Great effort Kevan. I liked it.

Good collection of the social tools for the business.

Wot no Hootsuite?!

Buffer is an excellent product but no mention of Hootsuite rather invalidates the integrity of this article.

We use both at http://www.fabmin.com and both work very well.

Roger Lightfoot
Co-founder, Fabmin - Taking the hassle out of managing staff holidays

Roger, it doesn't invalidate the integrity of this article. It's clear that these 2 platforms compete with each other. And following your way of thinking why didn't he mention Oktopost? Or anything else?

The answer is very simple - you don't send customers to other restaurant if you still have seats available at yours. Especially if you know your food is better ;)

Guys at Buffer create great content, wonderful blog experience, and it's their complete right to not include apps they don't approve. Some apps don't deserve to be on this list and they're not. ;)

Disagree. If they are being transparent then they would list the best tools, not omit ones that compete with them.

We just started using a tool called http://GroupTweet.com in our newsroom and its a pretty great way to allow multiple people to seamlessly Tweet from a Twitter account without sharing the password.

Its great, because it allows our employees to Tweet from the company account simply by sending a DM to the company account or adding a hashtag to their Tweets. Employees love it because they can continue to use Twitter for iPhone or Tweetbot instead of having to log into some cumbersome and overwhelming social media dashboard and learn the latest and greatest new thing.

I highly suggest you check it out Kevan!

Looks like a useful tool, thanks!

How about Brand24.net for social listening and analysis? Nice, efficient, affordable tool which gives an instant access to every mention on the Internet, reliable results, statistics (i.e. reach, influence, sentiment) and allows to react fast, check customers opinions, find leads, track competitor etc. I find it really helpful!

#Hootsuite for managing and scheduling social media posts. Even the free version Is very robust!

Wow--great list, but obvious high powered snub of two of Buffer's biggest competitors--Hootsuite and Sprout Social. Interesting.

Exactly. How can we trust buffer to make recommendations if they are obviously NOT posting some of the top tools because simply aren't being transparent. It's called disarmament. Marcus Sheridan talks quite a bit about it. Be 100% honest, and you'll gain a lot more from it then if you are obviously hiding a competitor that you are intimidated by.

Thanks for calling us out on this. We have an updated list here in case it's helpful: https://buffer.com/library/...

Great tools! I learned a lot. But, the one tool I loved the most is infogr.am and piktochart. I've been wanting to create infographics for a while now. Thank you.

This is great to hear, Virginia! If you ever need a hand, we are here to help :)
- Jacqueline Jensen, Community Evangelist at Piktochart

Keven thanks for the list,
Would have loved to see my application http://Unfollowers.com (@unfollowersme) on the list :)

Great site. Thanks man !!

Kevan, great list of tools! A few new positions for me. Appreciate it.
Please also test our platform www.fanpoint.com
Place where U can create, manage and analyze Social Media Campaigns :)

Love the visuals here, Szymon! Will be keen to give this a closer look. :)

Thanks Kevan! I appeciate it :) U can test our platform for free. It would be great to get feedback from you.

I find a lot of value in CrowdBooster for FB pages and Twitter.

Looks really interesting, Nik! I'll add this one to my must-try list.

Wow this must've been quite the homework assignment.

Also, Hootsuite...? Definitely one of the most popular small business social media tools. But they are Buffer's biggest competition as well, aren't they?

Hootsuite definitely has some crossover with Buffer, Evan. But it's absolutely a deserving tool for this list. Thanks for mentioning it! :)

Hootsuite is a dashboard and Buffer works well as scheduler. I like to use both.

Great list, iv recently built www.metricsgram.com
Free Instagram Insights & Metrics on ANY instagram account

it would be awesome if you could test this and give me your thoughts :)

This is super helpful, thanks!

Top way to manage social media is to utilise them and construct your social media profiles, Education and guidelines/policies are needed before your take into social media.

HootSuite and Mr. Social www.mrsocial.me (both not on the list!) for me

Check out www.brandgauge.com for monitoring social media metrics. You can also cross analyze social data such number of Facebook Likes/Tweets a certain YouTube clip has.

It's also free!

Ever consider using target=_blank on your links?

and for Gmail users there's http://flashissue.com for creating rapid email newsletters from online content:

Oh Kevan -- another one I just discovered is Tagboard. It creates a "bulletin board" of tweets based on hashtags in real time -- it's really cool! https://www.tagboard.com/

Really a good collection of social tools

Great list and arguments for the listed ones. As all I would add some which I use and consider great:
- Brand24 - great for social media analysis
- Podio - as a planning platform
- Klout - but maybe not so great for companies
But in the end Buffer (and IFTTT) rule them all :-)))

Thanks for mentioning Brand24.net! I hope you still love it :)

Hi Kevan.
Thanks a lot for this amazing list. I already tried few of them. I would like to mention that i used several times http://www.linktotweet.com to share my tweets.

Huge list! Must have been a lot of work. Like you said it is hard not to miss any. Try SocialSensr, we have been working on it for the past two years and are about to release our tool!
http://socialsen.sr/iZ9PL

Kevan, I'm a recently new reader to Buffer. I have to say this list came at the perfect time! I'm working on a social media talk for next week, and I will include your list as a resource for my audience. So many great tools along with helpful descriptions! Thank you for putting this together!

I just started using SproutSocial.com and have been really happy with it so far. Facebook/Twitter/GooglePlus/Analytics/etc. Very nice. Would add to the list.

Awesome addition, Jessica! Might need to come up with another 61 tools ... :)

This is a great resource Kevan, awesome job!

Wow, thanks for doing this homework. I will be enjoying this list over a cup of coffee.

I'm several pots in over 4 days! :)

Better make it two! (I wrote a lot.) :)

Great and very useful list. Really awesome job and thanks for sharing this list. Coffee is ready and I'm starting exploring some of listed tools

Good collection of the social tools for the business.

Must be useful tools. I'd be really glad if there was an app for the word point. This is really useful for small businesses in social media too.

Nice list - can only imagine how much effort it must have taken for you to collate this.
Talkwalker Alerts :http://www.talkwalker.com/a...
is a free social media monitoring tool that is excellent for reputation management. You should check it out Kevan!

Effective tools for social media small business. And also an informative one.

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