25 Million Views in Half a Year: How to “Kill It” on Quora
September 17th. That was the day I started. I wish I could describe in clear and succinct detail that day, but I can’t. My memory isn’t that good. It drives my wife crazy.
What I can detail is my process — the tricks, tips, tactics and techniques that I consciously and unconsciously developed that you can use to get more views. My half year “Semiquoranniversary” (a well-known term) was a couple of weeks ago, so this seems like a good opportunity to give back and spread the knowledge that I’ve gained about this platform.
I don’t mind. Really. I want everyone to have better content. This isn’t really a zero-sum game, and even if it is, I still don’t mind.
Much of this post will be exclusively focused on the Quora platform, but I imagine that a significant portion of it will be useful on any area of the internet or writing in general, if you have the good sense to apply it with wit, will and wisdom. This post will be likely be long and I don’t expect everyone to finish it, but I sincerely hope you find it a useful reference. Read all of it, some of it, or none of it (how often do you see that in a Medium post?)
Some quick stats, mostly to prove I know what I’m talking about, as I’m not all that well known in these parts:
- ~1200 total answers. Most of these are fairly in depth. Occasionally I’ll have a shitpost. A man needs his luxuries. Average views/answer: ~20k. Average upvotes/answer: 395.
- 610 answers with over 100 upvotes, 103 answers over 1,000 upvotes, 14 answers over 5,000 upvotes.
- Except for two vacations with my lovely wife, 1,000+ upvotes every single day.
I’ll stop before I seem bigheadish, and I apologize if I’ve gone too far already.
You have to realize that quality content is crucial. If your content is not good, none of this will work. While there are some “hacks” to get more views, upvotes, shares and conversions, they can’t turn a turd into a tapestry.
All of this advice is absolutely predicated on becoming a better writer, and churning out high level material. And I do mean churning out.
Be prolific. Few people know that the word “prolific” comes from the words “process” and “lift”. Probably. Lift your process. Become a content creating machine.
The more answers you give, and the better the answers are, the more total views you will get. Think stride length and stride frequency for running.
You need both to run fast. You must be prolific to optimize views, but you also must make sure that you aren’t just pumping out bland content. You need to keep the quality high as well.
I write primarily to help people. That is not my only goal — I also use it to support myself, but at the beginning of every piece, I ask myself a question:
“How can I bring value to the reader?”
And then at the end:
“Did I bring value to the reader?”
This can come primarily in two forms: entertainment, or education. The best posts will have a mixture, and this amalgamation is what turns a post from good to gold.
Entertainment is going to be funny stories, puns, jokes, interesting situations, trivia and tidbits. Can’t believe I just typed the word “tidbits”.
Education is going to be practical information, useful science, tricks, hacks, techniques, advice, behind-the-science knowledge and experience and stuff like that.
Here is a quick list of what types of writing I notice do the best — I suspect it will be the same on Medium as well as Quora, though I admit I have precious little experience in this domain.
Personal stories. These almost always do better than the “average” post, as long as they are told honestly, genuinely, and don’t make you appear self centered or arrogant. That’s the absolute fastest way to someone pulling their mouse pointer away from that upvote button. The story might be about you, but you should make it clear that it’s not all about you. If you are self-centered or arrogant, eat some humble pie and realize the internet is a very big place and you just aren’t that great. Alternatively, learn to hide it.
Stories about other people. I don’t mean being gossipy. I often answer a question through the life story of someone. This is often someone famous, but more often, it’s someone who I can nearly guarantee that the reader has never heard of. Someone “semi-famous”. I always make sure to still answer the question, but sometimes it might be in a very creative or roundabout way. Someone asked if whey protein powder was needed to build muscle. I could have just said “No”. Instead, I told the life story of George Hackenschmidt, a famous bodybuilder and wrestler…from more than a hundred years ago.
More effort? Yes. More views? Also yes.
Niche down. At least at first, pick a topic or topics that you know, and are passionate about. For me, that’s fitness, health and bodybuilding.
The first few months on Quora, I probably wrote at a feverish pace upwards of ten hours per day, most days. Sometimes up to fourteen. I worked unbelievably hard.
