There are lots of tools and knowledge about social media, but let’s be honest… there is a lot of crap too out there. We made this list because we wanted a really, really good resource about the tools that are actually helpful for you as an entrepreneur or business.
Managing social media for a business or project takes time. A lot of time. A lot of these tools can help you worker smarter, save time and get more out of the ressources you put in to your social media effort. You will find everything from small services that solves a very specific challenge to super professional marketing suites that can help you if you work with social media at scale.
I recommend you to scroll through them and test out those you think can help you. If you have any experiences with these tools or want to recommend other tools, please share it in the comments, so we can make a big ressource of the absolute best social media tools out there.
If you want to jump directly to a section, you find them here:
Twitter Tools (12)
Facebook Tools (10)
Instagram Tools (7)
Google+ Tools (3)
YouTube Tools (4)
General Social Media Management Tools (12)
Tools for your website (11)
Dashboards and Analytics Tools (6)
Miscellaneous tools you would want to know about (13)
Graphic design tools (10)
Outreach tools (6)
Social media reputation management / review mangement tools (6)
Let’s get to it:
Twitter tools
1. Tweepi
Tweepi is a good all round tool for managing your Twitter account. Options include unfollowing people who don’t follow you back and forcing people to unfollowing you (good if are getting too many spammy followers). Since the list of your followers are visible for everybody, this can be a really good tool to keep your follower list looking good. Tweepi can also be recommended as a tool for following people, since you can copy/paste Twitter IDs and then get a list of them, so you can follow a lot of people quickly. Use Followerwonk to get the list you can copy/paste.
2. Followerwonk
Followerwonk is a great tool from the guys over at Moz. Followerwonk is a search tool for Twitter. Here you can search for a specific word or phrase that people should have in their profile and then export the list. You can adjust searches on a bunch of parameters like how many followers they have, how active the profiles are and so on. There is a lot of ways to use this in a creative way. What about searching for “business journalist”, exporting the list and copy/paste it in to Tweepi and then follow all of the business journalists quickly, to get attention to your project.
3. Fake Follower Check
This is a really simple tool that checks your followers and uses an algorithm to categorise if they are spam accounts or not. There is also a premium option, where it automatically blocks spam accounts. Again, it’s just a really good idea to keep your follower list clean. Everybody can see your followers and everyone can put your ID in to Statuspeople to see if you have a lot of fake followers. This is also a great tool to check other people. Often you will find that someone bragging about their follower number, but then you check and 40% is fake 🙂 Use this tool to verify people if you pay and / or put a lot of energy in getting key influensers to spread the message about your project.
Check out StatusPeople Fake Follower Check here.
4. Tribeboost
Tribeboost is a service that gets you targeted followers on Twitter. I’ve checked a couple of cases from people I know and the quality is perfect and the accounts grow slow and safely (you know something fishy is up, if you get too many followers too fast). You could do exactly the same as Tribeboost offer, by combining Followerwonk and Tweepi yourself. Of course that would take up your time and you will spend some time getting to know how it works and what works, before you can automate it. For me personally, I’ve spent the time to get into things myself, and then automate as much as possible with a virtual assistant. If you wanna get started fast, then Tribeboost might be the right solution for you.
5. TweetDeck
Most people who use Twitter also know about Tweetdeck, which is now owned by Twitter. Not much to say here. This is my favourite tool for managing multiple accounts at once. I use Tweetdeck to get a quick overview on how things are going, but I normally go to the normal browser version of Twitter, if I need to scroll through my feed or reply to a bunch of tweets. In my eyes the best tool for having a good overview of multiple accounts.
6. Topsy
Topsy is a cool, little tool for searching and doing simple Twitter Analytics. Search for a word or phrase to get an overview of how many tweets there is about it. You can also sort searches, so you only see searches including a link, video or photo, which can be quite helpful. There is also a smart little tool for quickly comparing different words being used on Twitter. How many have talked about you and your competitors the last month on Twitter?
7. Twazzup
Another small tool for searching on Twitter. I don’t think it works that good, and it doesn’t track that far back in time. For example there was no information on #workawaycamp (Refuga’s old hashtag), because it’s some time since it has been used, or maybe because there is not enough data. A good thing about the tool, is that you search for a hashtag and then see a list of the links that is shared the most. I’m sure this can be helpful sometimes.
8. SocialRank
I haven’t worked that much with this tool, but it’s something that I think looks really, really interesting and opens up for a lot of interesting things. You can use Socialrank to analyse your own or others followers. First of all, go and check who is your most valuable followers. Socialrank checks all of your followers and rank them based on a combination of parameters. This is probably the most intelligent way to identify the most valuable followers you have. You can also see who is engaging the most with you It’s important to nurse those fans! Another smart thing about Socialrank is that you can use it for analysing other profiles. They call this Intel, and this can be used to for example learn something about your followers followers.
Maybe that intel can make you better at making content or initiatives that your followers will actually help spread to their follower. I think there will be a lot of these tools in the future and the options are endless if you use the knowledge in a creative way.
9. Tweriod
No need for a long description on Tweriod. This tools analyses your account and tell you when the best time to tweet is. Simple and something that is really, really valuable to know.
