Quora, the crowdsourced question and answers community has been getting a lot of publicity lately. Purported to be more than just another questions and answers site, Quora is aimed at going beyond a simple forum for questions and answers (like Yahoo Answers) to being more of a brain trust where individuals’ knowledge on a topic is collected and made available to members of the community.
Founded in 2008 by former Facebook executives, the latest social community for business seems destined for big things. Since its inception, Quora has grown steadily and in the last year, user counts have doubled - although according to this compete.com graph, the number of visits is still erratic. Quora doesn’t make user counts available but there are an estimated 200,000 – 500,000 users - according to this Tech Crunch article.
” a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it. The most important thing is to have each question page become the best possible resource for someone who wants to know about the question.”
It is easy and free to join Quora, simply sign up, enter a few details about yourself and you are off to the races.
Once there you can search questions (put the term you want to search for in the add question box but don’t click enter or you will end up asking a question) and review all related answers, find and connect with others in your community and share your content in other networks.
I’ve always found LinkedIn answers a useful tool for researching blog posts so I thought I would test drive Quora and at the same time do little crowdsourced research for this blog post by asking the question:
How has using Quora benefited you?
It has been several days now and so far there are no answers. Now, this could be because I don’t have many contacts yet, because its not a stimulating enough question or because people haven’t yet decided on the benefits of using Quora. One neat feature of Quora is that it finds and suggests “related questions” that might be of interest. The one answer to the question “What are the benefits of using Quora?” has the short and sweet answer :
In browsing through Quora, I couldn’t fail to notice that it has some very influential users. One question about social media startups had answers from industry pioneers like Robert Scoble: with answers that were both in depth and insightful (and a good read for anyone launching a web startup). Another Quora user, Marc Bodnick lists new and interesting Quora users they have discovered every week and whilst many of these users seem to be centred in the tech community, I was also able to to find questions about such diverse topics as the Vancouver Canucks Stanley Cup chances (go Canucks!), best Croatian Islands and Scotland’s independence.
Some of the downsides to Quora seem to be question regulations, reviews and user administration. Personally, I came across a lot of comments about voting up a question but couldn’t work out how to vote up a great answer far less vote down the crappy ones.
In the longterm, the value of Quora will depend on the quality of both the user base and the answers people provide as well the ease of use and ability to connect with your community. For now, Quora will stay on my radar (join me there!) but I won’t need a daily fix for the foreseeable future.
A recent question by a fan of the Out-Smarts Facebook page regarding ‘giveaways’ prompted us to take a close look at Facebook’s rules and regulations
regarding contests, promotions and giveaways on their site. Running a promotion on Facebook is an effective way of generating buzz about your business, increasing the number of ‘likes’ your page has, increasing engagement with existing fans, and even adding to your business’ email list.
However, Facebook has some specific guidelines regarding these promotions, and most giveaways and contests on Facebook are actually in direct violation of these terms! Below, we will decode the legalese and give you the information you need to avoid being in violation of Facebook’s promotion guidelines and having your business page shut down.
First, you should ask yourself the following questions:
1. Do people enter your contest by ‘liking’ your business page?
2. Is your promotion being run on your Facebook fan pages wall? For example, do people enter your promotion by liking posts or leaving a comment?
If you answered yes to either of these questions, your promotion is illegal and you are at risk for Facebook shutting down your business page.
Basically, if you are using Facebook in any way to run or support your contest, you are in violation of their promotion guidelines. Instead, you need to run your promotion on a third party application such as Wildfire, Involver, Friend2Friend, and other similar application builders – see Facebook’s list of preferred developer consultants. You can also create your own custom application by building an iframe and running your promotion from there. See ‘create a custom iframe tab for your facebook page’ for how to make your own iframe application.
What does Facebook consider a promotion?
Before going further, we should clear up what exactly Facebook considers a promotion.
By “contest” or “competition” we mean a promotion that includes a prize of monetary value and a winner determined on the basis of skill (i.e., through judging based on specific criteria).
By “sweepstakes” we mean a promotion that includes a prize of monetary value and a winner selected on the basis of chance.
Basically, any sort of promotion of Facebook in which you will be choosing a winner in some way has to follow their promotion guidelines. Furthermore, the guidelines go on to say that you cannot use any of Facebook’s features in your promotion, ie as a condition of entering your promotion you cannot have users ‘liking’ your page or posts, uploading pictures to your page, or commenting on your posts or wall. Lastly, you cannot use Facebook in any way to announce your winner, either by posting the winner’s name on your wall, posting their photo on your wall, or contacting them through Facebook chat or a message.
Note: Acondition of your promotion could be that users need to be fans of your page, but that alone cannot enter them into the promotion. They need to take some further action on a third party application or iframe in order to ensure your promotion is legally within Facebook’s guidelines. Read more
Social Media widget adoption is one of the fastest growing trends online right now. According to Website Magazine adoption rates have increased by 80% in the last year. What are widgets you might well ask? Well, they are not inexplicable little items found at the hardware store that you might think they are, they are those icons your see on websites, the ones that let you click to do something. And they should be an important component of your social network growth strategy.
Not to be confused with web buttons or badges (like this Twitter one) which are simple icons on the website that you click to take you to another page, web widgets do something more complex by launching java or flash applications.
Social Media Widgets
Social media widgets for networks like Twitter and Facebook shown here are among the most widely used. If a company has a presence in these forums, then it is absolutely essential that you showcase and link to that presence on your website. Doing so allows cross community pollination allowing website visitors to find and follow you on your networks too.
