Quora is moving mainstream and becoming more than the “in place” to have a profile that it once was around launch time in late summer of 2010, when it was strictly by invitation only.

In an earlier post, “Quora Morphs from Adolescence to Hot Property” I gave you a good background on how and why you may want to use Quora. Be aware, you still can’t sign up with Quora and use it to promote a corporate brand like LinkedIn - it’s core focus continues to be for personal branding, although I think this may change moving forward.

Quora still has a bit of a techie/geeky vibe if you will. But, traffic is still in “Facebook uber growth mode,” driven by the high quality user generated content that is uploaded to the site every day, high profile users, the easy to use interface and mentions by mainstream media, including CNN, Wall St. Journal, Wired, Huffington Post and others.

Here’s my take on Generating Marketing ROI Via Quora:

1) It’s a great place to position your individual business brand, especially if you are in the high tech world. There’s a stellar group of executives on Quora from all over the globe and staking out a personal brand on this site certainly complements a presence on LinkedIn and elsewhere. Being visible drives credibility and opportunities to network with C-level execs and others.

2) Got questions then Quora is the place for answers. It’s a wonderful resource for generating answers from something that is arcane to a mainstream question that necessitates a deep dive response from an expert that is actively answering questions.

3) Use Quora to stay on top of what your competitors are doing by Following them via the platform - it’s another web-based competitive intelligence tool.

4) Easily build and foster relationships with others by “voting up” an answer to a question posted by an individual you want to establish rapport with. You’ll find the reverse is true as well - as you build a presence on the platform others will reach out to you.

5) Use Quora to help you do a deep dive on any topic that you want to learn more about. This is easy to do, just Follow a Question to accomplish this. The platform can be a wonderful resource for tracking and understanding a diverse group of questions or topics of interest.

6) You can sync Quora with your Twitter and Facebook accounts - an answer is automatically posted to both (you select this option) your accounts after you have responded.

Think of this as reusing your content across the social web, which is critical to maximize your time and resources invest in content marketing.  You can also add your Quora answers to a WordPress blog, assuming it supports plug-ins. Although I’ve not tested this for myself or our clients.

7) Use Quora as a way to stay on top of critical processes that are occurring in your industry, again this is much easier to do if you are high-tech focused. Case in point, Twitter suspended UberTwitter last Friday (third party app) and Bill Gross, Twitter’s marketing manager, Matt Graves and several venture capitalists weighed in on the issue.  It’s fascinating to see events unfolding on Quora that would typically not be publicly discuss and insightful as well.

8) Quora’s content is indexed immediately by search engines so it’s a great way to get visibility for your individual brand and generate visibility via Google and other search engines. I’ve researched a good number of answers I’ve provided via Quora and found them indexed by Google.

9) Think of Quora as an adjunct to your social presence via other sites including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Is Quora worth an investment in a considerable amount of time? Hard to say, as the long term marketing ROI will be determined by the continued rapid adoption of Quora like other popular social media sites.

Is Quora’s shiny new social platform the place for you?

There are so many shiny new social media applications, platforms and companies rushing to market that at times it can be difficult to separate the proverbial digital what from the chaffe. Full disclosure, I’m on Quora and I love the platform.

But, I’m in the social media marketing business and for me, it’s been a great place to enhance my social brand. But there are tradeoffs for Quora - some thoughts on why you may not want to jump on Quora:

• Quora’s in high growth mode now, but this could fade over time, especially as the company integrates a revenue model with the site.
• Like any social media marketing, Quora requires a time commitment for research, establishing a presence or using it in a competitive analysis manner.
• It’s socially transparent (again like any social media platform); so, what your conveying on the platform can be viewed by your competitors and others. You many not want to be this open.
• I found Quora’s interface to be very easy to use. But, I’m certainly not using it in an in-depth manner and like any social media platform, Quora has a learning curve associated with it.
• Quora has it’s fair share of “egnoscenti” (think “cognoscenti”) which is a term I coined for a post on Twitter Personalities. Quora has moderators (some are paid and others work for the company); so their is content curation going on. But, be forewarned, it’s a dynamic community and you can get comments and negative votes from others that may not always sit well with you.

All in all, I love the platform and think its a great way for generating marketing ROI - connect with me on Quora here or via LikedIn.