Writing the best answer we can isn’t necessarily difficult but there are some things you have to keep in mind when writing them. Over time we’ve learned many things that work and others that simply don’t so read carefully.
Best practices on Quora
If you don’t follow the instructions below, the answer will probably be collapsed and deleted by the Quora moderation team making it a waste of time.
If you have any questions, let us know in the comment section at the bottom of the page. We’ll help you as much as we can. 😉
1. Add quote blocks
Every time you quote content from an external source, you have to add a quote block. These blocks look different on each platform, for instance, a quote on Google sheets has to have three things.
- It has to be in italics
- You have to add quotation marks like these ones “ ”
- Add and increase indent.
Here’s an example:
“Don’t worry this podcast has nothing to do with who’s right and who’s wrong, but it has everything to do with why they are using the Corona virus.”
Here’s a 24-second video to show you how to do it. Just click play to watch it.
After you publish your answer on Quora, this is what the quote will look like. ↓
2. Add an image source
Every time you take an image from a third-party website, you should add a “source link” pointing to where you took it from.
If you took a screenshot, there’s no need to provide a link but you should at least mention where that screenshot is from.
For instance, something like “Screenshot source: Premier League’s official page.”
Here’s how to provide image sources:
3. Thoroughly describe links
As per Quora’s policy, you’ll have to describe what users will find on the other side of a link. If you don’t do it, they’ll either collapse (hide) or delete your answer.
For instance, here’s an example of one of our answers that got deleted. ↓
In retrospective, since we didn’t provide any links besides the one we wanted to promote, a much better answer would have been:
Use Ticket-Compare. What they do is scan ticket vendor websites to then show you the cheapest tickets they find. After that, you just choose a vendor, seats, and pay. If you want to check them out, here’s a link to their Premier League tickets page.
Also, to make sure it didn’t get deleted, we could have provided links to the other alternatives we talked about. That way we could have made it look more natural and sort of mask the link we wanted to promote.
Things you must avoid
Just like there are best practices, there are some things you should avoid. Here are some things we’ve learned that you should have in mind when creating answers for Quora. ↓
1. Affiliate links and UTM code
As per Quora’s terms and conditions, all affiliate links are forbidden in the platform, therefore UTM codes will trigger their algorithm making it think it’s an affiliate link. To avoid this, clean any links you provide to make sure it fully complies with their ToS.
2. Rambling
We should avoid rambling about stuff that isn’t important just for the sake of meeting a specific number of words. Think about it, when you are talking to a person face to face, do you start telling them a loooong story before answering a question?
Probably not, right?
It’s the same on Quora, don’t ramble and get into the answer right away.
Here’s an example of rambling:
It’s a good thing to write a nice intro but it should be closely related to the answer and it should describe the pain point rather than talking about similar stuff.
3. Duplicate content
There are times when we’ll have to provide content that is partially the same as other answers we’ve written. That’s fine as long as we don’t make it pass as new content, the way to do that is by linking to the previous answer we wrote.
Here’s what I mean:
Inspirational answers
Here you can find great examples of how a good answer look like
- Netanel Baruch answer to the question “what is MES?“
It's your turn
Now that you know exactly what to do (and what you must avoid), go ahead and write your own answers.
And to help you avoid wasting your time on answers that will probably never be seen by most, visit this other post we wrote. It will teach you how to find the best questions on Quora.
Also, if you have any questions, remember to write them down below, we’ll do our best to help you.
Have an awesome day!
