27 Social media tools for business

Clarke McEwan Accountants

Social media isn't just about viral videos or selfies. For consumers, sites and apps such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are playing an increasingly large role in their path to purchase.

This is why it's so important for retailers to invest in social media marketing. Having a strong presence in relevant social networks not only gives you an avenue to communicate with your audience, it also allows you to stay in the radars of your customers. This in turn, increases the likelihood of a shopper choosing your brand when they're ready to buy.

To that end, we've compiled a list of tools you can use to streamline your social media efforts. From social network management apps that'll save you time, to social commerce solutions that'll enable you to sell products to your fans and followers, the following tools are essential for any retailer who wants to win at social.

Facebook

Call to Action buttons - Businesses can add call-to-action buttons on their Pages and ads. Admins can select from seven calls to action, including Book Now, Contact Us, Use App, Play Game, Shop Now, Sign Up, and Watch Video.

Check out this example from Tory Burch, which has a "Shop Now" button on its page.

To add a call-to-action button on your Page, click the "Create Call-to-Action" button found at the top part of your page, on your cover photo.

Facebook Bluetooth Beacons - Beacons have been a hot topic in the retail industry for some time, and it looks like Facebook now has its own Beacon initiative. The company launched Facebook Bluetooth beacons, which are devices that retailers can use to help customers learn more about the business whenever they visit the store. Retailers will be able to deliver certain information or messages to customers such as a welcome note or a prompt to "like" the business' page.

All you need to do is install the beacons in your store, and they will then connect with smartphone users who have Facebook location services turned on.

Facebook Bluetooth beacons can be requested for free here .

Woobox Custom Tab - Woobox lets you install customized tabs to your Facebook page. It lets you add forms, embed external sites, fangate content, and it even create your own tab designs.

LikeAlyzer - Need a quick analysis of your Facebook Page? Just enter your URL into LikeAlyzer's search field and it will generate a report that contains your page score, along with information on what you're doing right and what can be improved. It even offers recommendations to help boost Page performance.

Facebook word blocker and profanity filter - These tools make moderating comments a bit easier. The word blocker allows you to create filters that automatically hide comments or posts that contain words or phrases that you specify.

The profanity filter on the other hand, lets you restrict (or enable) certain levels of profanity for your page. According to the social network, "Facebook determines what to block by using the most commonly reported words and phrases marked offensive by the community."

You can find both these tools by clicking the Settings button at the top of your Page.

Twitter

Followerwonk - One of the most popular Twitter analytics solutions in the social realm, Followerwonk lets you "find, analyze, and optimize" for social growth. It offers features such as follower analysis, bio searches, follower tracking, and more.

Twitter Profile Analysis by Klear - This is a free tool that gives you a snapshot of how your (or anyone else's) Twitter profile is doing. It measures activity level, popularity, and responsiveness, and it also identifies top content.

Topsy - Want to see who's tweeting about your brand or any other topic? Just enter the term or phrase into Topsy's search field and it'll generate a list of Twitter users talking about the term or topic you searched for. You can even enter full URLs to see who's shared your content. Perfect if you want to check out the people tweeting out your content.

Tweepi - Tweepi is a great tool for managing friends and followers on Twitter. It lets you view and sort the users you're following, as well as those who aren't following you back.

Twitterfall - If you need to monitor Twitter trends in real-time, look no further. Twitterfall displays tweet searches as they happen. This is great if you're monitoring trends or events as they're happening. Many social media experts, including Kelly Mahoney, social media manager for CompTIA , use this tool when running or participating in Twitter chats.

"It's great because it allows you to visually display tweets in real-time. You can also retweet, reply, favorite, and follow people directly from the platform if you sign in to it through Twitter's API."

Instagram

Crowdfire - Crowdfire enables you to easily manage your Instagram follower and following lists. It lets you view your non-followers and offers features to help you clean up your account. It also has a "CopyFollowers" feature that lets you quickly view another account's followers. Perfect if you're looking to follow relevant accounts.

TakeOff - Another app by Crowdfire, TakeOff allows you to schedule your Instagram posts at the most optimal times. It calculates the best time to post based on when your audience is most likely to be online, increasing your chances of getting in front of your followers. It also has additional features, including smart tags, photo search, and multiple account support.

Iconosquare - Analyze your Instagram account and get cool stats with Iconosquare. This tool gives you an overview of the number of likes and comments you received, and it also scores your account's engagement levels.

Repost - As its name clearly implies, this app lets you repost photos and videos from your Instagram feed and likes. It also lets you bookmark posts so you could repost them at a later time.

Snapwidget - Show off your Instagram feed on your website with Snapwidget. Used by over 100,000 websites, this solution lets you create and customize a grid, slideshow, or photo map of your Instagram posts quickly and easily.