There were a lot of late nights and early mornings. I went from zero views to the number one author in fitness and about fifty other categories in about a month. Hey, don’t be too impressed, Quora has a lot of categories. There is even a category called “sitting”.
Keep pushing. A lot can be done in a short period of time on that platform, which I feel is quite unique to the internet. That’s not going to happen on YouTube or Instagram. This simply is not possible if you don’t already have a ton of knowledge “preinstalled” in your brain, as well as the drive to work really hard. So pick something you know. Something you love. Assuming that you are a decent writer, this will generate a decent following, likely within a few weeks if you are following everything outlined in this article. When that happens, keep pushing. You want to be “The (wo)man” in your category.
Generalize. This might seem counter to the point above. That’s because it is. While you should focus on a particular group of topics initially, after a certain point, it’s completely OK to answer questions outside your niche, as long as you do so in an effective manner, and the quality of information and writing is still high.
Once people have been following you for a while and love your content, they won’t “unfollow” you because you are suddenly dancing outside of that niche.
Dance everywhere too early, however, and people might not follow you in the first place as they don’t know what kind of content to expect. Eventually, generalizing will be key for maximizing views, as every niche is, by definition, limited. The best writers have answers on damn near every topic imaginable.
Current events. Out of my top fourteen answers, five of them are related to the recent COVID-19 outbreak. While I am by no means an infectious disease expert, I don’t have to be. That’s not what Quora is. I live in China, and people are curious about how the disease has been handled here as well as my personal experiences.
You don’t have to be an expert — just don’t pretend to be if you are not! Even in my niche, I will never claim to be a guru, expert or master. I’m just a guy sharing my thoughts and experiences. No matter how many views you get, stay humble.
Get weird. One of my coronavirus answers, I answered from the perspective not of people…but of the virus. An answer on pullups, I answered from the perspective of the muscles and the central nervous system. Another answer, I traveled back in time to give myself a training plan that would be more effective for gaining muscle, complete with a time machine with sparks and an interesting change of events at the end.
Same information conveyed to the reader. Totally different experience.
People are there to read great writing, not just get information!
Get different. If there are already other answers, I will read them, and then deliberately make my answer totally different. There are often many ways to answer a question, and if someone has done it one way, I’ll do it another. If there is legit only one answer, and someone already wrote essentially what I would have written, what do I do?
I congratulate them on a fine answer, upvote it and move on.
Puns, alliteration, rhymes, metaphors, similes and smileys are going to separate your answer from others. Again, people are there for an experience. Give them that. If you are one of the .01% of writers that can deliver that delicate parcel, you will crush it. Not crush the parcel. I mean the writing. Bad choice of words.
Measure everything. OK, not everything. But the more, the better. If I had to pick just a few metrics to measure — I realize not everyone is as nerdy about statistics as me — it would be the following:
Upvotes to views ratio. This is crucial. I average about 2%.
This is a good target. If you are under .5%, meaning that only half of a person out of one hundred gave you an upvote, that’s not particularly good.
Partly because there’s half a person using the internet somewhere, partly because the ratio is low. Make that person whole. Get to that 1%. Even better, give that person a friend. Get to 2%.
I saw a video on YouTube where Sean Kernan (who has 366.8m views) recommended going for 1 person out of 40 as a ratio, or 2.5%, as a minimum. I agree. This shouldn’t be unachievable, if you focus on the process.
Three to four percent? Very good writing. This content may trend. Or maybe not. It’s still kinda random.
Five to six percent? Excellent. This will likely be top answer, and may appear on a category page or elsewhere.
Into that seven to nine percent? You are really achieving something. Congrats! This is undoubtedly one of the metrics that Quora uses to decide which posts float to the top of the heap, and you may appear on a main page.
Above ten percent? Doesn’t happen very often, but when it happens, it’s awesome. Truly fantastic. Remember those posts, and try to replicate them. Don’t necessarily delete bad answers, but find out why they are bad. There’s a reason. Even great writers sometimes fumble the pen. Or keyboard. Or whatever.
