Top 9 LinkedIn Tools to Take Your Networking to the Next Level

Want to get better marketing results from LinkedIn?

If so, you need to publish a steady stream of high-quality content daily to keep your Linkedin audience engaged.

This is true whether you’re a business owner, content marketer, recruiter, networker, sales professional, or job seeker.

In this post, we’ll look at 9 of the best LinkedIn tools to help you do everything from responding to messages to automating your posting schedule. They’ll save you time, improve your content, and improve your engagement.

Let’s get started!

We’ll cover:

What is a LinkedIn tool?

LinkedIn tools are resources developed to help individuals optimize their presence and activities on the social networking platform.

These tools provide users with features and information that otherwise would be hard to obtain. Most people use LinkedIn tools to save time while also improving their content.

Some of the more popular apps among professionals who use LinkedIn are:

• Automation services
• Scheduling applications
• Analytics dashboards
• Design tools

With these powerful tools at your disposal, it is easier than ever to use LinkedIn to get ahead in the job market.

What you should look for in a LinkedIn tool

When looking for top-notch LinkedIn tools, you should ensure that their features align with your specific needs.

This might include being able to customize it to match the branding of your business, making it easy for you to better engage with clients and colleagues, write better content, design great graphics, or many other functions.

In addition to YOUR business’s needs, there are some specifics you should ALWAYS look for in a LinkedIn tool. Let’s look at 3 significant concerns when looking for a LinkedIn tool.

Saves time

It’s no surprise that top-tier tools should make the workday smoother. The best LinkedIn tools are designed to save you time, streamline your workflow, and make your professional life more manageable.

With the right combination of online resources, employers can set up automated systems that look for content, post it, and can even help you write articles faster!

These LinkedIn tools empower users to have dozens of extra hours each week to relax and remove stress from their lives (or get more important work done).

Improves the quality of your content

Crafting the perfect LinkedIn post takes more than just a catchy headline. To stand out from the competition and engage your audience, you need top-notch content highlighting your brand’s expertise.

With the right tools, you can quickly create a LinkedIn post that will generate more interest and engagement. Tools can help you accomplish this by:

• Helping you curate better content
• Giving you ideas for content
• Helping you research high-quality content and imitate it

Regardless of your industry, your LinkedIn tools should help you take your content to the next level.

Fits in your budget

With a limited budget for your LinkedIn needs, you don’t have to worry! While some premium tools can add up quickly, plenty of lower-cost or even free options can drop the price tag while still providing great features.

In other words, don’t try to spend MORE just because you think you have to. Plenty of LinkedIn tools will fit your budget and still drastically improve your presence on the platform.

On our list, we’ve got tools for every budget (including free!). So take a look and see what fits yours.

Best LinkedIn tool for post design: Canva

LinkedIn says adding images to LinkedIn page posts results in a 2x higher engagement rate.

That means you NEED to find a way to add high-quality images to your LinkedIn posts.

Canva is the go-to online graphic design app for millions of Linkedin users due to its ease of use and high-quality tools.

With Canva, you can quickly design custom graphics using a combination of templates and your own creativity.

Pros

• The free plan includes a good set of features
• Templates are easy to use and customize
• A huge library of media is available
• You can use Canva for all your social media–not just LinkedIn

Cons

• You still need an eye for design if you customize anything (even though Canva makes it as easy as possible).
• Many of the best designs are reserved for pro members
• No branding features on the free account

Features

Canva offers simple templates you can easily customize to increase engagement on your next LinkedIn post. You can use Canva for free to edit pre-made LinkedIn post graphics and additional templates that you can modify for use on LinkedIn.

Canva offers premium features and paid images, but there are enough free design elements for most people to keep their social media content fresh.

The main advantage of Canva is that it dramatically improves your ability to create great images to accompany your posts, enhancing your LinkedIn marketing capabilities. It won’t help you write or develop content, but it’s full of ideas for creative visuals and other time-saving tools, including the following:

• Collages
• Automatic size formatting for different social channels
• Stock photos
• Color palette suggestions
• Drag-and-drop design elements

Canva is your one-stop shop for creating stunning visuals for your LinkedIn page!

Reviews

Canva gets almost entirely positive reviews, and many of the positive comments remark on these aspects of the tool:

• Ease of use
• Wide variety of applications (flyers, posters, social posts, etc.)
• Time-saving features like templates

Negative comments generally revolve around Canva’s limited video editing features or complaints about some of the better templates and images being reserved for the paid version.

Pricing

As mentioned, Canva offers a great free plan to satisfy many users’ needs.

However, if you want full access to all the platform’s content, you must upgrade to the paid plan for $119.99/year or $12.99/month.

I recommend starting with the free version. If it doesn’t have everything you need, you can upgrade. The chances are good that you can make do without the upgrade.

Best for content research: Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo is a great tool that allows users to research every aspect of their content plan to make it as high-impact as possible.

It’s also valuable for competitor research, social listening, and identifying influencers to partner with you.

In other words, it’s a complete system for researching your content, then taking that research and using it to improve your social media content plan.