Pinterest

Pinterest Analytics - Pinterest Analytics helps you better understand your users and content. It shows you data on your Pinterest profile, your audience, and your website, allowing you to get insights into how users are engaging with your content both on your website and Pinterest profile.

Note: You'll need a business Pinterest account to access analytics. You can either create one, or convert your existing profile on business.pinterest.com .

Tailwind - Tailwind provides an array of features to help you stay on top of your Pinterest efforts. With it you can schedule Pins, analyze trends, measure results, and monitor Pinterest activities, among others.

PinAlerts - Think of PinAlerts as Google Alerts, but for Pinterest. It sends you an email alert whenever someone Pins an image from your website, thus giving insights into which of your images are popular on Pinterest. It also lets you see who's Pinning your images so you can reach out to them.

Social commerce tools

If you're looking to make your social accounts more shoppable so you can sell directly to your fans and followers, the following tools are worth looking into:

Like2Buy - As we mentioned in our 2015 Retail Trends piece , Like2Buy is one of the leading solutions for making Instagram more shoppable. Here's how it works: A customer who'd like to purchase an item they see on your feed can tap on the Like2Buy link found on Instagram profile. Clicking the link will take them to the your Like2Buy site, which looks similar to your Instagram page. When the shopper taps on an image, they'll be taken directly to its product page, where they can find more details and proceed to checkout.

Tapshop - Tapshop works by giving you a branded link that you can display on your Instagram profile. When users click through that link, they'll be taken to "a custom page of products they've liked, and get an email with links directly to your product pages."

Soldsie and Spreesy - These are comment-based selling solutions that enable retailers sell through Instagram and Facebook comments. When shoppers see an image of an item they'd like to buy, they would simply need to leave a comment indicating their purchase intent, and these services will automatically generate an invoice or checkout link, then send it via email.

Note: Soldsie also has a solution called Have2Have.It, which, similar to Tapshop and Like2Buy, lets retailers set up a curated page that has the same look and feel as their brand's Instagram feed. From there, users can learn more about their products and head straight to the retailer's ecommerce site if they want to make a purchase

General social media management and monitoring

Hootsuite - Hootsuite is one of the most a powerful and extensive social media management solution out there. It allows you to manage your Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Instagram, and even WordPress account from one dashboard. You can view and schedule posts right from Hootsuite, saving you time and energy.

Buffer - If you're looking for a more lightweight tool with a simple interface, then Buffer is worth checking out. It's an excellent social media scheduling tool that works with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and Pinterest. Adding posts to your queue can be done with one click, and Buffer can automatically create a scheduling plan for you, or you can set pre-determined times for when posts should go out.

Handy design tools for creating shareable images

PicMonkey - Want to create beautiful images but don't have the design skills to do so? Check out PicMonkey, a web-based solution that makes it easy for you to edit, touch-up, and design images for your blog posts and social media updates. It even has a collage maker for those who can't decide on just one picture to post.

Canva - Canva is a powerful-but super user friendly-graphic tool for people who are "design-challenged." Like most graphic design solutions, Canva lets you easily re-touch and edit images. On top of that, it also offers preset templates for Facebook posts, cover images, posters, flyers, and blog posts, making it easy for you to get started on projects. What's more, Canva has a library of fonts, graphics, and photos that you can add to your design with a quick drag-and-drop feature.

Share As Image - If you like putting text on top of images, Share As Image offers an extremely simple solution. It's works as a Chrome extension and bookmarklet that you can access from any website. All you have to do is highlight text on the page, click the bookmarklet, and Share As Image will turn it into an image ready to be shared across social media.

Your turn

Did we miss anything? Are you using any awesome social media tools that aren't on this list? Tell us about them in the comments.

About Francesca Nicasio

Francesca Nicasio is Vend's Retail Expert and Content Strategist. She writes about trends, tips, and other cool things that enable retailers to increase sales, serve customers better, and be more awesome overall. She's also the author of Retail Survival of the Fittest , a free eBook to help retailers future-proof their stores. Connect with her on LinkedIn , Twitter , or Google+.

Could your business survive without you?