It’s not bad luck. It’s your writing. But you can make it better.
Categories. If you are competitive, this will help to niche down. Select a few different yet related categories, and see where you are on the list of top authors. In many categories, it’ll show the top fifty authors. If you aren’t on the list, get on the list. If you are on the list, get to the top.
Then stay there. Remember, this is war. You are trying to crush your enemies, drive them before you and hear the lamentations of their followers. I suggest checking this often, that sweet, giddy, tantalizing release of dopamine will keep you on track. You can even put your ranking in excel for several categories and track them over time, along with charts and total views per category. Not that, you know…I did that or anything. *Ah hem*. Moving on.
Total views, upvotes and shares. This isn’t as important as the upvote to view ratio — as you can’t always control how many views a question gets — but seeing these hopefully go up is very important and certainly motivating. Shares will explode the reach of your answer. If someone shares your answer, upvote it. This is not just a show of thanks, but it actually helps the answer get traction, especially if you have a lot of followers. You can’t upvote your own answer, but you can upvote someone sharing your answer.
Occasionally look through your most upvoted or viewed posts, and give them a bit of thought.
Why were they successful?
What made them stand out?
How were they different from your “typical answer”?
Just this simple act of caring about excellence will ensure that you achieve it.
How to find questions on Quora:
I haven’t been using this strategy very long, but follow the top writers in your niche, and turn notifications on. You’ll get an update whenever the answer anything, and you can pile on the question. I don’t feel bad doing this, because it actually increases their views in most cases, as you make the question more popular. Plus, I am genuinely interested in what they have to say — they are the top writers for a reason. Again, if they answered a question well and there’s nothing much to add, I just upvote their fine answer and move on.
You can also find questions on the topic pages. If you have content from elsewhere (blog, book, etc) you can repurpose it to a suitable question. Because of the Quora Partner Program, aka the Quality Prevention Program, most questions are quite spammy and insincere nowadays, but there are occasional good ones. Just find one that you have content for already, or you can clearly envision an answer.
If you cannot see an answer through from start to finish before starting to write…do not answer it!
This isn’t a novel and getting bogged down is just going to reduce your efficiency.
Eventually, people will start asking you questions. This is pretty cool at the start, but quickly becomes very overwhelming. This is no longer a big source of questions for me, as I get about fifty per day and many I am not interested in or they won’t make good answers.
If it’s not a “hell yes”, don’t answer it. There are plenty of questions!
How to get more views on Quora:
Get followers. Yea, easy to write. But getting a base of fans helps, a bit. Not amazingly — far less than people think, actually — but it’s certainly a boost, especially if they check your page a lot. The snowball effect with this platform is strong — answers generate views in perpetuity, which gets more followers, which gets more views, which gets more shares and upvotes and views and followers, which gets you on the top writer pages on categories, which starts the process all over again with a plethora of shares and views and upvotes and followers.
…you get the idea.
Use spaces. It’s free real estate for your post. Just make sure it’s appropriate for that space. Get to know the admins and moderators in your niche.
Choose new questions. The reality is that not all questions are the same. I’ll write some answers that get 1,000 views in the first ten minutes. Some will never get that many, despite an equivalent quality of answer and upvotes. The reality is that some of it is out of your control. But typically, more recent questions are better than old ones. This is where people asking you questions is good, as they will typically be newer.
Get your answer sent in the Quora digest. This is obviously entirely out of your control, but worth noting. It’s really cool the first time it happens. Now, it’s every day, sometimes to a few million people at a time. Don’t expect millions of reads from that, by the way, as not everyone opens the email. But it’s potentially free publicity.
Get a friend to upvote it. A real person, not a sock-puppet account. That’ll get you banned. The way the Quora algorithm works, is that if someone upvotes something, it gets more publicity. However, not every user is equal! Users with more followers tend to give an answer more “oomph”. So, make friends with people in your niche. Upvote their answers, and they’ll upvote yours. Note that this really should just be what happens naturally, if you have to force this, it’s probably against policy or something.
How to get more upvotes on Quora:
Write better. Make sure that your grammer, sleeping & spandex are on point.