10. GroupTweet
Grouptweet works perfectly for those who need multiple people to have access to a twitter account, say for a business or organisation, but without giving out the password. You don’t have to worry about people having unauthorized access to your account as now you can have anywhere from 2 to 100,000 people contributing from the same account.
11. TwitterCounter
TwitterCounter is a pretty cool tool to working more intelligent with your presence on Twitter. It’s a good allround Twitter Analytics, which include data on when it’s the best time to post for you and which of your content that is being engaged the most with. Many of the features are also available in Twitters own Analytics, but this goes just a step further in my opinion. One example is that you can get a list of your new followers ranked by their Twitter influence, so you can easily see which to engage with.
I think a problem on Twitter is automated welcoming message. I get so many of them, so it’s very clear it’s automated, but with this data you can get pinpointed to who it will make sense to reach out too. This tool is recommended to check out if you really want to go in-depth with Twitter Analytics.
Check out TwitterCounter here.
12. Pay With a Tweet
This is a very simple referral tool, where you can offer your visitors on your website something if they tweet. The name says it all: Pay with a tweet.
You can do this with content, where people have to tweet about your post before reading the rest or you can offer them a discount code if the tweet.
Pay With a Tweet is something that can be used very creatively. It’s something that is very easy and “cheap” for the visitor to do and something that is very valuable for you, so used correctly it can be really good.
Check out Pay With a Tweet here.
Facebook Tools
13. Facebook Audience Insights
Customer insights, especially for Facebook are invaluable to understand your audience. The more you understand your customer, the more chance you have of optimising your message to your customers. The tool, created by Facebook for business will help marketers learn more about who they’re trying to target and offer them information such as their geographical location, demographics purchase behaviour and much, much more. You can get information about your Facebook Fanbase, your email newsletter list or for example your website visitors (if you set up retargeting), giving you a lot of knowledge about people already interested in your products.
The key to success with Facebook Ads is knowing who you are targeting in-depth and this tools gives you that knowledge. A most-use tool if you’re serious about Facebook Ads and also just marketing in general. The knowledge you can find here about your existing customers can help you on other platforms too.
Check out Facebook Audience Insights here.
14. Woobox
Woobox one of the really good, simple and affordable providers of apps you can use for your Facebook page. Apps include simple things like having a tab for Instagram, so people can check your Instagram profile directly on Facebook. But you will also find pretty powerful apps for throwing a competition to get more followers and more email signups.
What I like about this tool is that the balance between value and cost is incredible good. It’s super cheap compared to what you get. There are so many free or very cheap (and pretty crappy) apps out there and then there is the marketing suites that costs way too much. This is perfect for doing a lot of cool stuff on Facebook yourself.
15. Timeline Slicer
This tool helps you create images that will fit perfectly onto your Facebook timeline. The tool is for people who don’t know how to use or don’t have access to tools like photoshop or gimp and are unable to use the various slice and dice tools. It’s super simple and the image says most about it. Use this tool for fixing images on Facebook super quickly.
Check out Timeline Slicer here.
16. Facebook Custom Audiences
Facebook Custom Audiences helps you reach people on Facebook who already knows about you and based on that data, you can also reach people like the people who already knows you. With Facebook Custom Audiences you can import your email list and create ads to them. You can also put a pixel on your website and target people who have visited your website, but didn’t buy / sign up. These things are probably super simple for most people, but it has to be mentioned here, since it’s so super super effective.
After your have done this you can create a “lookalike” audience. Let’s say you upload your email list to Facebook Custom Audiences. Then Facebook finds all of the emails that are connected to Facebook profile and you can now make highly targeted ads to those. If you create a lookalike audience based on this, Facebook analyzes the people on your email lists and create another audience like them. This is a great way to do VERY targeted ads.
Check out Facebook Custom Audiences here.
17. LikeAlyzer
LikeAlyzer is a super simple tool and not something that will change your business on Facebook. But it gives you a bit of great insights and then it only takes a second, so can recommend to quickly run your page through the tool.
Here you will find a bit of insights about the page, but the coolest thing is that based on those data they actually makes some recommendations. The recommendations are pretty simple, but it’s a good place to start. LikeAlyzer is a great tool to send to someone who is new to using a Facebook Page.
18. Facebook Debugger
Facebook debugger, a tool by Facebook helps you to see how the page’s markup appears on Facebook. Way to many people posts links where pictures and texts are not shown correctly. Before posting a link, run it through the Debugger to make sure that everything on Facebook is shown correctly and the way you want it.
Check out Facebook Debugger here.
19. Pagemodo
Pagemodo is a professional, but simple tool. It’s great for businesses that doesn’t normally work professionally online, but wants to have an online presence. It’s a more simple Woobox (mentioned above) with tools for cover photos and custom tags. They also have tools for running contents. I would recommend this tool for someone who is busy with running their business and just want a simple tool to use their Facebook Page more professionally.
20. Qwaya
Facebook’s own Ad Manager (and Power Editor) is getting better and better, but there is still a lot of third party software to handle Facebook Ads. Most of them is for running the ads smarter and at scale. This also include Qwaya, that has a bunch of features you wont find in Facebook.