By Clarke McEwan • September 17, 2025
Would your business still thrive, or would it suffer a catastrophic failure if you suddenly stepped away? It’s tough to remove yourself from the day-to-day operations when you’re passionate and busy. However sudden accidents, illnesses, or family emergencies can – and will – happen and you need to be able to step back knowing your systems are robust enough to cope. Build in resilience For your business to work for you, you need to make yourself replaceable. Large corporations have plans in place to mitigate what’s known as ‘Key Person Risk’. But when you run a small entrepreneurial venture, who is the backup?  The more you can train and empower your team to perform the business’s essential daily functions without micromanagement, the closer you'll be able to enjoy a lifestyle business. Establish repeatable and scalable support infrastructure to run the daily operations and create a great team that you can lean on. Your staff need a common purpose – knowing why what they’re doing matters – as well as clear expectations around their roles. By creating a suitable work environment, where employees both individually and as a team are more efficient and likely to enjoy what they do, you’ll breathe easier knowing they have your back (and your business) in an emergency. Finally, it’s important to know what the business looks like without you. An exit strategy is often thought of as the way to end a business — which it can be — but in best practice, it’s a plan that moves a business toward long-term goals and allows a smooth transition to a new phase. That may involve re-imagining business direction or leadership, keeping financially sustainable, or pivoting for challenges. A fully formed exit strategy takes all business stakeholders, finances and operations into account and details all actions necessary to sell or close. Strong plans recognise the true value of a business and provide a foundation for future goals and new directions. Top Tips: 1. No one is irreplaceable – Challenge yourself to step away for a week. Which systems fall over? Which procedures get left hanging? Which duties get ignored? Go cold turkey as a test case for the time you may have to leave your business in the hands of others. 2. Embrace innovation – Get systems that are simple, streamlined, effective and can be used by multiple key team members. Make sure anyone can log in and see exactly what’s needed for what reason at any time. 3.Recognise the value you’re creating - A business that doesn’t rely on its owner is worth a lot more when the time comes to sell or pass the reins to someone else. Talk to our team about structuring your business to make it more reliable.

Keeping your tax and expenses in check when you are self-employed

By Clarke McEwan • September 16, 2025
Working for yourself or running your own business? Setup robust systems for expenses & tax requirements so you can focus on your important tasks. We can help take the headaches out of your business accounting. #freelancelife #taxtalk #smallbusinesstips #contractors #medicalcontractor #businesscontractors #ABN

A win for those carrying student debt

By Clarke McEwan • September 9, 2025
20% reduction in student debt The reduction is expected to benefit more than 3 million Australians and remove over $16 billion in outstanding debt. The 20% reduction will be automatically applied to anyone with the following student loans: · HELP loans (eg, HECS-HELP, FEE-HELP, STARTUP-HELP, SA-HELP, OS-HELP) · VET Student loans · Australian Apprenticeship Support Loans · Student Start-up Loans · Student Financial Supplement Scheme. The reduction will be based on the loan balance at 1 June 2025, before indexation was applied. Indexation will only apply to the reduced balance. The ATO will apply the reduction automatically on a retrospective basis and will adjust the indexation that is applied. No action is needed from those with a student loan balance and the Government has indicated that you will be notified once the reduction has been applied. If you had a HELP debt showing on your ATO account on 1 April 2025 but you paid the debt off after 1 June 2025 then the reduction will normally trigger a credit to your HELP account. If you don’t have any other outstanding tax or other debts to the Commonwealth, then the credit should be refunded to you. The HELP debt estimator is a useful tool to get an idea of the reduction amount, please reach out if you need any help in working out eligibility. Changes to repayments The Government has also modified the way that HELP and student loan repayments operate, primarily by increasing the amount that individuals can earn before they need to make repayments. The minimum repayment threshold for the 2025-26 year is being increased from $56,156 to $67,000. The threshold was $54,435 for the 2024-25 year. Under the new repayment system an individual will only need to make a compulsory repayment for the 2025-26 year if their income is above $67,000. The repayments will be calculated only against the portion of income that is above $67,000. Repayments will still be made through the tax system and will typically be determined when tax returns are lodged with the ATO. For many people the change in the rules will mean they have more disposable income in the short term, but it will take longer to pay off student loans. The main exception to this will be when an individual chooses to make voluntary repayments.

