Pluggio (which is entirely web based) does much more than fix Twitter’s shortcomings.  It  manages to create an entire workflow system around Twitter that makes it easy to manage nearly every aspect of your Tweeting life. 

This is a really great twitter client, simple enough for everyone

yet powerful enough for power tweeters!

Use this to publish “Rolling Tweets”!  A rolling tweet is essentially a bunch of tweets that are titles of articles that others have written that include the link to those articles for my networks to check out. These posts are generated by the RSS feeds I choose to have pulling into my RSS section.

Pluggio.com has a suggested follow and unfollow feature. Each day when I login to my account, I am given up to 20 suggestions of people to follow and unfollow based on my bio and keywords.

You can have multiple Twitter accounts synced to one Pluggio account – Very handy!

Pluggio Blog

Katie Martell is a Marketing Manager at NetProspex, a B2B startup outside Boston, MA that provides verified B2B contact information that has been crowd sourced by a community of users.  She works with marketing/PR strategy, promotional design, and new media, with a portfolio of freelance and entrepreneurial fun.  She believes in the power of new media and the creative ways in which it makes meaningful connections…but values your ability to hold a conversation unplugged.

First, a bit of introduction before my first post on TweetValley: 

My name is Katie Martell, I’m a millennial in B2B marketing, and Twitter got me a job.

I’m living proof that combining valuable content and insightful comments makes Twitter a useful, powerful tool.

Photo by Sarah H (@SJean11) 

For me, twitter is a new platform for the fundamentals. Social media, with all of its hype and what many predict to be a short-lived glory, is a powerful new place for the fundamentals

But you’re already reading a blog about Twitter – there’s no need to convince you that there is now a necessary and important place for it in our lives.

Who do need convincing are many B2B marketers. (Not all, just many.) Recently I attending a breakfast/panel discussion for those in the marketing automation field.  Social media was brought up for discussion, dutifully, and I was surprised at how quickly it was disregarded as hype/just the latest trend.

I remember laughing as the moderator asked the crowd ‘Do you want to talk more about social media?’ The response was a quick and decisive ‘NO!’

I think they’re tired of hearing about it, that the B2B marketers in the room were turned off by the hype, the buzz, the self-proclaimed ‘gurus’, the endless supply of reasons it will drastically change the scope of interaction between customers and companies, the very nature of sales and marketing.

As one member of the crowd stated, "more has changed in sales and marketing in the last 2 years than in the last 20."

Change is never easy, and B2B marketers don’t want change. B2B marketers want something tangible, with proven ROI, something they can implement to enhance the fundamentals aspects of their craft.

For me, Twitter is a new platform for the fundamentals. Social media, with all of its hype and what many predict to be a short-lived glory, is a powerful new place for the fundamentals.

For me, Twitter is a logical channel for content distribution and subsequent lead generation. It is an effective PR tool to quickly and easily communicate directly with the public from within a company. It opens up channels of communication between me and the thought-leaders I want to learn from and collaborate with. It gives me a place to interact with and listen to my customers. It delivers industry news on demand.  Nothing about that says ‘short-lived’.

Perhaps one of the greatest powers of Twitter is the public nature of the discussion- it can be tracked, followed, monitored, studied. Rule #1 is, as we know, to listen. Listen before you jump in, watch the conversation before you get involved. Listen, learn, adapt.

I’m a new player in the workforce. I’ll proudly admit that I’m a recent graduate, and that I am constantly soaking up new knowledge.

Every day to me means just as much learning as it does planning, strategizing, and executing ideas. My reading list of blogs, articles, books, whitepapers, etc, is ridiculously lengthy and always growing.

To me, every piece of new technology and every new platform available to us is exciting, fresh, and inspiring.  It’s this mindset that will help B2B marketers navigate the changing waters. The mindset of a student.

"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing." – Socrates

(I know, cliché blog technique, quoting a dead guy.) But he has a point.