These features include a direct Google Analytics integration, easy splittesting and performance rules (so ads stop automatically if there are not working). As many of these tools I would also only recommend Qwaya if you have a big budget and if you’re really serious about Facebook Ads. If so, it’s definitely something to check out.
21. 20 Percent Rule
When doing Facebook Ads, the ads are only allowed to have 20% text in it. The guys behind Komfo made this little tool, so you can see if you have under 20% text in your ad.
I always run my graphics through this before adding them to the ads. Sometimes your ads gets approved right away, but they will be checked within some time and get refused if there is over 20% text in them, so it’s much better to do it right from the beginning.
Check out 20 Percent Rule here.
22. AdEspresso
AdEspresso is a 3rd party tool for managing Facebook Ads. The core features is that you can very easily create new variations of your ad sets and ads. Just with one click you can create variations for gender, age, location etc. In that sense you can really save some time, but this is only a relevant tool if you run a lot of Facebook Ads and have a big budget. Creating a lot of variations of your ads only makes sense if you have the budget to actually test which ones that works the best.
Besides that they have a really cool feature, that I don’t understand that Facebook hasn’t implemented themselves yet. In AdEspresso you can do ads to persons who have two different interests. An example could be the Refuga trip to Kenya, that is targeted entrepreneurs that also like running. I don’t understand why Facebook doesn’t allow this in their own Power Editor, but I’m sure it will come at some point. Until that AdEspresso is a great tool for it.
Instagram Tools
23. Instagress
Instagress is probably the best working and best designed tool I have tried for “hacking” Instagram. It’s super simple and super cheap. The main feature is that you can insert some relevant hashtag and then follow, like and / or comment when people post something with that hashtag – completely automated.
You can really grow your account fast like this and the features that they are spitting out are getting better and better. For example they now have a GEO feature, so you can target people in a specific area. This is great if you run a local business and wants to spread the word.
Of course there is always the risk that it can get a bit too spammy, so you have to be cautious about how you use it. Instragress gives you to the tool, so it’s up to you to use it correctly. I would recommend not making automated comments for example.
24. Iconosquare
Iconosquare is a little tool to get some more insights about your account on Instagram, so it’s a simple Instagram Analytics, where you get data about your follower growth, most active followers, your best content etc. If you’re serious about any social media account knowledge and data like this is a must have, so if you’re on Instagram, go check it out, so you can run things smarter in the future.
25. Redcast Repost
There is probably not much to add here. This is just a simple app for resposting pictures. I know a bunch of commercial accounts that has success with getting people involved in their brand by reposting the best pictures being put up with their company hashtag and for things like that, this little tools is great.
Check out Redcast Repost here.
26. Latergramme
Latergramme allows you to plan and schedule your Instagram posts. You can upload images both from your phone and your computer. There is really not much to add here, but if you work with a content calendar, if you have a team that helps with Instagram posts or if you just want to plan your posts a bit out in the future, then this could be a super simple tool to get started.
27. ScheduGram
ScheduGram gives you the ability to both upload and schedule your images. As well as this, you have the option to post to multiple Instagram accounts and it’s possible to have multiple users to login and manage the account.
Another small, smart thing about Schedugram is that you can bulk upload pictures and easily plan the posts in the future.
28. Piqora
Piqora is a photo content marketing management tool, that can make your work on Instagram and Pinterest smarter and more data-driven. The tool include a planning tool for your team, where you can schedule posts and see which pictures will be posted when and where.
Piqora helps you identify your best content, so you can plan new content that you know will work your community.
This is another company who actually delivers a suite of tools, so it’s a good 360 degrees tool if you’re serious about photos and Instagram. From their references it looks like they have a lot of customers within fashion, interior and food – probably the biggest categories on Instagram, and you probably need a very serious approach and a big community, before using tools like this.
29. Websta
Websta is a really simple tool. Actually it’s just a small search tool, for checking out hashtag. This can give you an idea about which hashtags you should focus on, because you can see the volume of pictures uploaded with the specific hashtag. At the same time it suggests some other relevant hashtags you can use. If you hashtag your pictures or use software like Instagress, you have to use this tool.
Google+ Tools
30. Circloscope
Circloscope has been defined as circles on steroids. Circloscope is the tool you need if you want to grow your Google+ circles. It’s really the only tool I have found for managing Google+ really professionally. First of all this tool is really good at growing your followers on Google+. Features include getting a list of a persons followers and then follow them. You can do the same with circles and groups and hereby exposing yourself for highly relevant people.
The fun thing about Google+ is that in many ways they are still a very basic social media. Actually you can follow and unfollow 5000 people per day, which is extreme compared to for example Twitter. Circloscope is the tool to use for growing your account on Google+!
You can really grow a fanbase quickly with this tool.
31. CircleCount
CircleCount is one of the only tools I have been able to find for Google+ Analytics. This tool can give you a lot of insights – something that is very widespread for other social media platforms. So if Google+ is important for your business, then this is absolutely a tool to check out.
Features include a map of your followers, a way to see your best content and a bunch of other data.
