From “Duh!” to “Aha!” – How To Turn Q&A Sites Into Traffic Magnets?

I love Q&A sites for a zillion reasons! In addition to their unquestionable personal/corporate branding rewards, I have come to realize that you can leverage them for content marketing and relationship building purposes, which translate into driving massive traffic to your blog/site.

How To Use Q&A Sites For Content Marketing

Have you reached the reader stagnation station? Join the club!

In other words, have you, in your relentless quest to find quality content for your blog, realized that you’ve been saying: “duh! I know this already” to almost everything you read online?

I have been there and it’s very frustrating to do lots of reading only to end up feeling you learned nothing!

At Garious, we strive to become “Aha!” experts. In other words, we want our readers to say “Aha! That’s a great tip I haven’t seen elsewhere.”

That’s why, when blogs and online magazines failed to satisfy my hunger for fresh content, I sought out Q&A sites for a healthy dose of inspiration.

Yes, Q&A sites are gold mines for new blog topics! And you can easily tell if the topic is hot or not by checking the number of views/answers to a given question. This way, you can confidently blog about the same topic and rest assured that readers will devour it.

Alternatively, you can ask all kinds of interesting questions and blog about the answers.

For example, the following article was inspired by a question that Aaron Eden, Garious founder, raised at LinkedIn Q & A:

Why Bother Measuring Your Social Media Campaign? Keep it “Chaotic” Sweetie!

You can also combine several questions into one topic if you wish to create a broader readership spectrum.

Recently, Garious published a list of questions form Q&A sites and Garious answers to them. (I hate to state the obvious but it was Q&A sites that inspired today’s topic as well ).

Tip take away: you can come up with outstanding blog topics form Q&A sites by blogging about other people’s questions or their answers to your questions.

Intelligent “Teaser” Answers = Insane Blog Traffic!

Here’s a golden rule: Not finding answers to a question doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not hot. It could also mean that the question is challenging. So, if you can jump in and answer it, you will stand out from the crowd.

For example, do you think a question like Who are the real social media experts? (and why) is hot or not?

Personally, I think it’s super-hot. Still, Garious was the only answerer (so far!) and we gave a teaser answer that links to relevant posts on our blog.

Tip take away: if you want to get massive targeted traffic from Q&A sites, dig for hot and unanswered questions and provide teaser answers with links to your own content.

How To Use Q&A Sites For Relationship Building

Here comes my favorite part…Whenever you spot great answers from people, contact them to get their permission to publish their answers in blog posts with a link to their site. That’s a no-fail ice breaker if you ask me. Who would say no to more visibility?

Simply put, when you approach people in a way that focuses on what’s in it for them, you will always seal the deal.

In addition to building relationships with like-minded experts in your industry, they will reward your for showcasing their expertise on your blog by sharing it with their networks. Again, your blog traffic will thank you.

Here is an example of a blog topic that was inspired by raising a question and featuring people’s answers and links to their sites:
“Yo Yo Yo…Gimme The Dough!” (2) – The Implications of Twitter’s Latest Bombshell on Twitter Users.

In general, featuring third party quality content has two massive rewards:

1. Your readers will still be happy while you can get some rest from writing your own content.
2. People you feature will appreciate the exposure you are giving them and will return the favor in many ways. For example, they would gladly feature your content on their sites and share your blog with their networks.

You see, Q&A sites are loaded with branding, traffic and visibility treasures waiting for intelligent marketers to tap into them.

What’s your take on these tips? And make my day…Tell me, did you say “Duh!” or “Aha!” after reading this article? Please be honest. I promise not shed any tears! lol…