Social media is nearly as ubiquitous a communication tool as email. Whether you have a little or a lot of experience using channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Foursquare, Tumblr, and (need I go on?) others, there are additional tools you can use to simplify, augment, or better analyze your online social communication and its effects.
If you're brand-new to the wide world of online social networking or campaigning, several very good businesses have developed classes where you can learn both the basics and more advanced tips. Pros and social media business managers or marketers may be interested to hear about seminars and courses that cover best practices, best practices in social media campaigns, and social media marketing "bootcamps" (which often include information about search engine optimization as well). I've named some of my favorite sites and services below.
Experienced networkers, whether tweeting and Facebook-ing for personal or business use, may already be familiar with social media aggregators such as TweetDeck, HootSuite, and Seesmic for iPhone, but a couple of more interesting contenders have recently joined their ranks. Some of the newer social media aggregation apps and services are still being beta-tested, but a few already show very promising advances in monitoring, searching, indexing, and analyzing all the information in your streams and feed.
Here are 21 apps, tools, and services for social media.
Where to Learn About Social Media
Let's say you're brand-new to social media… as in you've never even seen Facebook's homepage, much less know the first thing about Facebook apps or "at replies" in Twitter. Learning website Grovo (freemium, 3 stars) should be your first stop. Grovo, which teaches neophytes how to use Internet sites and services, keeps a fairly well stocked catalog of content for people who are uncomfortable with searching for answers on their own. For the most part, Grovo is a how-to guide, not a "why" analysis. It's more about instruction than objective analysis, strategy, or best practices. It's about learning the basics.
If Grovo sounds too basic, you can go straight to Social Media Marketing Bootcamp or another one of MediaBistro's Online Courses and Seminars (3.5 stars, prices vary). While online learning isn't for everyone, Mediabistro's classes—which can be several weeks long or one-time sessions—are welcoming to self-motivated learners who have basic computer skills. The classes help media professionals (and beginners) become or stay current with trends in digital publishing and marketing from the comfort of their homes or offices. Seminars typically meet weekly via Web-conferencing software, and guest speakers share their deep insights about the topic at hand. Other courses might meet only via text-chat. And some of the content is video-based, so you can watch it any time. One benefit of Mediabistro is that it usually has a live component, even if it's just a forum for asking questions. Of course, extra perks make the classes more expensive than some others.
AppSumo (prices vary, 3.5 stars), which has excellent online learning content for technology-minded businesses (very good deals on niche software tools, too), is another site to check out. Some of AppSumo's fantastic content covers social media, SEO, and online marketing. From what I've sampled, videos and PDFs make up the bulk of the courses—good if you want to take the watch the material at any time of day, and maybe multiple times, but bad if you desire real-time Q and A. AppSumo is much more fast-paced than Grovo.
When you launch your Internet browser, do you immediately open Twitter and Facebook? Do you log in to LinkedIn several times a week? Are you checking in your friends' whereabouts with Foursquare? If all these browser tabs are cluttering your screen, you need a social media aggregator, a tool that pulls in feeds from all these sites (and others, too) and centralizes them in one place. Here are a few to choose from:
The biggest name in social media aggregation (although not everyone likes its style) is probably TweetDeck. I rather like the TweetDeck desktop app (free, 4 stars), which marvelously condenses your social media profiles and data streams into one highly customizable application. The customization options can be overwhelming at first, but once you iron them out the way you want, it's a great free tool. Mobile versions, including the TweetDeck iPhone app (2.5 stars, free—shown) and TweetDeck iPad app (3.5 stars, free), are available, too.
Another well-known social media aggregator, HootSuite (free to $5.99 per month for Pro, 4 stars), consolidates your various feeds of information and activity into one place. Pay for the Pro versions if you're interested in a tool that makes social media easier to manage and delivers sophisticated reports.
Aggregator Seesmic has a number of different apps, but my favorite is the Seesmic Web app (3.5 stars, free). It gathers all your social media profiles into one window and lets you filter the information that each site delivers, giving you total control over your incoming streams, while helping your manage your outgoing messages, too. I wanted to like the Seesmic Desktop (free, 3 stars) more than I ultimately did because it lacks post scheduling (which is in the Web version). The desktop version's big advantage is it allows for plug-ins that add real value to power users, who can use them to add nearly any social account you can name, including such niche players as Ning, Ping.fm, 6dgree, and Zendesk.
Mobile users can of course pick up Seesmic for Android (free, 2 stars) and Seesmic for iPhone (free, not rated).
Twitter power users on Macs might want to investigate Hibari Mac app ($10, not rated), which does a thorough job of keeping your Twitter stream clean even if you follow thousands of people. It supports multiple accounts, can block and mute keywords that you enter, as well as retweets, and lets you silence users without unfollowing them. Another nice feature: Hibari interleaves your favorite search results into your home timeline, giving you quick access to the trends that matter to you.