32. Steady Demand
A great and very simple free tool, where you can get a free analysis of your Google+ Page to see if you have set everything up correctly and that you are using the core features that Google+ has to offer. It’s free, so you have nothing to loose 🙂
YouTube Tools
33. TubeTrackr
TubeTrackr offers YouYube creates dashboards and tools for their channel. The tools helps them grow their subscribers and YouYube views, manager their videos and how well their channel is performing, grow their visibility and engage with their audience as well as optimizing things in their toolbox. Signing up to an account is free, so if you have a YouTube account and you’re looking for ways your can work on it, tubetrackr could be for you.
34. FameBit
FameBit is a place where brands can meet Youtubers and Youtubers can meet brands. Connect with creators or brands who fit your market. The tool makes it easy for brands and creators to work together. From connecting to hiring, this service allows you to scale so you can connect with many Youtubers at once. From there you can drive awareness to your product or service through YouTubers.
I haven’t worked much with YouTube, but this could be a great way to not just do ads, but actually get out there and get mentioned by some popular profiles.
35. VidRocket
VidRocket is another tool that helps you connect with Youtube influencers and promote your brand. It’s certified by YouTube and helps you build your campaign. You describe your brand and product and tell them the story behind it. From there they will help you connect with influencers that are relevant to your brand and from there, you will be able to reach an audience in an authentic way through people your customers trust.
36. VidIQ
VidIQ is a YouTube certified tool, that helps you to grow your views organically, also called YouTube SEO. They have a range of tools included in the solution, to help you grow your views. These include finding the right keywords, so you can be find on the right terms. Over 50% of views on YouTube comes from search and related, so it’s very important to be found here.
VidIQ has solutions for both brands and agencies and they also specialize in tools to keep up with the conversations about your brand, even at scale. Definitely a tool to test if you are very serious about YouTube.
General Social Media Management Tools
37. Unfollowers
Unfollowers is a tool which enables you to see who followed and unfollowed you. See your data presented in either a graphical or a list view, it’s an excellent way to analyse your community and ensure you are connecting with the right people. This is in general a very simple tool and it works with both Twitter and Instagram, but with some features just working for one platform and not others. I have found this tool best, for what it name says – to unfollow people.
38. Buffer
Buffer is probably the easiest way to share on share content on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or LinkedIn and get valuable insights about the posts. It works seamlessly on both the web app and tablet/smartphones. Build up a queue of content and choose when to share it. For paying customers, an analytics hub is available to see when you’re most effective social sharing was, how many people it reached and the ability to see which posts performed best across board.
Also, if you like the content on the Refuga blog, then you should also check out Buffer’s blog, which has made them famous. There is a lot of good stuff.
39. HootSuite
Hootsuite is a social media management dashboard which helps you manage multiple networks and profiles. You can join the other 10 million people who are already using the app and get started for free. The app works in accordance with over 35 popular social networks so there’s scope for this app to be an asset for you, if it’s not already.
HootSuite is typical marketing suite for social media, delivering you a bunch of tools like listening, scheduling and of course a really good Analytics part. My opinion is that if you want to use tools like HootSuite you have to have serious approach to it and really use it and make it your primary place to manage your accounts. That’s when it gives you the most value.
40. SproutSocial
SproutSocial is another social media marketing suite doing a lot of the same stuff like HootSuite. It’s difficult to decide which is the best, so check all of these services out before you take a big decision about it.
41. BuzzBundle
BuzzBundle helps you find online conversations about your company, products or brand so you can engage with your audience. BuzzBundle is effective because it’s supports sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+ LinkedIn, Youtube, forums and blogs and thereby giving you a one stop solution to following conversations and responding to them across your different accounts. Features include some analytics and scheduling like most other tools.
42. Twtrland
Twtrland is a social media analytics platform that gives you data about Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Cool features include a competitor dashboard where you can see your performance compared to your competitors.
A pretty simple tool that is somewhere between the super simple and the marketing suites / big analytics companies. Worth testing!
43. RavenTools
RavenTools is a tool to creating very professional marketing reports in minutes. You can both do SEO reports, general traffic reports and social media accounts – The coolest thing is that you set it up once and custom the reports you want, so you get the data that is important for you. Then you schedule the reports, so you receive the reports without more work.
Not just for social, but for online marketing in general, this is a great tool. Especially if you have clients, a boss or partners you need to report too. Data is so important when doing online marketing (including social media marketing), but it’s very easy to forget to check things and follow the progress. This tool just makes it easier for your and I’m sure it just make the chances of success online bigger.
44. HubSpot
HubSpot is an inbound marketing and sales platform that helps companies attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers. Hubspot have a series of tools from blogging, CMS, social, SEO, CTA, Landing pages email analytics and more. Their software is designed to drive growth at any scale.
I haven’t used HubSpot much, but these guys are really one of the pioneers in content marketing and their software can help you work smarter with with content and social. In my opinion you have to have a big focus on the things you do to use a tool like this. I guess for many it’s a bit too much, but when you’re ready to get serious HubSpot can be a place to go to.
45. Falcon Social
Falcon Social is a social media management tool for enterprise clients. Using the tool you can listen and engage with your new customers, as well as old customers, publish posts and measure their effectiveness all from one platform. Used by companies such as Carlsberg, Toyota and Cocacola, this tool is for those with budgets big enough to afford to enterprise premium service. This is a high end tool, dedicated to the challenges that bigger brands have.
