Now that 2018 is here and in full swing, you might be looking for new social media tools to add to your marketing stack.
According to Scott Brinker of the Chief Marketing Technologist Blog, there are now more than 5,000 tools in the marketing technology landscape2Chief Marketing Technologist Blog, 2017.
So where do you start?
As part of our State of Social Media 2018 campaign, we partnered with the team at Product Hunt to put together a list of the latest trending social media tools for marketers to try in 2018.
Keep reading to see the full list and learn how to use the tools, or click over to the Product Hunt collection with all of 2018’s best social media tools.
The 20 best new social media tools to try in 2018
Here’s an overview of all the 20 social media tools (not arranged in any order). Feel free to click on any that catches your eye to skip to it!
I’m sure I’m missing some of the great new social media tools out there. If you know of any, it’ll be great if you could share them in the comments section below.
1. Crello
A simplified graphic design tool with 10,000 free templates
Price: Free (with some design elements at $0.99)
Description: Crello is a new, free graphic design tool for creating social media, web, and print images. It provides 10,000 free design templates and millions of stock images and free design elements.
How to use Crello:
You can either create a graphic from scratch or use one of Crello’s nicely-created templates. Using drag-and-drop, you can easily add, edit, and move design elements around on your graphic.
Here’s a quick video on how to create a graphic with Crello:
Now, you can even create animated designs with Crello!
Here’s what a Product Hunter has to say:
2. Fastory
Craft stunning Instagram stories, share them everywhere
Price: Free or enterprise pricing
Description: Fastory is like Canva for Stories, as a Product Hunter described it. It’s an online graphics editor that allows you to create animated or static stories easily.
How to use Fastory:
The Fastory editor will guide you through three simple steps to create an engaging story.
- Choose an animation for your text
- Choose or upload a video or photo
- Add your logo
When you “publish” your stories on Fastory, it will send the stories to your email. You can then download them on your mobile phone and upload onto Instagram or Snapchat.
Note: Stories created with the free version come with a Fastory branding in the lower-left corner.
Here’s what a Product Hunter has to say:
3. Storyheap
Manage your Snapchat & Instagram Stories
Price: $49 per month, $99 per month, or $199 per month (with a 7-day free trial)
Description: Storyheap might be the only tool around that lets you manage your Instagram and Snapchat Stories — create, schedule, and analyze your stories — from a single dashboard.
How to use Storyheap:
Storyheap works like most social media management tools, except that it focuses on stories only. To schedule a story, upload an image or video and select your posting time. Storyheap will then add that story to your queue.
Besides creating and scheduling stories, you can also see the performance of your stories (e.g. views and screenshots) and the growth of your accounts (e.g. followers, average views, and open rate).
It might be good to note that some people are concerned about whether Storyheap is violating Instagram and Snapchat’s Terms of Service, though Storyheap seemed to have found a workaround that doesn’t violate the terms.
Here’s what a Product Hunter has to say:
4. Botletter
Send newsletters on Facebook Messenger
Price: Free (for 1,000 messages every month), $23.50 per month, $53.60 per month, $85.50 per month, or custom pricing
Description: Facebook Messenger is growing as a promising marketing channel. With Botletter, you can grow your Messenger subscriber list, send your subscribers messages on Messenger (or botletters), and analyze your performance.
How to use Botletter:
Using Botletter is very similar to using most email marketing tools. The main difference is that while you send emails with email marketing tools, you send Messenger messages with Botletter.
Besides crafting your message, you can also add a Messenger card with an image, title, and call-to-action.
Here’s what a Product Hunter has to say:
5. PixelMe
URL shortener for savvy marketers
Price: $10 per month, $29 per month, $79 per month, or custom pricing (with a 7-day free trial)
Description: PixelMe is an URL shortener that allows you to include a retargeting pixel in a link. When people click on your PixelMe links, you’ll be able to retarget them with ads on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and more.
How to use PixelMe:
All you have to do to set up your PixelMe account is to add the pixel IDs of the ad platforms you want to use. For example, for Facebook ads, that would be the Facebook Pixel.
Once you have done that, simply copy and paste your link into PixelMe and let it generate a shortened link for you. Now, share away! When enough people click on that link, you’ll be able to create a custom audience in the ad platforms and retarget them with a very relevant ad.
Here’s what a Product Hunter has to say:
6. Promo
The easiest way to create marketing videos, from Slidely
Price: $49 per month, $99 per month, $199 per month, $359 per month, or enterprise pricing (You can try the editor for free and pay only when you want to download any videos.)