An exciting new tool called X1 Pro 7 (beta) (free while in beta, 4 stars) not only aggregates, but also indexes and makes searchable a variety of information, beyond just your social platforms. It catalogues programs, files, and tasks, merging email, social media, and locally stored files into one dashboard. It does what it sets out to do pretty well, but conceptually, it may go too far in its quest for total amalgamation.
Somewhat similar to X1 Pro 7 is MultiMi (free, not rated), an installable desktop program that blends social networking and email into one tool. It's more about interacting—sending messages, updating your status on various platforms, sharing photos—than it is about searching and indexing. A special feature is that it supports some drag-and-drop capabilities across different online platforms; a few include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Gmail, Flickr, Picassa, and Hotmail.
Bonus! The Rule-Maker
This next beta product, while not an aggregator per se, does one really cool job. It lets you create rules or formulas between different social media applications. It goes by a shortened abbreviation for "If this, then that," ifttt (beta) (free, not rated). An example: "If someone tags me in Facebook, then send an SMS text message to my phone." Ifttt gives you graphical tools for easily writing and managing commands that tell your online services to carry out functions when triggered. Want another example? "If I mark with a star something from Google Reader, then add it as a new note in Evernote." You don't have to know a lick of code to use it.
Search, Measure, Analyze
Powerful search capabilities make Engagio (beta) (free, 4 stars) an absorbing platform for analyzing what's being said in your social circles. It also lets you manage interactions in a format that's reminiscent of Gmail. As a Web-based service, Engagio (at engag.io) is platform agnostic. Authenticate at least one social network with Engagio, although you'll want to add more than two to really see what it can do. The complete list of websites and services that integrate with Engagio currently is: Disqus, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Hacker News, Tumblr, Foursquare, and LinkedIn.
If all you use is Twitter, a search tool that's specific to that network called PostPost (free, not rated) lets you find Twitter content you may have lost or missed while you were daintily trying to sip from the ever-flowing gush of information. PostPost's Twitter search engine strips out the noise and delivers real-time and historical Tweets only from the most relevant people you follow (it identifies the top 200 people most relevant to you), making it a much more effective search tool than Twitter's own built-in search bar.
If you want to know how much influence your various social media accounts have, try checking your Klout (free, 3 stars) score. It's useful for business teams in which several people manage one social profile or page, but slightly less useful for individuals, mostly because it's difficult to act on some of the advice it gives.
If you don't like your Klout, you can always solicit a second opinion with Kred (beta) (free, not rated). Similar to Klout, Kred measures your influence in online communities. As you may have guessed by the name, Kred also seeks to include your "credibility" in determining your score, so it looks at which communities you influence rather than the whole big sprawling network of users. If you influence key people in your special interest communities, you'll earn more Kred. Good to know: Kred scores on a on a scale of 1 to 1,000, while Klout scores range 1 to 100.
Business and Enterprise
If you want to see what people are saying about your product, service, business, or maybe your competitors, here are two tools to investigate:
Enterprise tool SocialVolt (from $100 per brand per month and $5 per user per month, not rated) helps you manage social media across a business, from marketing and customer support to sales and product development. The platform supports multiple online social networks, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. SocialVolt can listen for and report mentions of your company and brand, and help businesses maintain control of their online reputation.
Similarly, SocialMention (freemium, not rated) is an online solution worth trying. It's a social media search platform that culls content from social sites that rely on user-generated content, such as blogs, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube—more than 80 online spaces in all. Type in a term and, if you like, specify which sites you'd like information from, and SocialMention curates a dashboard showing all kinds of information regarding what's being said about your term. Price: SocialMention is free to use generally. The company has made an API available that is free to use for up to 100 queries per day; for additional queries, SocialMention charges a fee based on use, from $100 per month for up to 25,000 queries.
For a complete list of all the products mentioned in this article, click through to the next page.
21 Apps and Tools for Social Media (Complete List)
1. AppSumo (prices vary, 3.5 stars)
2. Engagio (beta) (free, 4 stars)
3. Grovo (freemium, 3 stars)
4. Hibari Mac app ($10, not rated)
5. HootSuite (free to $5.99 per month for Pro, 4 stars)
6. ifttt (beta) (free, not rated)
7. Klout (free, 3 stars)
8. Kred (beta) (free, not rated)
9. MediaBistro (3.5 stars, prices vary)
10. MultiMi (free, not rated)
11. PostPost (free, not rated)
12. Seesmic Desktop (free, 3 stars)
13. Seesmic Web (free, 3.5 stars)
14. Seesmic for Android (free, 2 stars)
15. Seesmic for iPhone (free, not rated)
16. SocialMention (freemium, not rated)
17. SocialVolt (from $100 per brand per month and $5 per user per month, not rated)
18. TweetDeck desktop app (free, 4 stars)
19. TweetDeck iPhone app
(free, 2.5 stars)
20. TweetDeck iPad app
(free, 3.5 stars)
21. X1 Pro 7 (free while in beta, 4 stars)