I was at a talk with the founder a year ago and it’s a super interesting company growing incredible fast. It’s a very interesting angle on the social media management they have.
46. Komfo
Komfo allows you to do social media marketing at scale. It helps you understand your social media analytics so you not only see how your customers are interacting, but also have an understanding of engagement trends and business metrics. You’re able to listen to your community and respond in a timely manner. With the platform you can take advantage of its Facebook advertising tool which allows you to post distributed targeted content to the right people.
47. Oktopost
Oktopost is the platform for B2B businesses and marketers to enable them to manage their social media accounts. Octopus allows you to easily share your content to various social media networks and profiles. Quickly and effortlessly you’re able to create social campaigns for any kind of content. Oktopost focus is on measuring the real value of your social media effort and not just the awareness you get. In that sense Oktopost is worth checking out, because your online presence should be about business and not just brand.
48. Socialoomph
Socialoomph is a tool with a variety of features that works for a variety of social networks. This tools helps you schedule posts, send auto direct messages on Twitter, sort Twitter lists and to tweet via email. It’s a bit weird, because there is no main feature, but just a lot of small features, which makes it a good tool to quickly look at, to see if there are some areas they cover, that you haven’t found solutions for elsewhere.
Tools for your website
49. KingSumo
Kingsumo is a a tool which enables you to grow your WordPress traffic. Through running viral giveaways you have the chance to build upon your email list. With their offer of a 60 guilt free guarantee, it seems a shame not to utilities the tool and see if it could work for you and your brand. A pretty simple, but effective tool to run giveaways on your own site.
50. What Would Seth Godin Do Plugin
Seth Godin has often been cited as the king of content. So what better plugin than a ‘what would Seth Godin do’. The aim of the plugin is to display a custom welcome message to new visitors and a different one to people who are returning visitors. The plugin advocates the use of cookies to distinguish between those who are coming to your site for the first time and those are are regulars. With the plugin, you have the ability to customize the message, the lifespan of the message and the location you want it to appear. A really easy way to make your website a bit more personal.
Check out What Would Seth Godin Do Plugin here.
51. Sleeknote
Sleeknote is a lead generation tool that promises to give you 400-600% more email subscribers. They create lead boxes, sign up forms and option forms you can add to your website to convert your visitors into potential leads. Sleeknote works out of the box with major email marketing software so you don’t have to worry about linking the two together. It has the same features as many other pop-ups, but you can also use this for social media, so instead of a pop-up or slide in with a sign up to your newsletter it can a Facebook like box.
They also have great splittesting features. The owner of the tool has been on a couple of our trips and they have a really, really good team working on this, so if you want to get more out of your users and you want a bit more than SumoMe, then check this out.
52. SumoMe
SumoMe provides you with a set of tools to grow your websites traffic. It works on any website and have been trusted on many websites such as Airbnb and Social Media Examiner. Tools such as a list builder to increase your daily email sigg ups, heatmapcs to see where your website visitors are clicking, share buttons for people to effortlessly share your content via social media, scroll boxes to politely encourage people to sign up to your email and more. The guys at SumoMe are crazy effective, just spitting out more tools all the time.
The tools are great for the more simple things, but if you want something more hardcore, then SumoMe is not for you. My experience is that what SumoMe offers is enough for a lot of people.
53. Tagboard
Tagboard is a tool to creating boards from content where hashtags has been used. So it’s actually a wall that you can embed on a website or show at a screen to an event. In the settings you can add different social media platforms and your hashtags and every time someone uses that hashtag the content is shown on your tagboard.
A great tool for creating life on your website or getting people engaged at your event.
54. TintUp
Another tool like Tagboard, but with a few different featurs. It works by pulling user generated and branded content into one place from over 100 social networks via hashtags. You have the ability to custom brand your social hub by changing themes, colors, and adding custom CSS for elegant design.
What I really like about Tint is that they have some industry specific solutions, like for ecommerce you can get user generated content from social media placed on a product page to create social proof. That’s a super cool solution.
55. Storify
Storify allows you to make the web tell a story. It’s the easiest and quickest way to find, collect and share what people are saying on the web about certain topics. Storify connects to countless social media sites and using the all-in-one search experience you can grab anything story-worthy with their handy chrome extension. Their story editor is made for simplicity and the drag and drop system means content is embodied instantly. With Storify’s enterprise plan you have collaborator with your team and create advanced, real-time, multi-editor experiences for streamlining content creation. When you have created a story you can easily embed it to your website.
This is used big time by media company to show a timeline of actions, but it can be used for many things. In the beginning Refuga used it during events to show what happened day by day at our trips.
56. Disqus
Disqus is something that most know. It’s the biggest system for commenting content online, so it’s a great tool if you want a serious system for commenting. But they also have a huge community due to all the sites their system is being used at and they use that for an advertising platform.
Disqus is becoming the de facto standard of commenting online, so maybe we should also start using it here on our blog?
57. Videolean
Videolean is a great tool to create professional looking videos for your blogs, e-commerce, newsletters, YouTube and so much more. Simply choose a template, customize and share it with your network. Especially for quickly creating video ads for YouTube and AdWords this can be a great idea. They have a lot of templates that you can adjust to your needs.
