Quora, Google’s community question-answering service, has become even more social and interactive with the introduction of Quora Views.
Quora describes Views as “a way to discover what Quora is distributing to people you follow in their feeds and digest emails.” Basically, it uses trending data from people you follow on Quora to give you a more “personalized” view of topics and questions that might interest you.
How Quora Views Works
Each Quora question has a Views page, accessible from the sidebar on the questions page:
The Views page shows everyone who viewed the question, and the reason they were notified of the question:
In the example above, the first person came to the question via a friend notification. The other three came from topic notifications (notifications of questions relating to topics they follow on Quora). Friends and Topics are the two aspects that can trigger notifications and therefore views in a question’s Views page. So obviously, the more people you are linked to and the more topics you follow, the more appearances you’ll make on Views pages.
Views in Quora News Feed
Your social and topical connections will also start to generate a new piece of content in you Quora News Feed. For example:
For privacy, participation in individual Views can be deleted (on the content’s Views page), or you can turn off Views altogether in your settings.
Reach on Quora
Once people have started viewing your content on Quora, a Views link will appear in your home page sidebar:
Clicking that link will take you to your own Views page, showing how many views your questions, answers, and other content got, and who viewed them:
The page shows your most recent views, followed by a monthly breakdown of past viewing history.
It’s important to note that Quora states they only post views that are already publicly available (such as from feeds, digest emails, and public actions like upvoting). Views from adult content or content you browsed but do not follow will never be shown.
Using Quora Views to Build Your Online Authority
I’m a huge advocate of building your personal brand online. Because of the social web, any one of us has more power to become known and trusted in our areas of expertise and competency than ever before. These new features from Quora can become an important part of building that personal brand.
Here’s how to put Quora to use for you. First, Tips on Building a Quora Following:
- Follow on Quora anyone who seems to have authority in your topical interest areas. The “Follow People You May Know” list in the Quora sidebar seems to draw on relationships from your other social networks, so obviously building quality relationships on Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn etc., and then linking to your profiles in your Quora profile can be helpful in improving this list.
- Interact frequently on Quora, answering questions, upvoting good answers, contributing to boards. All of these actions will increase your visibility in the Views pages of other users. You will also earn Quora Credits, which increase the visibility of your content to Quora users and give you “capital” to push-promote your content.
- Share your questions and answers to your social networks. This will bring more eyes to your questions, people who may decide to follow you on Quora.
- Always remember that Quora questions and answers are indexed for Google search, so your activity here expands your reach beyond Quora itself.
Tips to Leverage Quora Views for Building Authority
- Regularly check your personal Views list to watch for people who seem to be regularly attracted to your Quora activity. Consider following them, and/or interacting with their activities (answer their questions, upvote their answers).
- Periodically check questions that you have answered (“Answered” link on left side of your profile page). Look at the Views for that question to find more people with whom you might want to interact
- Overall, see Views (both your Personal Views and Question Views) as an opportunity to mine for people who share your interests and therefore might make good partners on Quora for mutual benefit.
Do you have any tips on using Quora to increase your online influence?
