How I used Quora for User Acquisition
Be helpful. It is not a fire-hose but a steady stream.
Quora for user acquisition?
Approx 500 views on my answer in Quora
242 views on Homepage (Organimi.com and not the landing page for the signup)
48.5% conversion from Quora to page views.
And 50 conversions.
That’s a 20% conversion from page view to signup.
Cost: $0 and 30 minutes of searching and writing.
So what is this about?
I’ve had this conversation with a bunch of people. It goes something like this:
‘I am working on/have this product that helps ____ person with _____. I need to get some people on it or want feedback. Where do I start?’
Everyone would have a different opinion about this. Ryan Hoover wrote an excellent post on the same topic and as PG say’s do things that don’t scale.
In short: you can post on Facebook Groups, LinkedIn Groups, Twitter, Google,Facebook ads, SEO, Content (SlideShare,Blog,Videos), Attend Conferences & Meetups or ask people you know who are in your target market out for a coffee.
Quora is often ignored.
Often overlooked or rarely talked about along with Reddit and HackerNews is Quora. Quora for Organimi hasn’t been a fire hose (Spike up then die down) of traffic and signups (which Reddit and HN can be if you catch the attention of the community) but more like a steady stream.
The Hypothesis
For Organimi; let’s go through the typical cycle of how someone finds us through Quora:
- Someone types into Google ‘What’s the best free of charge software for making an org chart?’
- First result is the same question on Quora.
- They click on it and start reading.
So how does this help in user acquisition for Organimi?
Simple: I wrote a helpful but biased answer for this with a clear disclosure that I am part of Organimi — a startup in the same space. Since the question does not have alot of answers at the current time often time’s folks click on it, signup and end up either loving or hating our product. The key here is not to be spammy. Be genuinely helpful and dont put in link or click bait. Put in a clear disclosure. Most importantly find relevant questions.
So when folks ask me — “Where do I find people interested in my product/idea for feedback” I often ask ‘Have you checked Quora for any relevant questions to the problem your trying to solve and answering in a helpful, funny and manner with full disclosure?’ People do appreciate the honesty. Needless to say you can always ask some friends to vote it up to give you a leg up.
How does Quora compare to Reddit or HackerNews?
In my experience Quora community is more civilized. On Reddit or HN often times if you don’t secure enough up votes within a couple of minutes (hours?) of posting, you are probably lost in the depths of the community never to be seen again. Quora is more SEO friendly — especially for questions likely to be searched for through Google/Yahoo/Bing. Quora provides some SEO juice for search phrases posed as questions. Reason being Quora has an emmense bank of questions with really good helpful answers and Google seems to appreciate that.
Another hypothesis I have is if someone searches Google for a question and can’t find the answer — they post the question to Quora and ask the community for help or now post a picture to Jelly. I've done it myself when setting up a marketing automation system here at Organimi.
With Quora now rolling out analytic’s on how many people viewed your answer you can even measure the conversion rates and edit your answer to see if that effects upvotes and conversion in any way by doing some simple math.
So go ahead and use Quora for user acquisition. Don’t spam or self promote on every single question you find. The trick to this as with anything is to be helpful & relevant on questions relating to your product — a shameless plug in the end can be forgiven in that case.
P.S My answer has been relegated to number 4 from number 2 on the page so will try some experiments and write another post as a follow-up.