Same.
With.
Formatting.
Don’t have huge chunks of text. 3–4 lines per paragraph is plenty. There’s a reason Kit-Kat bars don’t come with 20 pieces strung together.
You’ll want at least one picture, and likely a few for longer pieces. But don’t overuse pictures. They should be relevant, obviously. They should be horizontal if possible, if vertical they’ll take up the entire screen and be too distracting. I believe it is possible to alter the dimensions of a picture through a complicated process called “cropping”. Not sure what that has to do with crops.
Don’t use video. It takes away from the writing, and should only be done if you are trying to promote your own YouTube channel — just be aware that it’ll probably get fewer upvotes than usual, especially if you are overly pushy.
Never talk down to your reader. If you write something technical, break it down for the reader, but realize they are likely an adult. Treat them like one.
Be genuine. People can smell bullshit a mile away, even through the internet.
While everyone will have a different writing style, save the overly formal prose for technical writing or papers. You are talking to someone. Just write naturally. Casually.
Never ask for upvotes. This is the most surefire way to get less upvotes. Congratulations, you played yourself.
If you push or link to social media, do so gently, and realize that even then, it will cause some people not to upvote. That’s just how it be.
Inject some humor tumors. These little bad boys are sure to grow on the reader. You can make them subtle or very direct. You can even have bad humor, but you need to make it very clear that you realize it’s a bad joke. That makes it a good joke.
Alternatively, you might be a weird person. Like me. It’s entirely fine to sacrifice a joke on the altar of unusuality — making a joke so odd or a reference so arcane that only a small portion of your readers will understand. The fact that not many people get it will make it so much better for them. The others?
Pshhh. I don’t write for peasants. Only people of culture.
If you are making a statistical, economic, scientific or political claim that is not opinion, link evidence. This should be standard, but it isn’t, and is a great way to set your answer apart. It’s extremely rare to see this, and people appreciate you taking the time to do so. Yes, this will take time and effort; it’s not uncommon for me to spend half of the time researching.
Answer all questions and whatnot in the comments. You might miss some, as the notification system isn’t that great, but give your recent answers a scan every now and then. If you see someone comment on your answers multiple times, follow them. This will ensure that you see their comments. Build a community. Comments matter.
An example: in one answer I had on Christian Bale in late September, I got a critical piece of information wrong — I said he got very emaciated for “The Exorcist” rather than “The Machinist”. Perfectionists! Unfortunately, this was the last answer I wrote before leaving for my wife’s hometown for ten days…with no western internet, only the Chinese intranet! When I got back, I had dozens of comments correcting me (some not so nicely), but also…thousands of upvotes.
Provide value. Answer their question, and make it the best answer. This usually isn’t particularly difficult on most questions, as 80–90% of answers will be utterly lacking in effort, originality or creativity.
Write answers far shorter than this one, but not too short. If it’s just a few lines, people feel shortchanged, and even if they upvote it, the algorithm doesn’t really “like” super short pieces. Most people aren’t impressed by short answers, but don’t have the patience for long pieces. You want to be in that sweet zone. Perhaps 300–500 words is ideal. That’s about 10x shorter than this mostrosity, for reference. Most people have stopped reading this. Not sure why I am still typing. There is beauty in brevity, and this answer? It’s getting ugly. But I appreciate you trudging onwards as we pass the 3,000 word mark.
Lists do well. If possible, use numbers over bullet points, just keep in mind that they are more restrictive as you cannot insert pictures between the numbers.
Your last sentence is the most important. By the time they’ve gotten to the end, most people have forgotten the beginning. I bet you have. Heck, I’ve even forgotten the beginning of this post! Finish with something that steers the readers mouse pointer inexorably and inevitably towards that upvote button. Positivity is great. Appeal to something greater, something that makes the piece more than just a piece, but a comment on something larger than itself. Humor, of course, is often a good choice, but it has to actually…be funny.
Either way, you need that last sentence to really pack a strong punch, those last few perfectly chosen and crafted words that leaves the reader with a small smile, or a great gasp, or looking up from their phone with a new perspective on what is possible.