Description: Promo claims to be the easiest video maker on the market (and many Product Hunters agree with the ease of use). With a library of over 2.8 million premium video clips and licensed music, Promo can help you create high-quality videos in just a few minutes.
How to use Promo:
To get started, you can search and choose a video from Promo’s massive library or upload your own video clips. Promo’s videos come with nicely designed text placeholders so all you have to do next is enter your copy and logo. Promo would have even picked a music for you (though, you can change it if you want to).
Here’s what a Product Hunter has to say:
7. Typito
Create stunning videos fast, easy, and online
Price: Free, $5 per month, $30 per month, or enterprise pricing (with a 7-day free trial. You can pay $5 per video to remove the Typito watermark.)
Description: Typito has been described as “Canva for video”. Its drag-and-drop interface allows you to quickly create engaging videos with beautiful typography, images, and videos.
How to use Typito:
Once you upload your video clips and images to Typito, you can easily add text, icons, and music to your video. With its simple interface, you can change the text style, change the font, drag and move it around, and more.
In addition, you can convert your video into a landscape video, a square video, a letterbox video, or a vertical video with just a click. (We found that our square and letterbox videos receive the higher average engagements, views, and completion rate on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter than our landscape videos.)
Here’s what a Product Hunter has to say:
8. Anchor Videos
Magically transform audio to video and share it anywhere
Price: Free
Description: Anchor Videos is a new feature in Anchor, a popular audio network app, which allows you to turn your audio recordings into beautifully animated videos with your transcript.
How to use Anchor Videos:
Once you have recorded your audio using the Anchor app, tap on the video button. Anchor will instantly transcript your audio and let you share an animated video of your audio and transcript to the various social media platforms. You’ll be able to check and edit the transcript before creating the video.
Here’s a quick video on how to do that:
Here’s what a Product Hunter has to say:
9. Adioma
Infographic maker based on visual language
Price: $39 per month, $69 per month, $299 per month, or custom pricing from $10,000 per infographic onwards
Description: The people behind the popular Funders and Founders infographics created Adioma so that people can create similar awesome infographics easily.
How to use Adioma:
To create an infographic with Adioma, simply type the text you want to include. Adioma will do the design work for you — it’ll suggest relevant icons, automatically adapt the design to the amount of text you have, and more.
You can even upload all your text at once, and Adioma will generate the infographic! Here’s a quick walkthrough of Adioma:
Here’s what a Product Hunter has to say:
10. Smartmockups 2.0
Create stunning product screenshots without using Photoshop
Price: $69 (There’s a free trial where the mockups created will have a watermark.)
Description: Smartmockups lets you create photos of your product (digital, print, or apparel) in realistic backgrounds, without needing help from a designer.
How to use Smartmockups:
You can create an awesome-looking mockup of your product in just four steps:
- Select a mockup (such as a laptop, a business card, or a t-shirt)
- Upload your image (or grab a screenshot from a URL)
- Adjust your mockup (such as change the device color or add a background)
- Export your mockup in the size and quality you prefer
Here’s a quick GIF of how it looks like to create a mockup with Smartmockups:
Here’s what a Product Hunter has to say:
11. ContentStudio
Data-driven content suite to grow your social accounts
Price: Free, $15 per month, $47 per month, $97 per month, $197 per month, or enterprise pricing
Description: ContentStudio is a social media content curation tool that allows you to discover content, schedule posts, and automate campaigns.
How to use ContentStudio:
A main focus of ContentStudio, as its name might have suggested, is to help you find content quickly. Using its discovery feature, you can search for a particular topic, select content sources, and filter the content as you prefer.
Once you have found the content you want to share on your social media profiles, you can share it using ContentStudio’s composer, which will recommend images and hashtags for your post.
Here’s what a Product Hunter has to say:
12. Campsite
Turn a single bio link into unlimited
Price: Free
Description: Campsite solves a problem that many Instagram marketers face — having only one link for the entire Instagram account — by creating a mobile-friendly page where you can list multiple links.
How to use Campsite:
To add a new link to your Campsite page, enter the link title and URL and toggle the “Enabled” switch.
If you want people to know that a link is associated with a particular Instagram post, you can select that Instagram post and the image would appear beside the link.
Here’s what a Product Hunter has to say:
13. Tagwin
Instagram contests & giveaways made easy
Price: Free, $19 per month, $29 per month, $49 per month, or $79 per month
Description: Running Instagram contests is a great way to drive engagement and reach on Instagram. Tagwin makes the process simple and easy.
