of the book simplifies social media and reassures us that you do not need to spend your whole day to get the marketing impact you want.

Finally "Own Your Niche" wraps up with more traditional marketing efforts such as email newsletters, public relations and ways to draw the media to you naturally. As a bonus, if you are interested in professional speaking, the book outlines the benefits providing products and services that reach engaged and targeted audiences in person.

The Author – Stephanie Chandler

Stephanie Chandler (@bizauthor) is the author of several books including "Booked Up! How to Write, Publish, and Promote a Book to Grow Your Business", and "From Entrepreneur to Infopreneur: Make Money with Books, eBooks and Information Products." She recently hosted an inspiring three-day Non-Fiction Writers Conference with online sessions on self-publishing, Amazon, Smashwords, book proposals and more, all presented by major internet publishing industry experts.

Stephanie decided early on to avoid internet marketing tactics that didn't pass her internal "gut test" and despite her refusal to comply with the masses, she has built several successful businesses, is a frequent speaker at business events and on the radio, and has been featured in Entrepreneur, BusinessWeek, and Wired magazine, and she is a blogger for Forbes.

She is also CEO of Authority Publishing, specializing in custom publishing for nonfiction books and social media marketing services, and Business Info Guide, a directory of resources for entrepreneurs.

Who Benefits from Own Your Niche?

As the subtitle of the book suggests, if you want to become an established authority in your field and promote your service-based business, “Own Your Niche” is for you. This is true whether you are just starting out or have been in business for years. The latest marketing techniques and methods are broken down into reasonable chunks you can tackle on a daily basis to get real results in record time.

The Bottom Line

"Own Your Niche"shows you the way to achieve your internet marketing goals and still feel like you are connecting with your target audience in your own words, not pushing them away with gimmicky sales techniques.

From Small Business Trends

Own Your Niche and Remove the Fear of Internet Marketing