What 7.5k Views On My Quora Answer Meant For The Medium Story Linked To It

A Step-by-step on how I tested the Medium-Quora connection, the results, and what you should do differently

I tested this connection after reading yet another story on how this simple hack can get us more views and reads on our Medium stories. As new writers on the platform, this would be great.

Granted they were going to be external views but with the numbers in question, there will hopefully be a number of already existing Medium subscribers among them. Plus one could also pick up a few referrals along the way.

So I decided, well why not test this relationship with an article I had just published on Medium that wasn’t doing well?

I had self-published a story titled, “5 Criminals Who Became Gods” (it was accepted into ‘The Haven’ a few days later). The story wasn’t doing very well and after about a week it still had only about 20 views.

The views were mostly external because I had promoted the story on Twitter and in the various Medium writers’ Facebook groups in which I was a member.

The experiment

I went on Quora and found a question that would be sufficiently answered by my story. The question I settled on was last answered almost 15 months before. Precisely, as of the time of my little experiment it had only 7 answers and it was perfect for my purpose because the intro to my Medium story alone answered it completely.

The question:

Why did the Greeks believe some people who they believed were once mortals (e.g. Achilles, Heracles) could become gods? In the Greek view, what was required for a mortal to become a god?

Next, I extracted an appropriate chunk of “5 Criminals Who Became Gods”, and with very minor edits posted it as an answer to the question. I, of course, then provided a link to my Medium story at the end of the answer.

And I waited.

The result

Within days my answer on Quora had gotten several thousand views! As I write this story the answer has a total of 7.5k views. My original story, however, in the same amount of time has only 60 views and 24 reads.

The extra views and reads, I am almost certain, are a result of my continued engagement with other Medium users, especially those quid pro-quo-type endeavors in the Facebook groups.

The conclusions

Though the experiment did not yield the desired results, I did learn a couple of things.

• First, even for a small-time Quoran like myself (only 2 followers), Quora is still a good place to get a lot more eyes on your writing. It’s an interesting place that enables you to provide useful information to people directly seeking it.
• Second, at least, in this case, more eyes on Quora did not automatically translate to more eyes on Medium because there was no corresponding bump in views for the original story.

What you can do differently for more positive results?

As I researched further into this road, I came to realize there were many things I should have done that would have probably impacted my results more favorably. These are tips that many writers who have achieved success with this hack swear by.

These are steps that newbies such as myself should take when trying to use Quora as a source of free traffic to our Medium stories. Steps that would hopefully help us achieve our dreams of more views, reads, and maybe even a few referrals.

1. First and foremost you need to flesh out your Quora profiles. Interested readers are going to look at them.
2. Putting your Medium profile link in your Quora profile is essential. When you answer a ton of questions and readers start going to your profile they need to see the link so they can follow it.
3. In selecting questions to answer, take a good look at the question’s stats. Questions with a decent amount of views and followers are your best bet, and the more recently followed the better. You can also check the question’s ranking on Google. The higher it ranks the more traffic from Google to your answer and hopefully the more eyes on your profile.
4. One writer who has achieved a lot of success with this hack advises you need to first show consistency. Meaning you need to post answers regularly to build a presence.
5. Don’t repeat links and avoid putting links on every single answer you post to avoid coming off as some who is only interested in free traffic than providing answers to questions.
6. For the long term, try not to be overly promotional: give helpful answers first, and promote, second. Keep this in mind when selecting the questions to post answers to.
7. No spamming to avoid being banned. Link to other authoritative sites with authority to add credibility to your answers.

You Should spare a few minutes for this short but very informative video on how to get free traffic with Quora. The video by Stefan Ciancio, the Action Taking Blogger manages to pack a lot of the points here in-depth in a few short minutes.

Good luck, fellow writers.