How to use Tagwin:
It takes only a few minutes to set up your contest in Tagwin. You can set the entry conditions such as to follow your account and to like a post. Once you have set up the contest, you can track the contest entries on the Tagwin dashboard.
Here’s what a Product Hunter has to say:
14. Insense
Facebook and Instagram ads on behalf of influencers
Price: $299 for 25 creator deals per month, $999 for 50 creator deals per month, or enterprise pricing (Product Hunters get a discount)
Description: Influencer marketing is becoming more and more popular on social media. Insense is a platform that connects you with influencers and lets you manage and run sponsored influencer campaigns.
How to use Insense:
First, you have to create a campaign brief that’ll be read by the relevant influencers. Interested influencers will then respond to your campaign brief.
Once you have decided which influencers to work with, you can communicate with them through the Insense platform. When the sponsored post is published, you can even boost the influencers’ posts using Facebook Ads Manager.
Here’s a short walkthrough of creating an influencer campaign with Insense:
Here’s what a Product Hunter has to say:
15. Quuu Promote 3.0
Promote your content to influencers
Price: Starting from $40 per month
Description: Quuu is a social media tool that suggests content for your social media sharing. Quuu Promote, on the other hand, lets you promote your content by suggesting it to the regular Quuu users.
How to use Quuu Promote:
To promote your content through Quuu Promote, you just have to create the social media post you want Quuu users to share, and select the interest group that your content belongs to. After your post is reviewed, it will be suggested to Quuu users who want content suggestions from that interest group, and then shared on social.
Here’s what a Product Hunter has to say:
16. Lisa
Machine learning-powered engagement predictor for Instagram
Price: Free
Description: You likely have taken multiple photos and couldn’t decide which one to post on Instagram. Lisa, using its machine learning algorithm, can help you with that.
How to use Lisa:
When you are not sure which photo to post, select those that you’re considering in the Lisa app. Lisa will analyze the photo and recommend the photo that it thinks will be most liked on Instagram.
Lisa will also suggest relevant hashtags to use with the photo.
Here’s what a Product Hunter has to say:
17. Story Slicer
Cut long videos into slices to post on your Instagram story
Price: $1.99
Description: Story Slicer helps you split your long videos into short clips so that you can post them as stories on Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and more.
How to use Story Slicer:
Using Story Slicer is as simple as picking a video and selecting your preferred platform for the clips. Story Slicer will split your video into appropriate length and save them in your camera roll.
Here’s what a Product Hunter has to say:
18. MetaShort
Quickly change a link’s social media appearance
Price: Free or $10 per month
Description: If your social media posts often don’t appear the way you want them to be, MetaShort might be what you need. Using its simple interface, you can adjust how you want your Facebook and Twitter posts to look like, without having to touch the site’s meta tags yourself.
How to use MetaShort:
After you enter your URL on the MetaShort site, it will offer you several items to edit, such as title, keywords, and Twitter card style. When you use the URL that MetaShort has provided, your social media link post should appear on Facebook and Twitter as you have configured.
You can get statistics, such as clicks, on the Pro plan, which costs $10 per month.
Here’s what a Product Hunter has to say:
19. Station
One app to rule them all
Price: Free
Description: As a social media manager, you likely have many web applications (such as Trello, Pocket, and hopefully, Buffer) opened at the same time. Station lets you unite all those apps into one beautifully-built workstation and boosts your productivity.
How to use Station:
After you log in to Station, you can add all the applications you use frequently to your workstation. Station works with more than 300 applications (and is integrating more).
Once you’re set up, you can easily switch between applications using keyboard shortcuts or its search function, check your notifications across all your applications from a single place, and enter focus mode to stay distraction-free.
Here’s a short overview of Station:
Here’s what a Product Hunter has to say:
20. Planable
The command center for your social media team
Price: Free, $49 per month, or enterprise pricing
Description: Planable is a collaboration and planning tool for social media teams. Instead of using a combination of tools such as Dropbox and Google Sheets, you can get feedback, discuss ideas, and schedule posts from a single location.
How to use:
A workspace in Planable is a mock Facebook Page (or Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn profile). When you create and save a new post, your post will appear on the Facebook Page as though it has been published.
Your colleagues can then give you feedback by adding comments on the side, and you can edit the post accordingly before scheduling or publishing it.
Here’s what a Product Hunter has to say:
What are your favorite new social media tools?
I believe there are many great new social media tools that I’ve missed and left out from this blog post.
Would you be up for sharing your favorite ones so that fellow readers (and I) can try them? I’m excited to chat about them with you in the comments section below. Thank you!
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Image credit: Unsplash
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