Creative Networking

Uniting Medium writers to Quora Spaces

In early May, I was searching for a ways to thank my Blue Insights almost 2k followers by helping them to freely grow their creativity. I was fortunate to read Aamir Kamal’s article “19 Ways To Get More People Read Your Medium Stories” which gave great insights and introduced me to Quora Spaces.

Yesterday, giving some advice on Illumination’s Slack ‘promo- strategies’ thread, I was kindly asked by Dr Mehmet Yildiz to share my knowledge to encourage Illumination writers to share their stories in Quora spaces.

Though I am not a pro, I applied my data-analysis skills to observe and rapidly grasp the basic concepts of Quora spaces.

This article is based on my 15-days experience on using Quora spaces to unite priceless creative networking using my example with my Blue Insights publication.

Basic Quora Space concepts to grasp to grow and connect rapidly:

1. Quora Spaces are structurally physically separated by language

My first step was to create my Quora profile in English, French and Spanish. Once my language profiles were set up, it tripled my upcoming networking connections.

With the earth icon beside my profile picture, I can very easily switch through the Quora Spaces based on the chosen language.

The concept is easy to understand. I you are interested in ‘Poetry’ in English you will use your English Profile. If you are interested in ‘Poésie’ (French) you will switch to French and for ‘Poesía’ (Spanish). Hence, tripling the access and connection possibilities on Quora Space.

In your profile you get to choose the information you want others to see and these are called ‘Credentials’ in your profile. Mainly your education and job listings you want to share.

Once your profile is set-up you have cool tools to consult:

• Private messages
• Personal stats
• Your content
• Bookmarks
• Settings to personalize your profile

2. Quora Spaces are defined by thematic niches settings

Once my profile was setup I wanted to create my official gift to my publication’s followers. But since I was a newbie I did not have the rights to create my Quora Space. I reached out to Aamir Kamal for help. Blue Insights community is very grateful and sends out its gratitude to thank Aamir Kamal for helping me set-up the technical part of our new Quora Space ‘Blue Insights’.

This was very symbolic for me because I was able to offer our writers, for our 1-year anniversary, a free space for them to both share their unlimited creativity and grow in worldwide visibility.

The initial step for any Quora Space would be to assign the space’s name and a brief description what the space is about.

For new spaces, under 100 followers you are assigned a random URL. Once you reach 100 followers, you get to use your personalized URL based on the space’s name.

A Quora Space’s originality is defined using thematic niche. You can choose up to three different main topics that will be posted on the space. Understand that the chosen ‘Topics’ play an important role in Quora Space search engines. For your space to pop out and increase its visibility one must choose wisely.

They are the equivalent ‘Tags’ on the Medium platform.

Topics should be considered as submission guidelines helping your followers understand what the space is all about.

The next settings would be the ‘Description box’ which is not limited in length and content. The description is placed on a column on the right side of the space. It is the first window used to glance on the space. I included text, visuals and several key links to Medium and Facebook groups for our community.

Under the ‘Description box’, there is the ‘Visuals’ for space main color, icon and cover photo.

For new spaces you can only choose the space color and Icon. Under 50 followers there will only be the chosen color. Once your space has reached 50 followers you can personalize your cover photo.

Other user-chosen settings I advise you to go through once to be set as you want your space to be managed including:

• Email settings
• Content types contributors can add to your space
• Content types that can be submitted to your space

• Who can comment on the space
• Who can submit content on your space

• Which types of suggestions do you want to receive to post and share on your space
• Who can see suggestions
• Which members of your dream team can invite moderators and contributors

3. Quora Spaces grows if built on strong collaborative team work

Another important concept to grasp about Quora Spaces is to rapidly define a collaborative team to share the growing effort. I understood quickly for my Quora Space to grow, I needed to build a strong collaborative team. This is an awesome advantage because we can invite in our spaces other members to act as: Administrators, Moderators, Contributors and Followers.

The Quora Space dream team is to have unlimited followers and contributors, an average number of moderators and more restrictive number of administrators to help drive this new media.

5. Quora Spaces admin menus

Quora spaces offers useful menus tab to help admins easily manage and visualize the spaces contents.

Understand that your focus should reside on your space’s contributions quality and not on the posts quantity. Guidelines should be discussed with your dream team managers on the content you want to appear on your space.

Traffic to your space is driven through both original content you share on your space and other space’s contents you share on your own space.

Traffic can also be influenced by Questions/Answers you post on your space and/or Questions/Answers others request you to answer based on your space’s niche theme.

Through my observations, I quickly understood that I needed to post key questions to attract passionate followers that would instantly like my space so much to want to level up and ask me to become contributors.

As important, I needed to respond to some requested questions. But I can also pass on questions or choose to answer later or just simply follow.

This is another crucial Quora Space concept to understand, as each new follower, contributor and moderator can and will attract exponentially new followers, contributors and moderators.

Quora Spaces statistical tools are easy to visualize and manage

6. Quora Spaces strategic designs

Quora spaces might be based on Questions (QU) OR Answers (A); hence QUORA, make sure all of your space’s slightest design detail has great branding.

Again based on my experience, I noticed contributions with nicely displayed text; i.e. playing with fonts, styles, bold, italics, titles, spacing paragraphs including high quality visuals and their sources with bonus added web links attracts the most views, followers and positive responses known as ‘Upvotes’.

‘Upvotes’ are the equivalent of Medium’s ‘Claps’. The ultimate reward is when your post is being shared on another Quora Space.

The link between Quora Space and Medium has already been beneficial for the past two weeks. Getting new writers and followers daily and highest statistics of reads within Medium. So it is an easy and free way to help spread our writers’ contributions.

7. Quora Spaces sideline programs

Finally, I can list other Quora Space beneficial advantages that I have not yet tested personally:

• Paid Partner Programs do exist in Quora Spaces
• Marketing benefits linking to Quora Ads
• Getting quoted and published outside from Quora Spaces within big known newspapers and magazines.

Personally, I think that managing a Quora Space is easier and more advantageous than a personal blog based on several key advantages.

I consider the main one to be the mutual assistance within my Quora Space chosen dream team.

Administrators, moderators, contributors and followers contribute on making sure the space is enriched by their contributions.

While personal blogs are founded and relies uniquely on one individual’s efforts, Quora spaces are defined and kept alive by a group of individuals passionate about the same subjects.

In early May, I extended Blue Insights writers on to their new Quora space. Every followers got to freely contribute by sharing their Medium writing links from any publication of their choice.

Quora Space being completely free, I expanded their contributions by letting them post any other material or interests they considered important to post relative to the space’s theme.

Some writers used the space to openly and freely publicize their new published books on Amazon, their own personal blogs, photography. Some even surprised me by writing ‘live’ poetic responses or contributions. I personally published writers pieces from any other publications I considered would fit with our Quora Space theme.

I want to thank these helpful angel bees for their ongoing daily help in giving our writers more visibility to their chosen pieces.

Dr Mehmet Yildiz, thank you very much for submitting your stories on Blue Insights Quora space. You are invited to become a mediator to freely post on our space.

Quoting Illumination’s publication ‘cross-pollination’ growing visibility movement, I am offering this invitation to all of Illumination writers/followers/readers. The space is there to help increase our creativity’s visibility and I am glad to offer it.

Blue Insights will grow as you nurture us. Help us flourish this cybernetic space into a fundamental daring loving society. We would be genuinely honored to spark and ignite this world by sharing your emotional creativity.

Welcome to our space!

Francine Fallara, 2020