Ok I think I kind of get Quora now

As time-sucking vortices go, Quora is a pretty useful platform for writers…

These are lightbulbs, not pears, in case you couldn’t tell. They look a bit like pears, though, right? I know, weird. Anyway, that one in the middle is meant to represent a bright idea or realisation or something. I should probably end this caption now and focus on writing the actual post.

Quora is a funny one. I’ve been aware of it as a site for years. Poked around briefly a couple of years ago. Downloaded the app. Deleted the app. Forgot about it.

I came across it again being mentioned in an article as a useful platform for writers to flex their writing muscles, gain exposure and followers.

I don’t think I’ve gained much exposure, nor have I added (m)any followers to my loyal cohort of disciples hanging off every one of my words. I have definitely flexed my writing muscles, though.

How does it work? People ask questions. Other people write answers. It’s like stackoverflow but for everyday life. (Don’t worry if that reference doesn’t make sense. Ignore me!)

Why would anybody bother posing questions these days? Surely google has the answers for every possible question one you could throw at it. For facts and figures, yes probably. For anything else, less likely.

Here are a few random questions suggested to me which I felt impelled to write some answers for:

A fairly eclectic mix.

The best bit of all this isn’t that it’s just got me writing more words. The beauty of it is that my answers are channeling thoughts, ideas and beliefs that I often haven’t expressed in written form before.

It is opening up veins of creativity. I’ve referred to “mental cannulation” before. And this is exactly that.

I still don’t have any followers on Quora even though I’ve had around 600 answer views over the last week or so. I’m not sure if building a following on Quora is a goal I need to worry about.

Perhaps I should use it as a sounding board, a scratchpad for responses to stimulating questions. It’s a fairly common tactic to cross-post answers back to Medium if they stand up as a decent blog post in their own right. I’ve done this once already.

Regardless of how I continue to use Quora, this time around I’ll be keeping the app on my phone and poking around more often than before.

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