Remain a student. Make the choice to be open to new ideas, techniques, and innovation. Go back to that optimism you had after graduation, and never lose the feeling. Change is scary, but necessary.

If your customers aren’t on Twitter, that’s okay. Don’t disregard social media as hype, but rather, try to recognize the potential for how it can help YOU become a better marketer.

I’m thrilled to be a part of TweetValley, for the knowledge and sense of optimism all these authors provide.  I’m honored for the chance to add my voice to the conversation, and welcome any and all insights into using Twitter and social media for B2B marketing.  You can follow me on twitter @katiemartell, and my company @netprospex.

Follow Katie on Twitter!

This post was originally posted at KentBeatty.com as The Rise of Social Networks.

This Social Networks Infographic spans the timeline from 1995 up until today.  You’ll notice the really large social networks exploded into existence during the 2003 – 2006 period. Twitter had a rather late beginning:

What’s next?  For one thing: Personal Branding.  According to Chad Levitt, parts of the next wave of innovation will revolve around social networks, personal brands, massive amounts of data, collaboration and making senese of it all to create value.  Also, expect more internal company social networking.

Infographic courtesy of Chad Levitt at his New Sales Economy Blog

For more on Personal Branding check out Dan Schwabel’s blog.  Dan is the author of the book: , Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success (Kaplan, April 2009)

Cligs,  is a new URL shortening site that does much more than shorten URLs for Twitter etc.  I like the tracking mechanism.  It gives almost instant feedback on the effectiveness of links you are providing to your readers, followers and tribes.  The screen shot shows the activity I received from just a few tweets from last night.  I was surprised because I have a limited following in the specific Twitter account that I tweeted from.  Even the hyperlink in the beginning of this post is a Clig.  Enjoy Cligs.

Here is a graphical representation.  Use your imagination when considering long term tracking of a Clig.

In the early morning hours of August 27th, 2009, John Mayer (@johncmayer) took to twitter to reveal his “criminal” past and challenge famous investigative celebrity reporter Harry Levin (@HarveyLevinTMZ – editor at TMZ.com) to produce John’s mug shot. 

Within 14 hours Harry produced the mug shot from when John Mayer was arrested in Atlanta on May 26, 2001 for driving with a suspended license:

Later the same day:

The two checks John wrote to donate to the charities of Harry’s choice.

References: John Mayer’s mug shot revealed; John Mayer’s $25,000 Mug Shot; Harry Levin; @HarveyLevinTMZ; @johncmayer

Share this post on twitter!

If you haven’t seen the David Crowder Band Rockumentary “Twitter Will Kill You”, it is worth a view and sure to bring a smile.  The band gives the short video a sort of “The Monkeys” like quality.  Very creative and apropos to the twitter experience.

If you are not familiar with their music, you should give them a listen.  Solid faith oriented guys. My favorite track is “No One Like You” from their album, Illuminate.   The clip is perhaps a good example of embracing a popular cultural phenomenon and using it to promote your own work in a creative and dynamic way. It currently has over 82,000 views.  Its also interesting that within the clip the band has fun with another very popular clip on YouTube, “David After Dentist”.

As seen on TubeMogul.

This is just one more reason to use Twitter.  It’s importance on the Internet just seems to grow exponentially day by day.

July 31st, 2009

Want to automatically tweet your latest videos? Great news: there’s now a TubeMogul app for that. When uploading videos via TubeMogul, you can now check a box at the bottom of any video’s “Launch” page that will automatically send a tweet once the video goes live. The feature is basically TwitterFeed for video (those who know what that means).

Tweets look like this: “VIDEO: [Video's Title...] http//…”

And you might just want to use it: according to our latest research, audiences clicking on video links from Twitter watch a video 36.91% longer than viewers referred by Facebook and 49.98% longer than viewers referred by Digg, making Twitter an important medium for those content creators trying to reach the most engaged audiences.