In the world of social media, there are hundreds of thousands of communities, forums and destinations where people of similar interests congregate to share opinions and information with each other.  People who are passionate about a cause have a tendency to visit places where they can find others with a similar mindset.

But what happens when your interest of the moment is something you’re not passionate about? What if you are on a mission to find specific information– say, you’re buying a new home and need real estate advice, or you have an ailment and are seeking information on symptoms, or you have a paper due and need some random factoid?  Do you search for specific terms? Or do you go to knowledge sharing sites?

Everyone has knowledge about something, and yet there are a lot of things people don’t know anything about.  Enter Social Q&A. There is a growing batch of question and answer sites out there that help the goal oriented, subject matter seeking individual to ask a question… and hopefully find an answer.

Yahoo! Anwers, About.com, eHow — they all offer the capability for sharing content, questions and answers…  But how do you leverage this as a marketer?  By giving people the answers they seek.

By monitoring these sites, you can establish yourself as a subject matter expert by providing good, honest and transparent (speaking on behalf of the brand) answers to questions asked about topics related to your product, service, cause or persona. Additionally, you can be mining social Q&A sites for conversations, feedback and interest in your brand, giving you an outside (and usually much needed) perspective.

A cautious word of warning:  the reality is users who frequent Q&A sites often prefer the trusted voice of other consumers and the brand isn’t always a welcome guest at the party, however, if your response is helpful you’ll hopefully be perceived as being proactive in listening to your audience.