Quora for Nonprofits

We decided to make Quora for Nonprofits our inaugural newsletter post because of the stats we have been seeing. Many individuals have taken to searching Quora over Google for answers to questions due to Google’s paid ads and spam.

According to Foundation Inc., there are three hundred million monthly active users on Quora, and 54% of adult users report a household income of greater than $100k. In addition, 37% of Quora users are more likely to be in a management position. Adults are also spending twice as much time on Quora than on LinkedIn.

Some savvy nonprofits like the Heart & Stroke Foundation have joined Quora because Quora for nonprofits can help:

• Spread awareness of your nonprofit and its mission while humanizing your brand
• Reach new supporters, volunteers, and donors
• Learn more about your donors
• Connect and stay in tune with your audience
• Establish your authority and position your organization as a leader in your field
• Build transparency
• Research facts related to the causes that the organization supports
• Share unique content
• Boost your search engine optimization (we will talk more about this later)

If you are not familiar with Quora, it is a social media channel that acts as a platform for users to ask and answer questions. Other users can upvote and downvote those answers based on accuracy - or suggest edits.

Basic Features Include:

• Ask and answer questions
• Upvote and downvote answers
• Target questions to a specific user
• Search and follow questions, topics, or users
• Receive notifications on topics and users you follow
• Publish your own content

So, let us run through those basics.

Step 1: Setting Up Your Nonprofit Quora Profile

When setting up your charities profile on Quora, make sure to:

? add your headline

? edit your name

? add credentials

? upload your profile picture

? edit your topics

? write a description of yourself

Step 2: Find and Follow Topics Related to Your Industry

You will want to follow any topics specifically about your charity so you can join in the conversation when new questions are asked.

There are:

? Related topics

? Quora Spaces

? Most recent questions

TIP: Track relevant topics with notifications. Make sure you get notifications about your tracked topics by going to your settings page and emails & notifications.

Step 3: Start Answering

An essential part of learning how to use Quora for nonprofits involves knowing which questions to answer.

Start searching on Quora. Leverage existing high-performing keywords and topics and look for question opportunities that offer a solid follower count.

• Choose topics that fit your charity
• Find threads with a lot of upvotes
• Do not focus exclusively on the most popular queries; answer new or obscure questions

Once you have found questions relevant to your organization, make sure that your answers stand out. Answer questions with passion and authority.

One of the easiest ways to create a fantastic answer that promotes your organization, and boosts your website SEO, is to pull snippets from content you have already created. Answer questions by expanding on an article with a blog post, video, checklists, etc. that you have on your website (complete with a link back to your site, which boosts SEO).

Here is how it looks in action. Say you are a domestic violence charity, and someone posts a question about how to help a friend escape family violence. You can share an answer that includes a link to your website that contains a downable checklist. Make sure to have an email sign up on that landing page because you now have a prospective donor or volunteer whom you know has a link and a personal connection to your work.

Step 4: Start Asking

Here are a few guidelines for asking questions on Quora.

• Make sure your question has not already been asked. Check and double-check if there are any similar questions that have already been asked.
• Your question should be short, crisp, clear, and correct.
• Your question should be grammatically correct.
• Your question cannot be ambiguous.
• Avoid asking questions that can be answered simply with "yes" or "no." Instead, consider questions that start with "What," "How," "When," and "Where."

Step 5: Connect with other Quora users

Quora is not just a search engine; it is a social media platform. So do not forget about the importance of engaging and being "social" with it.

Like most social channels, Quora allows users to communicate directly with each other. This is a fantastic way to enrich your relationships with stakeholders for charities.

Step 6: Use Quora Spaces

Quora Spaces is a feature that enables you to create a community. It is like Facebook Groups, but those who follow the Space can share but not contribute.

Spaces are a valuable way to distribute your own content. Remember that using Quora Spaces for awareness and fundraising is not about selling but about positioning your organization as the experts in your industry and as a source of rich information.

In Quora Spaces, you can also share relevant articles or Quora answers you think followers will be interested in reading.

While contributing your own content and sharing others’ content adds value to the community, getting followers in on the action is equally important. Regularly encouraging your community to share articles and soliciting responses to articles goes a long way in establishing your Space. It also empowers followers to initiate discussions in your Space.

Some tips for promoting your Space include:

• First, give a proper name to your Quora Space - The more relevant your Quora Space name is, the more followers you will get.
• Including your Quora Space inside your BIO & Ask People to follow.
• Try to link your Quora Space when answering questions.
• Invite your followers to follow your Space.

HOW TO FUNDRAISE ON QUORA:

Quora has not yet set up any fundraising tools. Because it is a question-and-answer platform, it is not as easy to fundraise as other platforms where you can post content and include donate buttons. Still, there are some ways to make what we call a 'soft ask’.

The best way is to tastefully self-promote in Q&A related posts when answering relevant questions. You might mention a program or service your organization offers and how it relies on generous donors.

If you are using Spaces, you have more control over your content and can produce your own ‘soft asks’.

Once again, here is what it could look like in practice. Suppose you are an animal welfare organization using Spaces. In that case, you can post a blog-style story on the impact that a fundraiser you are hosting has on some of your animals. It is soft, you are proving a story, but there is a hint that you need additional donations.

There are hundreds of creative ways to use Quora for our nonprofit marketing and fundraising. Drop a comment and let me know what you have done and how it worked, or feel free t ask me any questions or run any ideas past me.

Find us on Quora at https://www.quora.com/profile/Cause-Specialists and our Nonprofit Hacks Space at https://nonprofithacks.quora.com/

#Quora #nonprofitmarketing #digitalfundraising #socialmediafundraising