News Courtesy of SearchEngineLand.com:
Quora may not rival giants Facebook or Google with audiences in the billions, but to put Quora’s audience of 300 million monthly users in perspective, Twitter reported 335 monthly active users (MAU) in Q2; Reddit claims to have 330 million MAU; and Pinterest said this month it has 250 million MAU. For marketers evaluating so-called second-tier platforms, Quora’s reach puts it squarely in the mix.
Ryan’s Take 
Both Quora and Pinterest now have my attention. Even though these platforms have been around for nearly a decade, I didn’t see much value in them for generating website traffic. Since I’ve started my Amazon affiliate niche website, I’ve been researching different ways to attract visitors. Only until quite recently did I understand just how big each platform is and how to tap into their massive audience size.
I should’ve realized a long time ago the referral traffic that can be gained from Quora. They’ve had a firm grip on question-form search queries for years now. Specifically, questions that begin with do or does. It’s quite common to find a result from Quora on the first page of Google when used in that context. I believe that in order to succeed in obtaining Quora referral traffic, your answers need to be deep and informative. Since the links are no-follow you won’t get any SEO juice, but if you target questions that pertain to your business or niche, that becomes irrelevant.
I plan to write a detailed answer with a personal story as it pertains to my niche website for a Quora question with over 7,000 follows. There will be some steep competition as this question has some very detailed answers already posted. The trick will be to offer some insights that have yet to be covered. Whether it pays off or not will probably take months to find out.
Pinterest, on the other hand, was never on my radar. I made a lot of assumptions as to what Pinterest actually is and their main demographic. I concluded that it was just a fancy bookmarking website for women. Boy was I wrong! It’s more like a visual search engine with a reported 40% of new sign-ups being men. Since I’ve joined Pinterest, it’s become clear the potential traffic and brand authority you can build. Simply, creating pins on a semi-frequent basis has gained me several followers with zero promotional effort. What’s even more impressive is the analytics dashboard that business accounts have access to. Creating pins and boards will be a huge part of my marketing strategy, not only for my niche website but possibly to integrate into packages to offer my clients. I only wish I wised up sooner!