Video is so effective, but something that few really do, because they think it’s too expensive. Sites like Videolean is a great way to start.
58. Google URL Builder
An app built by Google, the URL builder helps you generate custom campaign parameters for your advertising URLs. Running a link you use for a campaign through the Google URL Builder will make it super easy to get the results in Google Analytics, so you can track the performance of your efforts. A must-use for all marketing efforts.
On your website you can also use it for tagging different links on a landing page to see which ones that creates the most value in the end.
Check out Google URL Builder here.
59. Walls.io
Walls.io collects and displays all social media intention using your hashtag. You can see the best photos, posts or videos from your community. You can use Walls as a standalone widget, mobile or through their API. Use Walls to help visualize people’s stories about your event on the big screen, incentivize attendees to share their experiences. Customize their themes to create a look and feel you are happy with.
We talked about other tools like this, but Walls.io have a big focus on events, so if that’s your business, check them out.
Dashboards and Analytics
60. Simply Measured
Simply Measured’s leading social media analytics tool provides you with in depth measurement and reporting across Facebook, twitter, Instagram, YouTube plus many more. Their focus is big brands, so I guess you have to be pretty serious before this is relevant.
What I like about their feature list is that they have profile analytics, cross channel analytics and social advertising analytics. I’m sure you can do some really, really cool things with this if you have enough data.
Check out Simply Measured here.
61. Sumall
SumAll is the all-in-one social media and e-commerce dashboard your website needs. It tracks your data in an organized way so you can effectively an overview of your data. If you want to get a step further than just an overview they also provide insights and reports, so it can actually cover quite a lot of different needs.
62. BePresent
The people at SproutSocial have created BePresent that gives you a free report about the responsiveness of your brand. It’s not enough to just posts stuff, you have to take part in the conversation online and with this tool you get an idea about how fast you are interacting. Fun little project!
63. Geckoboard
Geckoboard puts all your metrics into one place. You can connect a lot of different systems and then create a custom dashboard showing you the most important numbers of your business. It can be uses in many, many different ways. I use it in my browser as the first page that opens, where I get an overview of the most important numbers, so I don’t have to login in to Analytics and a bunch of other systems.
You can really create some great solutions with Geckoboard, to get a better overview of your data. As we talked about earlier you can do a lot with data, but that means you have to look at the data and systems like Geckoboard is just making that more easy.
64. NutshellMail
NutshellMail is a great solution if you’re busy. Instead of checking analytics on different platforms you can just get an email with a summary of your stats. You choose what to be included in the email and when it should be scheduled to. Incredible simple!
65. Talkwalker
Talkwalker is a powerful social media search tool for brands. Easy to set up, you can analyse your social media reputation in real time, search through their global coverage of over 180 countries and use their powerful tool for tracking, analysis and reporting.
Miscellaneous tools you would want to know about
66. Nimble
Nimble is a social CRM, doing what a CRM system normally do, but connecting this with social profiles, to get more knowledge about your contacts. Instead of you manually updating your contacts it takes data from social media, so your contacts are always up to date.
I think this is really awesome, because you combine the powers of a CRM and the powers of social media to get better results. Somewhere on their site they call it the end of contact management and the beginning of contact insights. This can really be powerful.
67. BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo helps you analyse which content performs best for a particular topic or competitor. It helps you create epic content that people actually want to share by showing you the best the content that’s already out there. With this insight you can see what the most successful piece of content is and create one that’s better than that. The tool also allows you to see key influencers per topic or competitor so you know exactly who to promote your content to.
Let’s say you want to make a piece about social media tools, then you type in “social media tools” and you get a list of the most shared content out there about that topic, that you can check out, get inspiration from and do something better than.
It’s a great tool to create content for all platforms.
68. IFTTT
Coined with the phrase ‘put the internet to work for you’. IFTTT stands for ‘if this then that’. it’s a tool that gives you control over the products and apps you love and use regularly. You can opt for either a do recipe or an if recipe. If recipes are such as ‘if i post a picture on Instagram then save the photo to dropbox. Recipes are connections between products and apps that you create, building yourself a web recipes you can use automatically. A great tool to solve some of the problems you cant find solutions for elsewhere.
69. Zapier
Zapier works more less like IFTT, but Zapier is more focused on businesses and the challenges they have. Zapier is normally the best when you need more deep solution, where IFTTT is often more simple solutions. It integrates apps seamlessly and is supported by over 400 apps.
70. Pocket
Pocket allows you to see something you want to read or view later and put it into your online pocket for later. You can put articles, videos or anything you fancy into your pocket and you’re able to save directly form your browser or via for example Twitter or one of the around 1.500 other apps.
It’s a great way to manage all of the knowledge that social media brings, but that can be so difficult to navigate in.
71. Crowdfire
Formally justunfollow, this tool is both for Instagram and Twitter. It helps you find inactive followers so you can unfollow them, while they also have some analyzing tools. The latest add is a Instagram scheduler. One of the more simple tools out there, but it covers many of the basic needs, so if that is all you have, there is no reason to choose a bigger system or more expensive service.
