Hughes blog post: Quora? That is the question.

Quora - an online website where questions and answers are created, edited, and organised by everyone who uses it - was launched in Beta about a year ago and there's been quite a bit of buzz about it on Twitter in the last few weeks.

After coming back from leave recently I setup an an account, which was incredibly easy. Using it is also quite intuitive, something I always like in a new service or any online service for that matter. Although being the type of service it is, I could always ask it how to use it.

In relation to my job at Hughes PR regarding social and digital media, I am able to follow topics related to these areas to see what questions and answers people are adding. I can also follow a particular question and if someone answers that question I am notified within the system, a feature I particularly like because I don't always remember to follow up on these things. I can also see what questions my followers are following and what the trending topics are.

Therefore it's quite a social system. But is it of any use to our clients? I think it could be.

Rather than showcase a particular client, I did a search for 'Adelaide' being the city in which Hughes PR is based:

This search could just as easily been for a brand. See in the image above how one word in the search bar will show a bunch of related questions so if you do a search for your brand or business you can immediately see what questions are being asked.

These results show me that Quora is not only being used in Adelaide, but that people are asking and answering questions related to Adelaide.

Quora answers are also showing up in Google search results making it another tool to potentially add to the digital strategy arsenal for businesses. At the very least it should be monitored for any references to your business.

One of my first thoughts after starting to use Quora was that it could be more useful than LinkedIn groups facility for questions and answers. I think Quora is a bit more user friendly in this regard.

There are roughly 1 million registered Quora users, although the jury's out on how accurate any such number is. It has a way to go to catch up with the likes of Twitter and Facebook and maybe it never will, but in the meantime I'll keep an eye on it.

- Jenny Clift