Your Big Brains Can Raise Awareness of Your Organization Part 1 of 2

Originally written for socialfish.org

One of the tips you always see or hear or read about when it comes to becoming more active in social media is ‘become an industry resource/thought leader/trusted by showing expertise’. There are a couple of ways to do this as an organization or as an individual. You can write blogs, publish white papers, curate great content, create creative infographics or make YouTube movies – all of these are excellent and relatively easy ways to go about establishing yourself or your organization (or both, I’ll get to that). You may have noticed that I did not mention activity in industry forums, or LinkedIn Groups or the question and answer site Quora. Well, that’s because I wanted to to use the notable absence as a not-so-subtle segue. How’d I do?

Alright, so these opportunities to show off your expertise are no-nonsense, no beating around the bush forums for you flaunt that big brain you have. I’d like to focus specifically on Quora because I think activity there is so, so, so important not only for folks to be able to say “Hey, everybody, come look at how good I look!” but because it has fantastic SEO value. Let me deviate briefly to give you some resources to use so you can make sure you’re seen.

Quora Founder Adam D’Angelo answered a question on Quora asked way back in 2010:

Is Quora open to Google or other search engines, and can unregistered users see answers?

Adam: We are opening up because we are trying to make high-quality knowledge available to as many people as possible. We are committed to giving answerers control over their answers, and so you will have the ability to edit or remove your answers if you’re concerned about what shows up next to your name.

And of course, if you don’t want to be found on Google or other search engines (why are you still reading?) giving excellent answers, you can opt out.

Alright, so – how do you optimize a profile? Why should you? You should because it will make you easier to find – and your name/profile data will be attached to all of those great answers you give if you decide to move forward. This is a great optimization post from social media enthusiast and popular blogger, Kristi Hines. In the post, she also tells you how to optimize 7 other important social profiles. But head on over to the Quora section for now – in fact, I’ll post it here for you.

Courtesy of Kristi Hines

In the post, Kristi provides this excellent information:

SEO Title: Your Name – Quora

As is the trend for most networks, Quora uses your name in your profile’s SEO title.

Meta Property: Your Long Bio

Quora is a bit unusual in the sense that they use the Facebook Developer’s Meta Property=”og:description” instead of the traditional Meta Description for search results. For this, they pull the information that you include in your Long Bio which should be one to two sentences long. If you search your profile in Google, however, you will see that it pulls your name, your Short Bio, and then your Long Bio as the actual Meta Description snippet.

H1 Tag: Your Name + Your Short Bio

The H1 Tag for your Quora profile will be your name plus your Short Bio. It unfortunately cuts off your tag at 50 characters, so be sure to get your main keyword into your short bio first.

Extra SEO Tidbits: Including Your Websites in the Long Bio

Although the links are nofollow (and mashed up into some crazy looking code), one thing I have noticed about Quora is that you can generate a lot of views and followers fast by answering questions. So SEO value or not, be sure to include your main website links in your Long Bio box. Just type out the URL – it will automatically hyperlink.

Make sure you use that information to your benefit when crafting your Quora profile – and also, hit up that link above so you can see how to optimize your other social profiles. Once you have all of this set up, we are ready to get started with searching for good questions to answer, and developing a strategy that will benefit you and your organization the most in terms of becoming an industry thought leader. In the mean time, go ahead and start answering questions! Remember – Quora is great, good LinkedIn Groups are starting to become harder and harder to find, and archaic industry forums – if they exist – are always a good go-to.

Just don’t forget to tell people who you are and what/who you’re representing (even if it’s yourself!).