72. Bitly
Bitly is mostly know as an URL shortener, but it it has more power than that. The great value of Bitly is the ability to analyze your links. You probably know this company from the their URL shortener, but they actually also offer you to get one like that customized for your brand with all of the Analytics etc.
A great tool that gets more out of links!
73. ContentGems
Content gems allows you to quickly find and share the most valuable content on the web in an easy way. Being active on social media takes times and so does creating unique shareable content. Tools like Buffer can help you schedule content, but ContentGems actually helps you discover other content from out there, that you can easily plan to share within the system on your social platform.
A great tool to prove yourself as an expert within a specific tool. For my taste I prefer making the content myself, but this could be a great add on.
74. Klout
Klout is maybe something that a lot of people consider a bit of old school or a has been. There has been a lot of hype around the company and their rating system and they changed their focus multiple times. Putting that aside, Klout actually puts some numbers on people brands, helping you to connect to the right ambassadors to spread your word. They now offer a completely solution for this, so if you’re looking to get connected to the right people that can spread the word about your product, maybe you should check out Klout.
75. SharedCount
SharedCount is great, little tool. Insert a URL and see hos much it’s shared on different social media platforms. Great insights. Not much to add here, but a good tool to have in the tool box.
76. Vibeapp
Vibeapp gives you the ability to learn about your contacts for free. Once you’ve installed the app onto your computer, simply hover your mouse over an email ID and get full information about the person behind the email address. It’s a good research tool if you want to find out the name, designation, work history, social media handle and topics of interest of a person. If you’re someone who receives lots of emails each day, say a recruiter, then Vibeapp could be useful to research potential candidates quickly and effectively.
77. BuiltWith
With BuiltWith you can find out exactly what a website was built with. If you want to know what can of marketing software or tracking pixels a site uses then run it through BuiltWith. It’s a quick tool to use that can filtered further by traffic and location and others. The great thing is that it can be used to find leads. If you provide solution for people using a specific kind of server, software or technology you can easily find them with this tool. BuiltWith provides solutions for this.
If we have to stick to social media, you can for example see if there is a Facebook retargeting pixel on a site and which other marketing services they are using. It’s great for spying on competitors.
78. Tailwind
Pinterest has often been overlooked as an effective social media tool, but tailwind have provided the official Pinterest marketing develop partner. You can start off with a free trial and it’s trusted by over 35,000 brands and agencies such as Microsoft, Nike and eBay. With Tailwind, you can save time and schedule your pins by bulk uploading, and using the drag and drop calendar. You can measure how successful your pins were as well by viewing the deep insights on published content so you know exactly what is and isn’t working.
Graphic design tools
79. Pablo by Buffer
The creative image tool, by the guys over at Buffer. They help you create engaging images for your social media posts. You can choose from a series of images and fonts and designs, or even upload your own. Connecting pablo to your buffer and twitter account means you can share you photos effortlessly without any stress.
Check out Pablo by Buffer here.
80. Canva
Canva is really making graphic design simple, so everyone can do great looking design. Based on some very simple tools and a lot of templates and design elements you can very easy make design elements for a lot of different things, for example your social media.
Social media takes time, and here you can really save some time, by using good templates to create the creatives for your ads or posts, so they work better.
I’m a big fan of Canva even though I also use PhotoShop, but a lot of things are just faster to do in Canva. Should be mentioned that Guy Kawasaki is an investor in the company and we really like Guy Kawasaki, so that should be enough for just checking it out 🙂
81. GraphicRiver
This is not really a social media tool, but a database of a lot of graphic design elements, that you can buy. Most people working with social media thinks it takes a long time to do something probably, so buying great design and adjusting it to your design can be an easy way to look more professional and save some time.
Here you can find a whole section just with graphics for social media, like cover photo templates. They have over 5000 design templates in the social media category and in general it’s a good page to bookmark for the next time you need some simple graphic elements fast. This is a site I use again and again!
82. Photovisi
Photovisi enables you to easily create photo collages. First you choose a design, then you add the photos you need following that you simple save and share. It’s a quick way to do tasks that often without expensive software would take a long time. Great for creating collages for social media posts.
83. Easel.ly
Easel.ly is a web app that enables and empowers you to create and share visual images without having any prior design experience. If you want to start creating infographics or posters, this is a service that makes it super, super easy to get started.
Infographics can be awesome, but they are difficult to make, so using some tested templates is a great way to make more great content in less time.
84. Infogr.am
Infogr.am helps you create infographics and online charts. Many people avoid creating infographics, despite knowing how effective they can be, They avoid them because they are either too expensive to justify hiring a designer, or they lack the design skills to make it themselves. Infogr.am cuts out the middle man and allows you to make charts using their handy tool.
It’s super easy and they offer that you import data to create charts, that can make your social media posts, blog posts, website, newsletter or anything else look a lot more professional.
85. Visual.ly
Visual.ly is not a tool, but a service, where they have a big bunch of designers ready to create beautiful, custom design. They provide things like Infographics or social media design at a cheaper price than most agency. This could be a good service if the do-it-yourself-tools are not for you and you want to avoid the hassle of finding and communicating with a designer. These guys really have some tested processes.
