An Interesting Finding on Pinterest & Quora

Hey everyone.

It's been nearly 3 months since I joined WA, so I'm currently in the foundational stage where I'm trying different methods to bring traffic to my website.

Like many other WA members, I've been putting consistent effort into two methods in particular: Pinterest and Quora.

More than once, I saw Partha say that you should think of every platform you use to bring traffic to your website as a discipline in its own right.

You need to spend some time on that platform to gain experience and exposure until you're well-versed with the nitty gritty of the platform, and the working principles of its algorithm.

Toward that end, I have an interesting finding I thought I'd share with you all.

I'm sure that the relatively new members can benefit greatly from this, but perhaps many of you reading this are far more experienced than me in both platforms, so it may be that you already know what I'm about to share.

In any case, think of this blog post as a case study to cement your understanding of what you may or may not already know.

Pinterest Finding

Here's a picture of my impressions over the last two months on Pinterest.

See the two peaks I circled in red? There is one thing that those two days have in common:

On those two days, I created boards and saved a few pins from other people in them.

I didn't do that except on those two days.

What conclusions can we draw from this?

Pinterest seems to reward you if you actively engage with the community.

We use Pinterest to promote our blogs, so most of us probably have a number of boards we've filled with our own pins, and that's fine.

However, the more you show the algorithm that you're an actual member who's engaging with pins, saving them, and perhaps liking and commenting on them, the more the algorithm seems to value you as an organic member, and this can reflect in showing your pins to more people.

It may be reasonable to suggest that my impressions have been on a general increase, so the second peak isn't really indicative of anything.

However, as you can see in the image, my first peak definitely stands out.

Quora Finding

I also had a very similar experience in Quora.

Here's a picture of a detailed answer I gave to a question:

Of course, that's not the full answer — it was much longer and contained several images.

What I wanted to show you is that this answer got around 700 views in one day.

Here's another one of my answers:

Again, this is not the full answer — it also had many images and an in-depth explanation.

This answer got 860 views and 3 upvotes in a few days.

Now then, let's take a look at this answer:

5 views. Just 5.

It's been many days since I wrote this answer, and it's very obvious that Quora is deliberately not showing it to many people.

Why are they doing that? I mean, this answer has a very similar amount of detail and thoroughness, so why the huge difference between this answer and the previous two?

Well, those with a keen eye will have probably noticed that this answer contains a link — a subtle link that I included to one of my posts.

Previously, I tried answering many questions by writing a few lines and then directing the asker to an article on my website where I discuss the topic in detail, but all these answers barely got any views.

So this time, I thought I'd include a subtle link, maybe Quora wouldn't really punish me for it.

As you can see, that didn't work at all.

What conclusions can we draw from this?

Quora seems to reward you if you act like a normal member of the community.

This is very similar to the Pinterest finding.

We all know that our sole objective of joining those platforms is to promote our websites and grow our traffic, but the more we act like normal members of the community who are genuinely interested in helping, the more Quora will reward us by showing our answers to more people.

Using Quora to get traffic to your website is a long game.

At an early stage, putting links in your answers won't do the job, even if the article you're linking to is actually very relevant and does a great job at answering the question.

The focus in Quora is to be as helpful as possible, perhaps grow your following a little bit, until people are interested in finding out more about you.

If you have your website or some of your best articles linked in your bio, then there's a chance you will attract some visitors from Quora.

Main Takeaway

This is the take-home message of this blog post:

Every platform you use to direct traffic to your website appreciates you acting like an organic member of the community, and they show this appreciation by showing your content to more people.

Of course, it's still early days for me to see tangible success, so I'm still far from being an experienced member in these platforms.

However, I still think that this finding can help a lot of people.

Yusuf