I was researching ways to improve the impact of my posts on Quora and learned some things. First, I’ll mention that it is hard to find information on how Quora’s algorithm works!
If you are unfamiliar with Quora, it is a forum where people can post content and answer other people’s questions. It also features ‘spaces,’ like Facebook groups focusing on specific topics.
When I first started with Quora, I posted general posts (not in any spaces) and answered questions on topics I knew, such as how to start an affiliate marketing business, how to find affiliate programs and online marketing strategies. So, I posted content and answered questions each week.
A few months into it, I discovered spaces. Several spaces are dedicated to online business, marketing, side hustles, online jobs, and similar topics. I then started posting a piece of content I created each day into multiple spaces, up to 10 spaces per day. I got a lot more views of my content as well as ‘upvotes’, which are the same as likes, and also shares where people share my posts in other spaces. It was awesome.
Now, each space has a moderator responsible for accepting or denying posts to be published on the space. For two to three weeks, I posted daily in multiple spaces; my posts were being approved and posted. However, eventually, I noticed that some of my content was not being posted anymore.
Then, one of the moderators sent me a message letting me know my posts were scored or labeled as ‘low quality’, which happens with content the Quora system thinks is spam or too promotional. Since not all of my posts were accepted in the various spaces, I believe other moderators saw low-quality scores for my posts and declined them.
There is little to no information on what the algorithm does, so I can only speculate on what factors it considers when grading the quality of content.
So, after looking into this more by trying to use Google to find ways to post content effectively and looking at other popular contributor’s content, I was left frustrated and annoyed. Let me explain.
First, Googling for solutions about how to avoid having content scored as low-quality was useless. There is so little information about the algorithm that I didn’t get anywhere with this.
Then, I looked at other content creators and found some interesting things.
Here are three different content creators I looked at and what they are doing:
- One individual had a massive number of views on her posts. When I looked at the posts, they began with a very inspirational story and picture of a World War II veteran who did something heroic during wartime. Then, underneath this story, she had an advertisement for a diabetes product with a link to purchase it. So, she starts with something catchy, like a heroic military story, then puts her sales material underneath it. It gets enormous views, but it’s a bait-and-switch concept to get lots of views using the military story as the front runner and then stealthy putting the actual content about the diabetes product after it. The post has lots of views, upvotes (which are likes), and shares. Quora seems to love this and ranks this high in specific spaces. I found it.
- Another guy posts the same thing (essentially a sales copy of an advertisement for a crypto money-making strategy) in dozens of spaces. I noticed that each post had exactly 1 upvote and a small to modest amount of views. What is he doing here? He probably has another Quora account and upvotes his posts from the other account (since he can’t upvote a post on the same account he posts from). The Quora algorithm probably loves this and lets him post in multiple spaces without being labeled as ‘low quality’ content because all his posts have upvotes. Again, it’s a way to game the system.
- Another guy rotates a small number of posts (in the form of an educational advertisement about online job opportunities) in multiple spaces, but he does it differently. He copies a link from a previous post with thousands of views and many upvotes to a new post, which he submits to multiple spaces and gets approved because I see all the latest posts daily. I don’t know how he got the original post to get so many views and upvotes.. The Quora system might be ok with him doing this because he is linking a ‘valued’ post that the algorithm identifies as good quality based on the number of views and upvotes.
All three of these are interesting because they are all trying to work around the system to get their content posted in multiple spaces to get more views. As a marketer, this is key, so I understand why they are doing it. But at the same time, it feels like it’s not genuine.
Where does this leave me?
After many days of thinking about this, one positive aspect of this experience is that posting the same content in about ten spaces for 2-3 weeks allowed me to see which spaces my content was getting the most views and upvotes. I realized there were 5 spaces where my content was performing well.
So, in the future, I’ll focus on posting on those five spaces using a rotation of posts I have created in the past and new content I create. I hope to avoid the low-quality score by not replicating the same post for a while and updating/changing the wording so it is different. It takes more work to figure out the rotation, but I think it will get easier as I do it more.
However, I’m still exploring this, so maybe I’ll discover more and change my strategy.
One side effect is that I have grown more frustrated using Quora as a platform to share content. Since I’m still at the beginning stages of my business, my main objective is to grow an audience. The best way to do this is to post content and get as many views as possible. On Quora, this means posting content in multiple spaces so more people can see my information.
However, if posting content continues to be difficult, I might be compelled to change to a different platform. Some of my other affiliate marketing friends in my coaching program use TikTok and FaceBook successfully. I might move to this if Quora becomes too challenging to use.
That is it for now. If there are any developments, I will share them here!