86. Piktochart
Piktochart is another infographic tool which has been featured in both Forbes and The Guardian which promises infographics in under 10 minutes. You can choose from over 400 fully customizable themes so you get an aesthetically pleasing infographic every time. Another great tool to test if you want to do infographics.
87. InfographicTemplates
InfographicTemplates provides you with quality infographic templates that have been designed by experts. You can choose from different icons, resumes, templates or motion graphics. Most of the templates on there vary at an average price of $15 per template.
Check out InfographicTemplates here.
88. PicMonkey
Picmonkey is a free online photo editing tool which allows you to add filters to your photos. You can also add frames, text and effects before publishing them online. A simple and super quick tool to do some of the very basic editing things, if you don’t use Photoshop or other more complex software.
Outreach tools
89. Inkybee
Inkybee is a great tool if you’re looking for simple, smart blogger outreach. A suite of research and discovery tools have been built to help you audit and understand your client’s sectors. It begins by searching to discover blogs that are relevant to your niche. The list management tools allows you to create all sorts of lists to save your findings. From here you can contact the bloggers and manage it all in Inkybee so you have your whole outreach effort in one place.
Outreach takes time, it’s difficult to find the right ones to work with and there is a big risk that your inbox will look like a disaster, so it’s a great idea to put it in a system.
90. Buzzstream
Buzzstream is a tool, like InkyBee, to manage your outreach work. You can call it a CRM for outreach that helps you track progress and research online influensers, so you know who to focus on and work with. As mentioned above, if you’re serious about outreach having a system for it is a must have. Absolutely something to test out.
91. GroupHigh
GroupHigh is a another blogger outreach and influencer management software. GroupHigh does more or less the same as the ones mentioned above, so I think it’s up to you to test them all and see which one works best with your specific needs.
92. BlogDash
BlogDash is a good tool to help you reach your dream customers through their opt-in blogger community. This is not just a system to manage these contacts, but the platform to find the right bloggers to work with. You know that all bloggers on this platform is looking for partnerships, which just makes the initial contact much better.
93. Rapportive
Rapportive is a great, great tool for Gmail. You add the system to your Gmail and each time you open an email Rapportive tries to find as much info about the person your emailing with as possible. It takes data from LinkedIn providing you with some insights about the person you’re about to respond to that would normally not have, unless you did some manual research.
I have been a long time fan of Rapportive and one reason why, is that this system just makes emails more personal by putting a face on the person you’re writing with. If you use Gmail you HAVE to have this! A great way to utilize social media.
94. FindThatLead
FindThatLead is a browser extension for finding email adresses based on LinkedIn profiles. Using FindThatLead you are able to find out information about your prospects. Once you create an account, you can run email searches by providing them with a first name, last night and company URL. From there they check various sources and return a validated email for the profile. If they’re unable to find an email they will send all the variations they found.
The fundation for this company was actually created at one of our trip to Barcelona, by the spanish CEO Gerard Compte 🙂
Social media reputation management / review mangement tools
95. Chatmeter
Chatmeter is a tool to monitor a local brand (like a shop) and follow reviews and discussions about that locations on social media and blogs. They have solutions for chains, so you can see how your locations compares. You can also spy on competitors. At the same time Chatmeter is also a tool for tracking your local SEO in one place.
A really great choice for a local business!
96. Reputology
With Reputology you can monitor your online reputation. Listen on all social channels, engage with all of your customers and identify key areas for improvement. What I really like about this tool is that you don’t only can check out competitors, you can also benchmark against competitors so you can follow your progress compared to the other guys in the market.
97. Reviewpush
Reviewpush is an online review monitoring and management tool made easy. It collects all of your reviews and puts them into one place so you never have to miss a review again. This could be great for products that might have reviews in obscure places and ensures you see all the reviews and can respond to them in a timeless manner. More and more sites have review of businesses, so if you find it hard to follow everywhere, then you can use this to find everything in one place.
98. ReviewTrackers
ReviewTrackers does what other tools also does, with giving you a tool to managing and analyzing your reviews. This is great for businesses with a lot of different locations, since they have a focus on that. It’s a one-stop solution for getting an overview of your reviews like a bunch of tools, so you have to test the tools, to get an idea about what works best for you. ReviewTrackers also provides insights and email notifications – like most of the other tools.
Check out ReviewTrackers here.
99. Mention
Mention ensures you don’t miss anything that happens on the web about your brand, so you can react and join the conversation quickly. Mention also provides some Analytics on your online presence and how you interact with the people talking about you out there. They also have team solutions, where a team can share alerts and tasks can be put to the right person. For smaller projects I would recommend just using Google Alerts, but for bigger brands that really needs to monitor their brand closely, Mention is probably one of the absolutely best solutions.
100. Google Alerts
Google Alerts is probably one of the most simply ways to monitor the web. You can get email notifications any time Google finds new results on a topic that interests you, for example when your brand is mentioned some where. The limit of Google Alerts is that they only include stuff that they can crawl and thereby only stuff that is shown in Google. It’s my impression that there are tools out there that is better for monitoring for example Facebook.
What is your favourite tool?
Have experience with some of these tools? Know another tool that is awesome? Share it in the comments.
If you have any questions about the tools and my experience, you’re more than welcome to write in the comments and I will help as much as possible!