The number of social integration tools available is vast and getting bigger every day. It seems every other month a new “big” social media tool comes out. Most of the time the tools don’t make that much of an impact. Those that do however can truly help you save a lot of time and resources.

There are social media tools for just about everything: Posting updates, generating reports, finding people to follow, save time, manage teams, get email reports and so on.

Which tools should you use? Here are ten of the top social media integration tools for you to choose from.

Tool #1: Hootsuite

Hootsuite can almost go without explanation. It’s the largest social media integration tool on the web and provides a whole host of technologies and solutions completely free of charge. A lot of things Hootsuite offers for free are paid features of other integration tools.

Hootsuite allows you to manage feeds across multiple social media sites. They have analytics and reporting tools, albeit most of them are paid. You can integrate a team strategy, as well as analyze you contacts.

If you’re not sure where to start in social media integration, Hootsuite is a good bet.

 

Tool #2: Tweet Deck (by Twitter)

Tweet Deck is one of the largest social media integration tools on the web and the largest integration tool for the Twittersphere. In 2009, they had a 23% marketshare. The only other website that had a larger usage rate was Twitter.com itself.

The primary function of Tweet Deck is the social media dashboard. They feature an intuitive and easy to use dashboard that works with both Twitter and Facebook. In the past, they supported LinkedIn, MySpace and FourSquare, though they have since dropped support for those sites and chosen to focus exclusively on Twitter and Facebook.

Tweet Deck was purchased by twitter in May of 2011. It’s now run by the Twitter team.

You can run Tweet Deck on just about any operating system, including Mac OS, Windows, Linux, iOS (iPhone / iPad) and even Google’s tentative Chrome OS.

Tool #3: Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a social media integration tool that has some very interesting and unique features. For example, Sprout Social will log into your Twitter and Facebook analytics accounts for you and extract data about your demographics. This will give you a very good sense of who your audience is, all in one place.

Sprout Social can also make recommendations about new people to follow. If you don’t want to have to spend hours discovering new potential partners and sources of information, let Sprout Social do it for you.

Of course, Sprout Social also has all the standard features, like message scheduling and feed aggregation.

 

Tool #4: Social Oomph

Social Oomph is a bit of an anomaly in the world of social media integration tools. Unlike tools like Tweet Deck or Hootsuite that have a very slick Web 2.0 kind of design, Social Oomph is very minimalistic. Their design is simple, text-based and to the point.

Don’t let that fool you however. Social Oomph has a lot of very powerful features and is very up to date, despite the basic looking design.

Social Oomph has perhaps the most advanced automated friend finder on the planet. This was how the service was first built; it’s what gave it its reputation to begin with.

Social Oomph also gives you the ability to delete all your tweets with the click of a button, but not delete your followers. In other words, if you want to start from scratch, Social Oomph lets you do that.

The list of unique features Social Oomph offers is quite long. It’s important to note that some of them do require a paid subscription. All Facebook interactions require a subscription, though if you’re just using Twitter there’s a lot that you can do for free.

 

Tool #5: Nutshell Mail

Nutshell Mail solves one of the big problems with social media: It takes a lot of time to monitor. If you’re a full time staff member dedicated to social media management, that’s not a problem. However, if you’re a business businessperson with a lot on your plate, then chances are you don’t have the time or energy to log into your social media account all throughout the day.

Nutshell mail simplifies this by sending you email updates. You can receive updates on your social media activities directly in your inbox, so you never have to worry about logging in and checking up on your profiles.

Nutshell mail supports LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, FourSquare and Yelp.

 

Tool #6: Netvibes

Netvibes is a social media integration platform that has a suite of free features, as well as a host of paid features. Their basic features work a lot like most other integration platforms, but their paid features have a lot of unique functionality to offer.

Netvibes integrates online reputation monitoring into their social media tools. You can see what people are saying about you, your company and your brand all in one screen.

You can create product micro-sites using Netvibes. This makes it easy for people to interact with a new product launch.

You can also create online communities using Netvibes and give people a unique home page.

Netvibes is essentially a social media integration tool as well as a community and brand building tool all wrapped up into one neat package.

 

Tool #7: Yoono

Yoono’s unique position in the market is its breadth. Not only does Yoono cover media that many tools ignore, such as FourSquare or FriendFeed, but Yoono also incorporates instant messengers in its arsenal.

That’s right: With Yoono, you can sync up your AIM, Google Talk and Yahoo Messenger accounts all in one place.

Of course, you can also use it to manage your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. You can manage multiple feeds across different accounts and do everything you’d expect from a social media management tool.

If you’re only managing Twitter or Facebook, then you’ll probably want to stick with one of the tools mentioned earlier. However, if you manage a range of other networks as well and especially if you use instant messengers to communicate, then Yoono could be a great time saver.

 

Tool #8: Postling

Postling makes monitoring your social networks and posting to them a cinch. Postling gives you a simple and easy to use “social inbox” where everything people say about you is contained. You can easily respond to each of their comments from a variety of social networks all in one feed.

Postling also monitors review websites, like Yelp or Citysearch for you. If you’re an offline business, this is critically important. Just about no other social media integration tool will monitor these services for you.

With Postling, you can post directly to your blog while keeping your social media in the look. Postling has its own WYSIWYG editor built in for writing blog posts.

You can respond to messages and tweets all by email using Postling’s “reply by email” feature. You can also get a daily email about all the new activities that occurred across your various social media accounts.

Postling offers a lot of unique features. They’re especially powerful if you run an offline business and need to monitory reviews.

Tool #9: Cadence9

For those dealing with multiple accounts and brands, Cadence9 is a social marketing automation software that allows to automate your social media and content marketing team workflow and content posting. It allows to have multiple users, assign tasks and track followers engagement.

Tool #10: Widgets

One of the best ways to integrate your social media into your blog or website is through widgets. Widgets are little bits of code you can install that add social media functionality to an otherwise static page.

By using widgets, you can take feeds from your Twitter account or your Facebook account and put them all on your website.

People will be able to see all your recent posts, as well as posts on your feed, depending on how your feed is setup.

Remember that integration goes both ways – You want to integrate your social media profile, but you also want to integrate your blog.

These are the most powerful social media integration tools available at your disposal. Using these tools, you’ll be able to manage your social media quickly, integrate your social media profiles, post quickly, manage your reputation, build communities and more.