Is Quora still a significant social media destination? When the service was first launched, I was (like many others) flooded with notifications of new followers and invitations to follow back, to the point of annoyance. But that flood began to subside in about April of last year and had slowed to a trickle by late summer.
Blogger interest in the site seemed to follow a similar pattern. At the end of last winter, posts about how cool Quora was, the various uses for the site, and tips for getting the most out of it seemed ubiquitous. Then they began to taper off and disappear.
According to Compete.com, traffic to the site did fall off sharply in February and March of 2011 after an initial surge, but has rebounded to new highs since then (though half a million unique visitors per month isn't particularly impressive for a social media site).
What do you think-are Quora's best days still ahead? Will it go the way of MySpace? Or will it fill a niche and level off?
In any case, here are a few of the best Quora how-to guides and insights of 2011. As things stand now, there's unlikely to be a 2012 version of this post next year.
Why Quora Won't be "Bigger than Twitter" by Smart Insights
In this amazingly prescient post, Dave Chaffey lists 14 reasons why Quora won't overtake Twitter (yes, in early 2011, there were people who suggested that it would) including "Asking or answering questions isn't a daily must for most. But you often do want to socialize and share daily which is what you can do on Twitter or Facebook" and "There are better niche communities where you can get your questions answered, for example specialist communities or LinkedIn groups."
A Marketer's Guide to Quora by HubSpot Blog
Brian Whalley provides a helpful basic guide to what Quora is, what makes it different from other social networks and social media sites, how to get started with it, and the marketing applications of this Q&A tool.
33 Quora Q&A Resources: get actual ROI out of using it by SEOptimise
Frequent best-of honoree Tad Chef lists several business uses for Quora, followed by 30+ Quora-related resources covering everything from pros and cons of the platform to how to use it for SEO purposes, concluding "Will you get more out of it (Quora) than you invest in? That's not clear yet, as it's the initial goldrush right now."
Quora SEO: How to Use Quora if You're an SEO by WordStream Internet Marketing Blog
Tom Demers delves into two different ways to use Quora for SEO. The first is finding topic ideas for tech-oriented content: "take a look at all of the 'open questions.' This is interesting because these are questions that people are asking, but that no one has produced a good answer for: demand without supply = opportunity. I can take a peak at this list (here we see 44 unanswered questions) and pull together all the questions that myself or anyone else authoring content for the blog could answer." The second involves following Google engineers (and ex-Google engineers) on Quora to try to gain insights on the inner workings of Google's algorithm.
5 ways to harness the marketing power of Quora by iMedia Connection
Ashley Reed provides a helpful how-to guide for marketing use of Quora, from listing to customers and keeping tabs on competitors to commenting on answers and demonstrating expertise in a specific topic area.