It doesn’t make sense to jump in and use all new social media tools that come along just because everyone else is or because you think they’re “cool.” No one can really afford to be that unproductive with their time (or if they can, that alone speaks volumes). At Social Implications, we’re big advocates of cutting through the noise by narrowing down the social media tools you use to the ones best suited for your target market or audience.
That said, you can’t choose the best social media tools for your business (or even personal networking) unless you know what’s out there. With that in mind we’ve put together a list of 101 social media tools you should know about. We’ve broken them down for you by category below. Note though that we’re not including some of the biggest staples in social media — Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. Rather we’ll focus on tools to help you get more out of the sites you’re already using or social media tools that you might not have heard of yet. Links in each section are in no particular order. Enjoy!
Social Networking
There are countless social networks on the Web today, letting you do everything from network with old classmates to joining communities with likeminded folks who share similar hobbies or business interests. But what happens when existing social networks don’t really serve your needs? You can start your own! Whether you’re interested in building a niche social network or one around your brand, here are some tools to help you do that.
Ning — As of July 20th, plans range from $2.95 – 49.95 per month.
GoingOn Community Platform — Emphasis on educational use
BuddyPress — Create a social network on the WordPress platform
Elgg.org — An open source social networking platform
Boonex Dolphin — Feature-rich and free; Prime option also available
SocialGo — Setup a free social network or purchase premium access to monetize your site.
Crowdvine — Build a self-hosted or professionally set up community around your conference or other event.
KickApps – Add social networking capabilities and other social media elements to your existing website.
Snapville – Social networking solution focused on employee and customer engagement
Cisco’s Eos Platform — Social networking and content management platform for the entertainment industry
Blogging
Blogging is one of the older aspects of social media, around even before the “social media” label really took hold. Blogs allow you to keep your customers up-to-date on company news. They allow you to have conversations with your audience. They serve as platform elements for professionals looking to build exposure and gain a solid reader base. They’re used in PR. They’re used in marketing. They’re used as private journals. They’re used to host content sites. They’re even used as business models all on their own. So let’s take a look at some blogging platforms you can use to set up your own new blog. The list below includes both hosted and self-hosted (you need your own hosting account) platforms.
WordPress.com – Free hosted solution
WordPress.org – Free self-hosted blog platform
WordPress MU – Create a multi-user blog network using WordPress.
b2evolution
Blogger
Typepad
Vox
Moveable Type – Commercial
Moveable Type – Open source
LiveJournal — For more personal blogging in most cases
Posterous
Serendipity
Blog Comment Management Tools
Sometimes the comment management tools built into your blog platform just aren’t enough. Here are a couple of extra options you might want to look into either to help you manage comments or encourage more of them.
CommentLuv – WordPress plugin
Disqus
Subscribe to Comments – WordPress plugin
Microblogging Services and Tools
Chances are good that you’ve already heard of Twitter (and are using it). But there are other microblogging options out there, and plenty of tools to help you more efficiently manage your Twitter account to weed out some of that social media noise. Here are some of those tools and services.
Tumbler – Microblogging service
Jaiku — Microblogging service
TweetDeck
HootSuite
TweetStats
Seesmic
Twitterrific
Group Tweet
Friend or Follow — Find out if the people you follow also follow you back.
TwitPic
Tweet Backup
URL Shorteners
Speaking of microblogging services and their limited character counts, let’s take a look at some URL shorteners currently available. These can condense your long URLs (that might not fit in a Tweet or other post) into a much shorter form. Some even allow link stats tracking.
Bit.ly
TinyURL
Cli.gs
Is.gd
doiop.com
SnipURL.com
Forum Software
Like what we traditionally think of as social networks, forums allow us to build communities around a niche, company, product, or anything else we’d like. If you think a forum would be better suited to your audience than a social network setup, then consider one of these forum software options.
vBulletin
PHPBB
Simple Machines Forum (SMF)
Vanilla Forums
MyBB
Invision Power Board
bbPress
Social Bookmarking / Sharing
Social media is about more than conversations. It’s also about empowering members of your community to share what you have to offer, or “vote” if you will. There are several sharing, aggregation, and social bookmarking tools available to let them do that. Here are a few you might want to use or somehow incorporate into your website or blog.
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Sphinn
Slashdot
Newsvine
AddThis
ShareThis
Document, Video, and Photo Sharing Services
Social media encompasses all types of media. Users want to be able to share information, videos, photos, and other images in addition to their thoughts. If you’re one of those users, you might get some use out of the following social media tools.
YouTube
Flickr
Vimeo
Scribd
Picasa Web Albums
DocStoc
MetaCafe
Blip.tv
Daily Motion
PhotoBucket
Online Collaboration
Sometimes being able to share documents online isn’t enough. You need online collaboration tools like the ones listed below where your work group can collectively edit and save documents while you collaborate on projects.
Zoho
Google Docs
BaseCamp
WriteBoard
ReviewBasics (Disclosure: ReviewBasics is a former client of SI’s Jennifer Mattern.)
Podcasting
Podcasting is a sometimes overlooked area of social media. But if your audience could be effectively reached through a podcast or other type of audio show, you might be able to put these podcasting tools to use.
PodBean
BlogTalkRadio
Audacity – Free recording software
Podomatic
Wikis
Love it or hate it, we’ve probably all heard of Wikipedia. But why not create your very own wiki on your company site or related to a niche you love? Pull people together with some of the following wiki software options.
MediaWiki
Confluence
TWiki
BrainKeeper
Online / Social Learning
Social media goes far beyond personal and even business use. It can also be used in education. If you’re with an educational institution or organization, or you’d like to add online courses and other learning materials to your site, these social and online learning tools could come in handy.
Moodle
Blackboard
Articulate e-Learning Software
Joomla Learning Management System (LMS)
Social Media Search
There is a lot of noise in social media that you have to sort through on a regular basis if you want to stay productive. These social media search tools can help.
Technorati
Google Blog Search
Google Alerts
Yahoo! Alerts
Bing’s Social Search
SocialMention.com
Google Social Search
SocialSearch.com SearchWiki
Social Media Monitoring and Metrics
There’s rarely a way to completely and accurately measure social media. Most tools have their faults and most metrics can be manipulated. That doesn’t mean you should ignore the information you can access though. Social media monitoring and metrics-related tools like the ones below can give you a solid snapshot of trends resulting from your social media work.
Twitalyzer
Feedburner – Track RSS subscriber stats.
PostRank
Omniture Site Catalyst
Performancing Blog Metrics
Google Analytics
Compete
Alexa
By no means do these represent all social media tools currently available. Do you have favorites not in this list? Share them in a comment below!
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