You might have heard some buzz surrounding the website Quora. Quora is a knowledge market website that aims to create a community of individuals who know a whole lot about different topics, and may even consider themselves experts in a field. Like Twitter, people will follow certain topics or people of their interest and then ask or answer questions within those topics. Quora’s description of itself on its website is, “A continually improving collection of questions and answers, created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it.”

The reason you might have heard of Quora recently is because of all of the acknowledgement they have been getting within the social media community, with many predicting Quora to be the new ‘it’ website in social media. Mashable, a leading internet source for social media news, has classified Quora as amongst the ‘10 websites to watch in 2011,’ ‘5 of the best new user experiences of 2010,’ and ‘6 promising new companies that emerged in 2010.’ That sounds like a pretty good track record for a company that only became available to the public in June 2010.

So how can you make Quora work for your business? Here are a few ways businesses of all sizes can utilize their presence on Quora:

Strengthen Customer Experiences

Monitor mentions of your company on Quora by searching for your company’s name. If your company happens to be a Quora topic already, you can follow the topic and receive alerts when new questions and responses are posted within the topic. If your company isn’t already a topic, make it one! And make sure if you answer questions within a topic you are honest and disclose your affiliation with your company and answer truthfully. Quora can become a great way to deliver customer service and monitor how your company is being received. You can also serve as an invaluable resource for your company by posting lesser-known information. Look how Instagram’s CEO, Kevin Systrom, answered questions on Quora about the app’s origins, name, and URL.

Research the Competition

Another search on Quora for businesses you are in competition with might provide some great insight into what other businesses are up to and how the public is receiving them. Learn from their successes and failures and pick up ideas from them to ensure you stay competitive. The Quora community is even sharing the structures and details of different companies’ business models, which are being posted by current and past owners and employees of those companies. There is so much value here that you can tap into.

Connecting with the Media

Mashable’s Ben Parr and Christina Warren have given advice to Quora users about how to get media coverage for startup companies. Soon, journalists will be using Quora as a source for news articles and company profiles if they have not begun to do so already.

Expand Your Network

If you want to expand your network, you can connect with new people on Quora by following topics related to your business or interests of yours. This will expand your company’s network as well because users within those categories will see any posts you make.

Hot Topics

Utilize the structure of Quora to find themes within the topics that relate to your business. Identify popular questions and answers relevant to your industry and experience that generate a lot of interest within the Quora community and capitalize on this information by addressing it in your business. Use these new ideas for blog posts and newsletters you send out to your customer base.

Although Quora is a newer website on the social media scene, it has already proven that it can become an invaluable tool for your business by expanding your personal and business networks. Look for Quora to continue to gain users and have a larger sphere of influence within the coming year.