Social media is now a vital aspect of today’s business world. Regardless of industry, businesses and corporations are taking to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and a host of other platforms in order to engage with customers and boost brand awareness.

Amongst all the likes and retweets, how can the value of social media activity be measured and tailored towards business goals and strategy? With so meany platforms promising organisation, detailed analytics and brand boosting features, it is difficult to seperate what should be ‘liked’ and what should be resigned to the social media archives.

Here, CBR runs down the best social media tools which can be deployed by businesses in order to keep ahed of the social media curve.

1. Hootsuite

Created by Ryan Holmes in 2008, Hootsuite is a social media management system for brand management.

The Hootsuite concept was born when founder Holmes needed a tool to manage multiple social media networks at his digital services agency, Invoke Media. Finding no product in the market, he Holmes set about developing his own platform.

The Hootsuite name came from a competition in February 2009, where Holmes offered $500 for someone to rename what at that time was called BrightKit. Out of 100,000 submissions, Matt Nathan scooped the prize with a name which played on the dashboard owl logo and was a play on words with the French expression "tout de suite", meaning "right now".

The company operates a freemium model, meaning the service is free to users, but additional features beyond the basic package are paid for. Online brand and message updates can be managed across a variety of social media using a browser based dashboard. Social media platforms which can be managed in the dashboard include Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Foursquare, MySpace, WordPress, TrendSpottr and Mixi.

Notable users of Hootsuite include the Obama administration, HBO and The Virgin Group.

2. Sprout Social

Sprout Social started in 2009, when CEO Justyn Howard was working at an enterprise software company looking for a tool that would help him use social media to connect with customers. After finding a lack of suitable products, Howard founded Sprout Social Inc in 2010.

Sprout Social enables social communication for business through publishing, engagement and analytics. The web-based application allows, through a single interface, social media management, social media marketing, social customer service and social media analytics. With social media management, businesses can manage communications across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ from one unified stream of messages in Sprout’s Smart Inbox.

Particularly useful for those wanting to communicate and aid online customers, the social customer service allows customer care teams to connect with customers, solve issues and create brand advocates. Sprout’s tasking feature allows users to assign messages to the appropriate team member, while the social CRM feature logs all conversation history between the profile and the user. Sprout integrates with Zendesk and UserVoice.

Notable customers include Spotify, Hyatt, Pepsico, and Dove.

3. Buffer

Launched in Birmingham, UK, by Joel Gascoigne, Buffer is a software application designed to manage social networks. It enables users to schedule posts to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn all from one platform.

Particularly useful for large companies with multiple accounts, Buffer allows users to schedule posts sent through the application to the user’s social media accounts. There are various timeslots users can choose, which are based on peak social media times. Compatible with browser, mobile and newsreader, Buffer can schedule and post updates to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, App.net and Google+.

Additional features such as RSS feeds, more detailed analytics and an increased limit of 100 posts at any single time are available through the paid plan – dubbed Awesome.

Buffer also offers Buffer for business, an extension of the application tailored for corporations. The cost of Buffer for Business depends on the scale and size of the business, with three categories offered corresponding to different payment plans. Small Business caters for 25 social media accounts and access to 5 individuals, Medium Business caters for 50 accounts with access open to 10 individuals, while Large Business or Agency allows 50 social media accounts and access for 10 individuals.
Business for Buffer offers more detailed analytics, team collaboration features and exporting options.

4. TweetDeck

Originally launched as an independent Twitter app by Iain Dodsworth, TweetDeck has growing into one of the most popular twitter applications since first appearing in 2008.

Unlike other platforms listed here, TweetDeck is used for the sole management of Twitter accounts. However, after the platform was acquired in 2011 by Twitter, other social networks were incorporated into the TweetDeck interface. As of 2013, all other social media accounts bar Twitter were removed from the service.

TweetDeck consists of a series of customisable columns, which users can tailor to display their timeline, mentions, direct messages, trends, favourites, hashtags, or all tweets by or to a single user. TweetDeck offers automatic and invisible URL shortening, as well as immediate or scheduled delivery for all tweets. Users are able to oversee all accounts and tweet from multiple accounts simultaneously.

5. Klout

The controversial Klout was launched in 2008 by Joe Fernandez and Binh Tran, providing a measure of a user’s online social influence.

Klout uses Bing, Facebook, Foursquare, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Wikipedia data to create Klout user profiles, giving a user a ‘Klout Score’ ranging from 1 to 100. Twitter data points are blended with other social media networks in order to create the score, supplemented with three nominally more specific measures, which Klout calls "true reach," "amplification" and "network impact."

Free to use, the primary business model for Klout involves companies paying Klout for Perks campaigns, in which a company offers free services or products to Klout users who match a pre-defined set of criteria. While Klout users who receive Perks are under no obligation to write about them, the hope is that they will effectively advertise the products on social media.

In efforts to tailor Klout to businesses and companies, Klout announced its intention to begin displaying business analytics in March 2013 with the aim of helping business and brand users learn about their online audiences.

Klout has received criticism owing to its methodology, with many saying that the Klout Score is not a true representation of a person’s online influence. A past example of this being when President Barack Obama scored lower than a number of bloggers.