Creating a more dynamic and resilient economy

By Clarke McEwan • September 9, 2025
The Productivity Commission (PC) has been tasked by the Australian Government to conduct an inquiry into creating a more dynamic and resilient economy. The PC was asked to identify priority reforms and develop actionable recommendations. The PC has now released its interim report which presents some draft recommendations that are focused on two key areas: · Corporate tax reform to spur business investment · Where efficiencies could be made in the regulatory space (ie, cutting down on red tape) The interim report makes some interesting observations and key features of the draft recommendations are summarised below. Corporate tax reform The PC notes that business investment has fallen notably over the past decade and that the corporate tax system has a significant part to play in addressing this. The PC is basically suggesting that the existing corporate tax system needs to be updated to move towards a more efficient mix of taxes. The first stage of this process would involve two linked components: · Lower tax rate: businesses earning under $1 billion could have their tax rate reduced to 20%, with larger businesses still subject to a 30% rate. · New cashflow tax: a net cashflow tax of 5% should be applied to company profits. Under this system, companies would be able to fully deduct capital expenditure in the year it is incurred, encouraging investment and helping to produce a more dynamic and resilient economy. However, the new tax is expected to create an increased tax burden for companies earning over $1 billion. Cutting down on red tape The interim report notes that businesses have reported spending more time on regulatory compliance – this probably doesn’t come as a surprise to most business owners who have been forced to deal with multiple layers of government regulation. Some real world examples include windfarm approvals taking up to nine years in NSW while starting a café in Brisbane could involve up to 31 separate regulatory steps. The proposed fixes include: · The Australian Government adopting a whole-of-government statement committing to new principles and processes to drive regulation that supports economic dynamism. · Regulation should be scrutinised to ensure that its impact on growth and dynamism is more fully considered. · Public servants should be subject to enhanced expectations, making them accountable for delivering growth, competition and innovation. These are simply draft recommendations contained in an interim report so we are a long way from any of these recommendations being implemented. However, the interim report provides some insight into areas where the Government might look to make some changes to boost productivity in Australia. The PC is inviting feedback up until 15 September on the interim report before finalising its recommendations later this year.

Non-compete clauses: the next stage

By Clarke McEwan • September 9, 2025
Back in March this year the Government announced its intention to ban non-compete clauses for low and middle-income employees and consult on the use of non-compete clauses for those on higher incomes. The Government has indicated that the reforms in this area will take effect from 2027. This didn’t come as a complete surprise as the Competition Review had already published an issues paper on the topic and the PC had also issued a report indicating that limiting the use of unreasonable restraint of trade clauses would have a material impact on wages for workers. Treasury has since issued a consultation paper, seeking feedback in the following key areas: · How the proposed ban on non-compete clauses should be implemented; · Whether additional reforms are required to the use of post-employment restraints, including for high-income employees; · Whether changes are needed to clarify how restrictions on concurrent employment should apply to part-time or casual employees; and · Details necessary to implement the proposed ban on no-poach and wage-fixing agreements in the Competition and Consumer Act. Treasury makes it clear that the Government is not planning to change the way the rules apply to restraints of trade outside employment arrangements (eg, on sale of a business) or change the use of confidentiality clauses in employment. If the proposed reforms end up being implemented, then this could have a direct impact on a range of employers and their workers. Existing agreements will need to be reviewed and potentially updated. However, it is too early at the moment to guess how this will end up, we will keep you up to date as further information becomes available.

Superannuation guarantee: due dates and considerations for employees and employers

By Clarke McEwan • September 9, 2025
On 1 July 2025 the superannuation guarantee rate increased to 12% which is the final stage of a series of previously legislated increases. Employers currently need to make superannuation guarantee (SG) contributions for their employees by 28 days after the end of each quarter (28 October, 28 January, 28 April and 28 July). There is an extra day’s allowance when these dates fall on a public holiday. To comply with these rules the contribution must be in the employee’s superannuation fund on or before this date, unless the employer is using the ATO small business superannuation clearing house (SBSCH). The ATO has been applying considerable compliance resources in this space in recent years which can have an impact on both employees and employers. Employers To be eligible to claim a tax deduction on SG contributions the quarterly amount must be in the employee’s super account on or before the above quarterly due dates. The only exception to this is where the employer is using the ATO SBSCH. In that case a contribution is considered made provided it has been received by the SBSCH on or before the due date. Employers using commercial clearing houses should be mindful of turnaround times. Commercial clearing houses collect and distribute employee contributions and may be linked to accounting / payroll software or provided by some superannuation platforms. Anecdotally it seems that turnaround times for some clearing houses could be up to 14 days, so it is recommended that employers allow sufficient time before the quarterly deadlines when processing their employee SG contributions. If these deadlines are missed (yes even by a day!) that will trigger a superannuation guarantee charge (SGC) requirement which will result in a loss of the tax deduction and other penalties. The SGC requirements are outlined in the ATO link below: The super guarantee charge | Australian Taxation Office Employers do have the option to make SG payments more frequently than quarterly and this is something that employers will need to become used to if the proposed ‘payday’ superannuation reforms become law. This change is proposed to commence from 1 July 2026 and would require SG to be paid at the same frequency as salary or wages. There is some discussion on the payday super proposal at this link (noting that this is not yet law). The SBSCH will close at this time so employers using this service should start to consider transitioning to a commercial clearing house, please let us know you would like assistance with this. Employees It is recommended that you regularly check your superannuation fund statements and reconcile employer contributions to the amounts listed on your pay slips. Where SG contributions are not received on time (or at all!) employees are encouraged to discuss this first with their employer. Should this not result in a satisfactory conclusion, employees can consider bringing this to the attention of the ATO. There is some helpful discussion on this process at the following link .
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