Quora (Supposedly) Emailed My Answer to 100,000 People

I’ve been running a few content distribution experiments on Quora lately.

(Quick backstory before the real story:)

I only started using Quora for content distribution about a month ago. Quora lured me to pay more attention to their platform by sending me an unusual notification: I was invited to become a “Quora Partner.”

What's that?

After some Googling, I learned that Quora Partners are users who've been randomly-selected to get paid to ask interesting questions.

(You can see why I started looking more closely into the platform.)

Quora Partners are paid based on the reach of their questions. So, how many people have seen your questions, not necessarily how many you ask.

I haven’t spent much time asking questions, but I am technically $3.66 wealthier than a few weeks ago.

Content marketing on Quora

Despite all that big money *sarcasm* I could be earning asking questions, I've instead doubled down on answering other people's questions. I'm using this as a content distribution strategy to drive traffic to our customers' blogs.

Here’s the high-level, super-simplified version of how content distribution on Quora works:

Create a high-quality blog post. (The article you want to distribute.)
While the topic is still fresh on your mind, go to Quora.
Search for questions along the topic you just wrote about.
Answer each question in a way that drives real value to the reader.
At the end of your response, find a non-salesy way to link your original article. (Like you’re just citing your sources.)

If your response is popular, you may drive some traffic back to your original blog. That's the simplified version. But sometimes, the Quora algorithm kicks in to create a little more excitement...

How my answer was emailed to 100,000 people on Quora

One of my answers has been featured three times -- read it: thrice -- in Quora Digest.

What is Quora Digest?

There's not a lot on the internet about Quora Digest. As far as I understand it, Quora Digest is a topically-segmented newsletter. When a Quora writer -- like yours truly -- gives a popular answer to a question, an algorithm kicks in that sends that answer, via email, to users who've shown interest in that topic.

Got it? On with the story.

One of my answers got a little traction on Quora. The next day, I received a notification that my answer had been emailed to 1,000+ people on Quora Digest.

As you’d expect, I was excited.

A few days later, I got a similar notification about the same post: My answer had been emailed to 11,000+ Quora Digest subscribers.

And finally, last week I received another notification that my answer had been emailed to 100,000+ Quora Digest subscribers!

Wait, what?!

But… there's a sad ending to this story.

Being featured in Quora Digest, for my answer, turned out to be more hype than results. According to my Quora analytics, my featured answer has been viewed 999 times. Most of those readers found the answer before it was sent to 100,000 in Quora Digest.

(254 people have read the answer since it was sent to the email list.)

Is that good? Bad?

What do you think?

Next week I’m going to continue this conversation around my content distribution experiments with Quora. I'll even go in-depth about the tactic that is driving most of my shares, views, and upvotes.

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Have you been featured in Quora Digest? What were your results?