They Have Questions. You Have Answers.

If you are an expert in your niche, there are those who will seek out your wisdom.

Your blog is a great place to share your knowledge.

Provide value for your readers and you are more likely to be bookmarked and earn repeat visits.

Keep providing value and you\’ll find yourself with raving fans.

The same thing goes for social media sites. Twitter, Facebook and others provide many opportunities to share your expertise.

But your blog and social media sites are not the only places you can use to impart your knowledge.

In fact, there are some great opportunities right under your nose. You just may not have thought of them before.

1. Yahoo! Answers

This site has been around for years and there are literally millions of questions and answers in the database.

If you have a question, simply type it in. Any user can answer the question for you. Members rate how good the answers are with a thumbs up/thumbs down. Eventually a \”best answer\” is selected and the question is closed.

What does this mean for you as the expert?

Search for topics that fall within your realm. For example, I searched for questions with \”world of warcraft\” as a key phrase and discovered a question someone posted about playing the game as a rogue.

Having a level 80 rogue in the game, I put in my two cents.

Doing so gave me points. Points allow you to set your avatar, vote on other people\’s answers and more.

Answering a question leads to similar questions appearing.

So what\’s the point?

You can embed links to any of your sites within your answers. While I don\’t have any reason to link to my site for the question I just answered, I\’m sure you can see where it would be useful to point people to your blog or a product. It\’s free, so it\’s a good idea to check in from time to time.

The biggest problem is that there are tons of kids using the service and cluttering it with relationship questions that would only be of interest to those with undeveloped maturity.

2. Aardvark

This site was recently purchased by Google for $50 million.

Imagine Yahoo! Answers meets social media and you\’ve got an idea of how Aardvark works.

Simply create your account and enter a number of topics that you feel qualified to provide answers for.

Rather than being inundated with hundreds of questions, you will only see questions that are targeted based on your topics.

Questions can be seen on their web site, via email, or direct to your instant messager.

The last feature is especially useful as an IM window opens with the question. If you choose to answer, you can do so via IM.

Since the questions you receive are likely to be targeted, there is a good chance you can answer them.

In the example below, you can see how the question was targeted for my expertise. I took the opportunity to let the person asking the question know where they could read more about the topic.

Between the two, I think Aardvark is more promising. But both provide opportunities for you to share your knowledge with others online.

Have you ever used these sites? Are you familiar with others? Be sure to leave your comments below.