Use Quora to Market Your Online Course

By: Justin Ferriman • October 30, 2017
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After creating your online course you may be wondering how to market it.

You have probably heard all of the usual advice when it comes to building an online business. You know, stuff like:

All of this advice is sound and wouldn’t be given if it didn’t work. But I want to offer up another avenue for your marketing efforts: Quora.

Quora is the modern day Yahoo Answers. It’s a place where people go to ask questions and get answers. The quality of these answers far exceeds that of Yahoo Answers though, and the qualifications of those offering advice can be quite impressive. Business owners, web developers, professors, entrepreneurs, authors, and so on.

Using Quora is pretty simple. You create an account (for free) and when you do you get the chance to add topics of interest.

Questions that people have asked relating to these topics will then display on your account. Now all you have to do is find questions you think you can answer and start writing. That’s all there is to it.

Here’s How to Use Quora for Course Marketing

The very nature of Quora makes it an ideal place to passively market your online course. The key word here is passively.

Don’t be that person that goes around copying and pasting a canned reply that is a veiled promotion for your course. That’s obnoxious and really isn’t the reputation you want for your business.

Instead, take time to actually answer the individuals questions. If you have written blog posts or created videos that relate to the question being asked then don’t hesitate to include those in your reply. It’s a good way to share additional information but in a non-spammy way.

Now, when you answer a question you have the opportunity to add your credentials next to your name (you can actually modify your credentials slightly for each answer you give which can come in handy). Think of this as a chance for you to quickly validate your credibility and let people know where to find out more about your business.

If you give a really good answer and it is up-voted by others, then your name and business will be the first that people see. They may view your Quora profile to learn more about you, or go directly to your business.

For example, you could simply put the following as your credentials: “Creator of industry recognized MyCourse.com”. There is a good chance that you’ll get some direct type-in traffic from something like that.

Is It Worth It?

The question you’re probably asking yourself is if this strategy is worth it.

I would hesitate to tell anyone to only use Quora. I think it makes for a great supplementary option.

That said, it will definitely give you some added visibility. I know from experience.

I recently tried out Quora for LearnDash as an experiment – answering people’s questions related to e-learning, WordPress, learning management systems, and other similar topics. At the time of this article my answers have received 970 views for the month of October thus far. Not too bad, especially when you consider these views come from just 28 answers I have given.

The neat thing about Quora is that many times questions that are asked will appear on the first page of Google results when someone searches for a related question. This means you and your course end up on the first page of Google with pretty much zero effort.

In the end using Quora is an interesting way to supplement your marketing and branding efforts. By no means should it be the only strategy you use, but it’s definitely a worthy tool in your marketing toolbox.

Justin Ferriman

Justin started LearnDash, the WordPress LMS trusted by Fortune 500 companies, major universities, training organizations, and entrepreneurs worldwide. He is currently founder & CEO of GapScout. Justin’s Homepage | GapScout | Twitter