Using Quora as free research

Successful Content Marketers work like they’re playing chess: thinking at least two moves ahead. You might have a list of blog posts that you need to write and have an idea about how you’re going to link those posts together, but how do you link it to the next chapter in your client’s epic story?

When we’re running low on ideas, we turn to Quora. Some of the most powerful people in the world use it to offer their wisdom to the people.

For Legal Content Marketers, Quora is the stick of dynamite that can blow your research efforts wide open. The site gets between 20-30 million visits a year, and has about 400,000 questions in its database, each with a slew of answers. Best of all, it’s fun to use, though you do run the risk of telling yourself  ‘just one more question won’t hurt me’ as you exhaust your knowledge about your favourite television show!


Why is Quora so great?

Quora lets you know about real questions that people are asking in different subjects.

For instance, type in the keyword phrase ‘copyright law’ into the search bar, and Quora will respond with hundreds of questions that people have asked about copyright law (Picture included in folder). Any one of them could be used to generate blog post titles, such as:

  • Do copyright laws kill art?
  • How do copyright laws vary from country to country?
  • I don’t use Facebook for legal reasons.
  • Do copyright laws in China affect my rights in the United States?

Coming up with blog post titles becomes easier, and with a quick dip into the question you’ll have plenty of opinions on what the answer is. Sometimes you see some high-quality sources! When used with your other tools Quora is the kickstart that you need to push your legal content marketing campaign into overdrive.

Not enough answers for your taste, but you have an opinion on the matter? A great way to get activity on your question is to submit an answer yourself! Anyone following the question will get a notification and will vote on your answer, or even respond with one of their own. This is a great way to float an article idea.

Of course you’re not limited to just writing Q&A articles off of Quora answers. For instance, using the question search above you could:

  • Create a funny informational video about copyright and art.
  • Design an infographic that outlines copyright laws in different countries.
  • Delve into a whitepaper outlining the social media platforms and their relation to copyright.
  • Provide a fun blog post about the different types of lawyers and their personality traits (like the jokes about engineers, but this one would cover lawyers.)
  • Develop an app pertaining to the kookiest inventions.

All of this generates from the simple search that you did on Quora. Over the next few weeks we’ll be talking about how to leverage Quora better by developing profiles, distributing content, and how to get popular on Quora. But for now, let’s get back to answering questions about old TV shows.