To create basic button widgets, simply upload an image to your server and use your CMS interface to create a hyperlink to profile then cut and paste the code into your website.
Creating a custom widget for your site can be just as easy as long as you don’t need a highly specific application (for that you should talk to a developer). If it is a social media widget you are looking for then most of the major networks provide web widgets that you can customize and cut and paste to snip the code onto your site. Sometimes called social plugins, these allow visitors to your website to click and interact in some way with your social media pages.
Facebook allows you to create widgets to tell things to your fans, to get people to like your page and more. To create these go to your Facebook page and click on marketing and take it from there or begin by exploring Facebook Developers. For Twitter’s equivalent, their resources section is the place to go to build Twitter widgets for your website.
Social Media Plugins
Other widgets come in the form of plugins you can add to your website. WordPress offers a plethora of plugins that you can adapt and add to your website allowing visitors to interact with your social networks. If you are using WordPress, either ask your developer to add these or you can easily do so yourself by clicking on plugins on the left hand side panel and then on add new to search for the widgets you want.
Social media and web widget adoption is growing quickly because of the benefits these little bundles of internet joy provide. If you want to build your community online then they are one of the best ways to facilitate doing so.
Google recently unveiled their new social button, “+1”, pronounced “plus one” and digital shorthand for “this is pretty cool”.The +1 is similar to the ubiquitous Facebook ‘like’ button in that it allows users to share content they find on the internet with their friends and contacts. This content can be anything you find interesting, from websites and news articles to organic and paid search results.
How the +1 button works
When you use Google search, the +1 button will appear next to both organic and paid search results. When you mouse over the +1 button, its outline will color, and when you click the button it will shade in, as you can see in the example below.
You have the option to undo your +1 if you change your mind, or accidentally clicked the mouse on a result you didn’t want to +1.
It is important to remember that Google +1’s will be publicly visible to all people viewing the content you +1’d. If people are a part of your social connections – made up of your Google contacts, Gmail chat lists, and people you follow with Google Reader – they will be able to see that you personally +1’d something. If a person is outside of your social connections they will see an anonymous tally of total +1’s. Remember to only +1 sites and results that you don’t mind everyone knowing you like!
Currently, the +1 button is only available in search results, but soon webmasters will be able to add the +1 widget to their websites similar to how they’ve probably already installed a Facebook ‘like’ widget.
Get started with Google +1
First of all, you will need to create a Google Profile, or upgrade your existing one. Once you have an up-to-date Google Profile, you will be able to see a listing of all your +1’s, essentially you will be able to ‘bookmark’ the page in your Google Profile for future easy access. From your Profile you will also be able to edit and delete your +1’s if you no longer want to publicly endorse that item. To see and interact with +1 in search results you will need to be logged into your Google Account while you are using Google search.
Google is currently phasing +1 into all their search platforms, starting with Google.com. If you can’t see the +1 buttons yet, and would like to, you can opt-in by going to their experimental search site and clicking ‘Join this experiment’.
The Effects for Businesses
CTR and Adwords
The +1 button is bound to affect the click through rate of both organic and paid search results. Users are much more likely to click on results that have been endorsed by someone within their community whose opinion they trust. Users will not only be able to see the total number of +1’s for that particular result but also the names of people they know that have endorsed that result. Also, Adwords users will soon be able to see +1 statistics for their ads. There will not be a way to remove the +1 button from your ads; however, Google has stated the +1 button will not affect the way they calculate an ad’s quality score.
SEO
The +1 button will have a direct impact on search results. Google has stated they are more likely to crawl, or recrawl, pages that have +1’s and store the title and content of that page. Furthermore, it is quite likely that results with +1’s will appear higher in Google search results than a similar result that hasn’t been +1’d. We all know that social media affects Google’s ranking algorithm, and +1’s are public endorsements of trusted and popular results – this is sure to affect SEO.
For more information about the +1 button, view the following video from Google:
It has been ages since we posted our social media reasons to be cheerful links. If you have been waiting on tenterhooks – wait no longer. Here, for your enjoyment, is our compendium of social media and online treasures that we have discovered lately.
Layar – “is a mobile platform for discovering information about the world around you”. Use your mobile to tune in to the social media interactions going on around your physical location. Thanks Darko for sharing this!
YMPL – Your Mail List Provider is online email marketing software that allows you to easily create custom templates and manage your newsletters. Thanks to our friends at Social Focus for that one!
Website Magazine – is always a source of great website success tips. In the latest issue we discovered: Sprout Social (Social Media Management Tool) and Bizzy (local business recommendation button).
If social media or blogging interests you then its not too late to get your tickets to Northern Voice (only 83 tickets left!). See you there?
Quora, the crowdsourced question and answers community has been getting a lot of publicity lately. Purported to be more than just another questions and answers site, Quora is aimed at going beyond a simple forum for questions and answers (like Yahoo Answers) to being more of a brain trust where individuals’ knowledge on a topic is collected and made available to members of the community.
sign up, enter a few details about yourself and you are off to the races.
ons.
Creating a custom widget for your site can be just as easy as long as you don’t need a highly specific application (for that you should talk to a developer). If it is a social media widget you are looking for then most of the major networks provide web widgets that you can customize and cut and paste to snip the code onto your site. Sometimes called social plugins, these allow visitors to your website to click and interact in some way with your social media pages.
