Twitter, everybody loves Twitter, so what on Earth could be ‘even better than Twitter’s Micro Blog platform’?

I’ll get back to TweetGlide in a minute but first let me explain my problems with Twitter.

You are probably the same as me, you understand the potential of Twitter, you love how it allows you to follow people who influence you as well as allowing those you influence to follow you.

So, you spend a lot of time promoting your Twitter profile, probably just as much as you promote your website and blog! Here’s the thing, although Twitter ultimately owns your profile, wouldn’t it be a great place to promote yourself just that little bit more than just having that one single link in your ‘about me’ area.

Okay, you can upload your own Twitter background with a few images of links but that isn’t as powerful as providing your profile viewers with a clickable link.

But what if you could? What if you could add some elements directly to your Twitter profile page that gave you extra promotional possibilities for yourself and your business? What if you could monetize your profile, wouldn’t that be great?

Some people absolutely hate sponsored Tweets but I haven’t heard much objection to monetizing the Twitter profile page itself.

Well, all the things you wished you could do with your Twitter profile just became possible!

Take a close look at the two screenshots below and tell me if you can spot any differences?

Screenshot 1

Screenshot 2

I bet you noticed straight away that the second screenshot has 125×125 sized banner ads. Let me share another screenshot of that particular sidebar so you can take an even closer look.

After the ads I have a widget that shares the recent posts from my blog followed by my DandyID buttons that allow people to connect with me on other social networking sites. I also, at the time of writing, have a ProfileFly button and a share on Facebook button.

Have you guessed how I’ve done this?

Returning to the title of this post, I made a claim that there was something even more important than TweetGlide! Don’t get me wrong, the desktop app is great at what it does and if you haven’t downloaded it yet then I recommend you get it now!

Here’s the link: TweetGlide Desktop Application

More important than the TweetGlide app is the accompanying blog that you also get! Why? Because it is a more powerful version of Twitter, allowing you to make the changes you only wished Twitter would allow you to make.

What’s more, the changes I made to my profile took me five minutes. Just imagine what you could do if you took the time to really play around with it.

You’ll need to download TweetGlide to gain access to your very own version of the blog.

Fire-up TweetGlide and then locate the manage blog button. Click on the button and your default browser will load your profile blog page with you already logged in.

When you click on the settings button at the top of your TweetGlide profile page you will be taken to the back-office as seen in the screenshot below.

As you can see, the elements that I have added to my profile page are managed by placing code into the individual widget boxes.

You can then choose the order of how the widgets are displayed by using a drag-and-drop panel as seen below.

You probably have lots of ideas of how you can improve your profile page so what are you waiting for, if you don’t have TweetGlide yet go and download it now.

If you come up with a customisation idea that you think is truly awesome then come back here and leave a comment with your TweetGlide profile link so I can take a look!

I think you’ll agree with me when I say that the blog is probably more important than the application itself.

To your success,

Karl Foxley

P.s. Are you following me on Twitter yet?

P.s.s Don’t forget that you can place optimised links on your TweetGlide profile using keyword rich ‘anchor’ text. Just another benefit of getting one of these blogs for yourself.

I recently created a post about Polite SEO that spoke about blog commenting as a way of building links and how NOT to do it!

The secondary reason was that Polite SEO generates 170 global searches per month according to the Google Keyword Tool.

As it never hurts to go after the low hanging fruit I figured I would target polite SEO and see what happens.

What I discovered when I was checking on my progress is quite interesting and something I want to share with you.

Although the report is about micro-blogging in general, it does feature information about the ever popular Twitter (for some this is the only micro-blogging platform of choice).

What you will see below is a PDF document that is Day 4 of our Website Promotion Success Email Mini-Course.

I recommend you sign-up for the course and to our newsletter as you will get extra benefits that you will not get from reading the blog alone.

The report you are about to read covers the benefits of micro-blogging, how to get started and some useful resources you may find handy.

In the report you will also find a list of other micro-blogging platforms that you can use as an alternative to Twitter or alongside, depending on your needs and time restraints.

Micro-blogging sites are amongst the most popular websites on the Internet today and you’d be crazy not to tap into the marketing (conversation) potential.

The report is short but is packed with practical information that you can start implementing straight away.

If you find the text is too small then use the buttons on the top right side of the document to switch to full screen mode or toggle page size. Enjoy!

I hope you enjoy the report useful.

To your success,

Karl Foxley

photo credit: M i x y

But how?

The web is such a big place how can you possibly track every mention of your name, website, products and / or services and with the rise of social media sites such as Twitter, a negative tweet could be bounded across the Twitter-sphere without you even knowing.

This is how I monitor mentions of me and my company across the many Social Media sites, and it’s so easy!

Visit SocialMention and type in the various names of your products, services, website, etc and watch the results that SocialMention returns for each one.

After you have typed in your particular search phrase, in this case ‘Karl Foxley’ you will be able to subscribe to alerts via email or RSS found to the right of the page.

To use the email alert option simply choose what level of notification you want. I always choose ‘all’.

You’ll want to configure this to meet your specific needs. You’ll now be alerted to any futher mentions of the words / phrases you choose to monitor. You can also see from the screenshot above that a whole range of social media sites are monitored.

Below you will see a screenshot where you can see ‘positive’, ‘neutral’ and ‘negative’ mentions of your chosen search term.

In the case above, the one negative mention was picked up from one of my own posts whereby I had written something using negative words.

To increase your online brand and reputation you could track down those that praise you and your company and give thanks, be that via blog commenting, Twitter, Facebook etc.

You should also aim to respond to negative comments about you and your company in a constructive way. Offer to resolve issues, ask for feedback but never slam someone for their opinion, this will just lose you respect in the social media world.

I hope you have found this post helpful.

To your success,

Karl Foxley

P.s. SocialMention can also be used as a social media search tool.