Today, I chose this article "Question and Answer sites – another piece of the online travel search revolution" not really to wonder whether yes or no Q&A sites are the new travel search (as in my opinion this question is already obvious: yes they are definately the growing trend) but because it allows me to discuss of their role in the CRM (customer relationship management) and online brand building. These sites are usually very useful, convenient and it is fast to get an answer. Besides, it is a good way to have the insights of someone who already experienced the products or services we have doubts about. We are now in a period when other users' feedbacks are more relied on than brand messages and it explains why these sites are so increasingly popular.
The article presents you 4 Q&A sites - namely Quora, Aardvark, Travellr and Mygola - and describes you how they work. What is very interesting is what comes next: the author introduces to you the 2 challenges challenging these websites, which are 1) Are incentives necessary to make work these sites on the long term or the will to share and be useful to one another is stronger? 2) What will become of these sites if (when) Facebook will launch its own Q&A section (which is actually already happening as you will see in this article)
I think these are very interesting questions. Of course, opinions vary on these topics. For instance, concerning the 1st question, some sites believe that paying the participants for their contributions is logical (like Mahalo or Mygola) while other sites believe that human desire to share stories and be useful are more powerful than financial rewards (like Quora or Travellr). In my opinion, financial rewards should not be part of the game. The greed for money could encourage people to answer all questions, whatever their level of knowledge on a topic and be damageable for the quality of the answers. I think this method could affect the "purity" and honesty of the site and of its contributions.
As for the 2nd question, it is no doubt that Facebook would be a great challenger and that it may jeopardize the survival of these sites. However, may Q&A sites are in "niche" services. Not all of them are focusing on the same types of questions and people choosing one or another Q&A sites are looking for different king of information. For instance, you have general sites like YahooAnswer, professional sites like Linkedin Answers etc. The best would be to look at the presentation below, which will give you a better highlight of what already exists:
Q&A sites, forum des années 2010
View more presentations from Cyril Hijar.
As you see, Q&A sites are already many on the virtual market and all have their own purpose. Thus, I am sure there would still be space for some of them, provided they focus on their niche markets.
I would also like to add that another challenge facing the most popular sites is... their increasing popularity itself! What I mean is that the more people interact on the site, the higher the risk to get lower quality answer and to make the sites lose its relevancy. Sites like Quora should be very careful to monitor the quality of the contents.
Now is the topic I wanted to launch: how Q&A can help businesses? We always think of social media like Facebook or Twitter as the new tools to build our brand online but hardly do we mention Q&A sites. Still, they are social media in their style and business should monitor these sites to see what is said about them, their products and their competitors. It is the new place to be as they will have the possibility to interact with the participants, to answer their questions, measure their popularity, what is positive and negative about them and how they could better compete on their markets. It will also allow them to build a relationship with people and to have a higher visibility, while controlling and making sure what is said about your brand is true. I strongly encourage people interested in that matter to watch this video:
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