The Four Motivations to Follow

In the fray of social media, the success of your efforts depends on the strength of your online community. But how do you build your following?

It all comes down to basic human psychology. There are four – and only four – reasons that someone would decide to follow you.

1. They want to define themselves by you.

This is a purely selfish motivation. These people aren’t doing anything for you. They simply want to use you and your brand as a badge to define themselves to their friends, family and other connections.

If I “like” The Office on Facebook, in all likelihood, that’s probably where my engagement ends. I’ve raised a flag. I’ve staked my ground in the camp of people who enjoy The Office.

Do I want to hear from The Office all the time? Do they have anything to offer me in return? Not likely. I’m just participating in the culture of the Web, taking ownership of something I find funny, entertaining and relatable and making it part of my identity through the act of sharing it with my social network.

2. They’re in it for the perks.

These people choose to follow you because you’ve promised them something in return for inviting you into their network.

For example, you might hold a special “Facebook Fan Appreciation Day” when customers who show that they “like” your page get 20 percent off their purchase.

These kinds of fans also love to participate in viral campaigns on Twitter. Offer them free coffee for a week if they can get 100 people to retweet their message with the hashtag “#MochaJoe,” and watch them spring into action.

However, these fans can be a double-edged sword. While they are probably the easiest to win, they can also be the hardest to keep. As much as they might want that free coffee or 20 percent discount, they don’t want to be inundated with a constant deluge of marketing. Their memory of your fun freebie will fade quickly, and takes only the click of a mouse for them to hide you from their feed or to unfollow you once they’ve taken advantage of your initial offer.

To avoid this fate, you must make the most of the opportunity you have as a presence in their feed to build a stronger foundation of trust and permission. Be prepared to follow up your first enticing offer with other meaningful content that they will find useful, interesting or amusing in order to ensure that you remain welcome in their daily social stream.

3. They want to hear what you have to say.

These people have a genuine interest in your message. Your tweets and updates aren’t just unwanted noise in their feed because they value the ideas and information you broadcast.
Of course, this type of following starts with you, not them. Before you can attract these fans, you must build a reputation for consistently delivering great content, whether that takes the form of helpful tips, interesting news, inspiring ideas or even just a reliable daily dose of humor.

Martha Stewart has over two million Twitter followers. These people eagerly anticipate what the queen of “Good Things” will share next, whether it’s photos from her latest adventure abroad, a behind-the-scenes peek at her life on the farm or even a recipe condensed into 140 characters.

4. They support what you stand for.

These people are ready to carry the torch for your cause. Their affinity runs much deeper than just a vote of popularity or an interest in what you’re doing and saying day in and day out on Facebook. They’re publicly proclaiming their membership in your tribe because your core values align with theirs.

Generally, the only entities that can tap into this motivation are nonprofits, ideological movements and individuals who are fighting for the greater good.

If you exist as a company in the for-profit world, it’s almost impossible to inspire this type of following. After all, no one supports Target, BMW or Coca-Cola as a matter of principle. But if your organization is out to change the world, there’s much to be gained from tapping into the passion of a tribe of true believers.

A final word of caution: Just because these four motivations seem simple and straightforward, conquering them is no easy task. In all likelihood, only one or two of these will apply to you. If you can tap into three, you’re a social media superstar. And only the rarest of exceptions can boast a following that spans all four categories.

Whether you are seeking to grow your online community at the local, regional or national level, the key is identifying where your greatest potential lies to harness the motivation that drives your tribe and adding fuel to this fire by building trust, providing value and delivering great content in order to persuade them to jump on your bandwagon.

From Panda to Penguin: How to Practice Safe SEO Today

Anyone who has had some exposure to the internet knows the importance of Google. After all, as the world's single most important search engine in terms of user base and popularity, Google wields considerable power to make (or break) any website.

Time and again, Google makes changes to its SEO algorithm, in order to improve its search functionality and usability. Thus, while earlier it was an attack on paid links, last year Google came up with the Panda update that effectively tackled websites which were mere content scrapers or low-level affiliates.

While the impact and implications of Google Panda have been discussed all across the internet multiple times, certain newer changes in SEO algorithm are still relatively lesser known. In this article, we focus on the newest change – the Over Optimization Penalty, and how to tackle it.

