Today, at a social media roundtable in Birmingham with Michael Gass and four other incredible agencies, I learned about bit.ly.com and immediately put it to work.

Bit.ly is a plugin that gives you a bookmarklet for your toolbar. When your blog is written, you simply click on the the bookmarklet and bit.ly goes to work. It immediately creates a tiny URL without have to go to another site (like you have to with TinyURL.com). It includes your post title in a message ready to post on Twitter. Plus it feeds you immediate analytics to the right of the post you’ve bit.ly’d (already making it a verb). It shows your clicks, and who is talking about and sharing your post on Twitter, Friendfeed and other channels. All with a click of the tool.

It’s also great to use on other people’s posts. Click the bookmarklet and it will show you the conversation happening around that blog.

Thank you Michael for setting up the roundtable, Stephanie for hosting, Jaci for your type-AAA insights, Habib for your humor and tough questions, and John for your “Not afraid to get your hands dirty” sensibility. Great sharing.

Photos from the roundtable.