What is it about?

To quote Google's Matt Cutts, certain websites are often built keeping search engines in mind, and thus many SEO folks have sites that are “over optimized”, or in other words, “overly SEO-ed”. In short, the axis mundi of Over Optimization Penalty is to target and punish websites that focus more on SEO and less on content quality.

Yes, that's right. With search engines controlling a good deal of incoming traffic for almost any website, many site owners publish content keeping Google and Bing in mind, not their website visitors. In other words, SEO becomes the King, while content takes back-seat. It is this very practice that Google's recent Over Optimization Penalty patch aims to hit at. The motive is to “level the playing field” and crawl websites that offer quality content, not quality SEO.

How does it affect me?

Before going any further, let me present you with (my version of) a handy guide to Search Engine Optimization.

At the most basic level, SEO deals with analysis of data related to your website, so that you can assess what interests your website's visitors the most, what makes them visit your site, which topics are popular (and which aren't), and so on. Once you have such data, you can optimize or tweak your website to provide your visitors with information that they prefer, and avoid information that they don't like.

For instance, say, you are running a website about coffee. Now, you notice that most visitors to your website come by searching for terms such as “how to make awesome coffee”, and not “utensils for coffee”. Thus, you can focus more on preparation guides for coffee, rather than offering advice about purchasing coffee mugs. Similarly, you realize that your visitors are keen on knowing about the production of coffee all across the globe, and you can further provide such informational articles.

This is where over optimization comes into play. In your bid to get more and more visitors, instead of simply providing awesome coffee-related articles, you may also resort to repeatedly offer technically similar or 'SEO-friendly' articles about the history of caffeine, which may or may not be totally useful.

Good SEO is about content, proper coding standards and information hierarchy, and definitely not just about extra keywords.

So what should I do?

Avoid excessive usage of keywords.

The crux of the Over Optimization Penalty is to promote websites that do not play a handicap match by relying on keywords more than the actual content itself. Of course, keywords still matter – but you should not stuff them or fall prey to the 'keyword density' gimmick.

Avoid unnecessary "networked" links.

Let's say you have 10 websites, and you've created a 'network' out of them. Now, if only you can cross link within this network of websites, your traffic will increase – after all, users visiting the first site will be like, “Hey there's more to this network. I gotta visit 'em all!” Right? Sadly, not anymore. Google has been going tough on websites that are abusing interlinking.

Avoid backlinks from uncanny locations.

In other words, avoid link spam, period.

Avoid spending days and nights to 'comprehend the algorithm'.

Do not create content that satisfies Google's search algorithm – instead, spend time creating content which meets the expectations of your users. Google will automatically follow suit and take notice of your hard work. Surely, many SEO experts can claim to give you instant traffic boost and content promotion – but rarely do such tricks work in the long run.

Update your old posts and articles.

If your website has older articles and posts which have a good rank in terms of SEO, it is worth updating them – not necessarily a re-write, but check for broken links, outdated information, etc.

Build links the proper way.

Yes, properly employed link-building techniques can be effective in promoting your website. Certain measures such as writing guest posts and posting relevant comments on websites that are similar in genre to yours can be fruitful.

Implement a healthy on-site strategy.

It goes without saying that simple and clean code, along with validated HTML and CSS promotes better crawling of your web pages. Also, it makes sense to employ plugins and methods to make your pages load faster. Good load times almost invariably lead to better traffic. Similarly, HTML5 and responsive web design are the way to go, like it or not!

Employ social networking.

Websites such as Twitter and Facebook are ideal for viral campaigns – this is a well known fact. Further more, just in case you haven't noticed, Google is now keeping social networks in mind when assessing the importance of a website – in any search page, you can see the +1 buttons under each result, thereby allowing users to like or dislike a website in one go. Naturally, you'd not want to miss out on the social networking front.

Keep track.

Google itself offers a plethora of tools to aid you in your quest to promote your website – for instance, you can consider using Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools to your advantage.

Follow the golden rule of good SEO

So, what's the final word? Well, it's pretty simple, actually – Google is trying to offer search results that are clean of subpar content. Your best bet is to create content for humans, not search engines, so make sure you always write for people, not crawlers.