Pros

• Access Buzzsumo’s library of more than 5 billion articles
• Quickly identify what LinkedIn content has worked best with audiences similar to yours
• Analyze historical data to help you identify content trends
• Find influencers to promote your brand
• Social listening features help you learn what people are saying about your brand

Cons

• Quite expensive (might be cost-restrictive for smaller businesses)
• No content scheduling features, meaning you’ll have to pay more money to add an additional tool to your repertoire
• The cheapest plan doesn’t include some key features

Features

One of the best features that all of Buzzsumo’s plans include is the content ideas generator.

The content ideas generator accesses Buzzsumo’s colossal content library to suggest content ideas for you, including:

• Subheadings
• Keywords
• Engagement data

You can use this tool to breeze through the content creation ideation phase, saving you tons of time.

The higher-paying plans also include the content analyzer, which helps you understand precisely how well certain pieces of content perform.

You can then take that information to help you write the best content possible for your audience.

Reviews

Buzzsumo gets excellent reviews. The most frequently mentioned features are the content suggestions generator and the content analyzer, which helped people save time and improve their content.

The negative comments typically mention the price or the UI. Some users report that the UI is too busy for their taste, with so many tools that it can be challenging to find exactly what you’re looking for.

Pricing

Buzzsumo is expensive. There’s no other way to put it.

You’ll have to cough up $119/month to get their most basic plan. The sad part is that the smallest plan doesn’t include access to their best feature–the content analyzer.

You’ll have to go up to the $249/month plan for that feature.

You can upgrade to even larger plans if you need more users or even more comprehensive features.

Best tool for AI writing: Jasper

Have you ever wished someone else would write your LinkedIn content for you?

Well, that day may finally be here.

Jasper is a tool that will help you write your LinkedIn (and other) content with the help of artificial intelligence, meaning you can save a ton of time on writing.

Before we dive into this tool, let me offer a disclaimer. You should NEVER trust an AI tool to write a complete article. Even though AI technology has come a long way, it still doesn’t rival a human writer.

Instead, you should use Jasper to help you get a rough draft or outline, then go through and ensure it’s up to snuff.

Pros

• Save time writing articles.
• Use artificial intelligence to develop multiple outlines based on a key phrase.
• Jasper is applicable in various scenarios, including your blog, social media, and copywriting.

Cons

• Not the cheapest tool
• It doesn’t do anything you CAN’T do without it–it’s essentially only a time saver.

Features

Jasper essentially does one thing: helps you write content with AI. However, it offers some key features that make it as easy as possible.

One of those features is templates. Jasper has premade templates depending on what you’re writing.

You can simply select the template that most closely relates to your writing, then tell Jasper what you want it to write about!

When you input a command, you can use the built-in text editor to modify the text before you export it to your blog or LinkedIn.

Reviews

Jasper gets excellent reviews, with many people mentioning how much it improves the productivity of their writing process. The most frequent positive comments relate to saving time and generating high-quality content.

Negative comments are rare, but the most frequent complaint is that the content can occasionally be repetitive, so editing is always necessary.

Pricing

Jasper starts at $24/month, paid annually, which includes 20 thousand words per month and one user.

If you want tools like automated workflows, an improved word editor, and more users, you can upgrade to more extensive plans, including more words.

Best tool for content discovery and scheduling: Post Planner

Looking for a social media scheduler that will help you streamline your content strategy?

Look no further than Post Planner!

Post Planner’s Content Streams make it a breeze to curate engaging content from all around the web. Post Planner will save you hours each week and offer an intuitive interface that’s easy to learn and use.

Pros

• Very budget friendly
• Easy content curation saves tons of time
• Design posts without needing a separate tool

Cons

• Lack of deep analytics
• No messaging features

Features

Post Planner is an invaluable tool for any social media marketer. It offers several features that can help streamline the process of content curation.

With Post Planner, Content Streams can be found or created easily, allowing users to see posts from the best sources on the web automatically. Post Planner can help you find the best possible content for your brand or product.

Additionally, scheduling posts to publish automatically allows you to strategically plan updates across different social networks, creating a cross-platform presence. If desired, this will enable you to unify your LinkedIn content with other social channels.

Using Content Streams and the content calendar tools together can help you schedule weeks’ content in just a few minutes!

Reviews

Post Planner has received glowing reviews from satisfied customers, who praise the platform for saving them precious time.

Additionally, users have commended the excellent customer support and intuitive interface.

However, some have noted a slight learning curve for beginners and minor issues with the UI. Despite these criticisms, Post Planner remains a top choice for those seeking a powerful and efficient social media management tool.

Pricing 

For as low as $3 a month, you can schedule your content and curate posts from around the web for one social media channel.

However, if you want to take your social media game to the next level, you’ll want to upgrade to the $27/month plan. This includes 10 social accounts and up to 1,000 scheduled posts per month!

Best LinkedIn CRM: Lead Delta

As LinkedIn has grown and developed, it’s moved from just a networking platform. Many businesses now use LinkedIn to interact with their customers as well.

If you’re looking for a customer relationship management (CRM) tool for LinkedIn, Lead Delta should be near the top of your list.

Lead Delta isn’t just a place to manage your customer relationships, but also to manage your entire LinkedIn network from one dashboard.

Pros

• Easily manage your growing LinkedIn network
• Bulk actions without needing to open LinkedIn
• Robust tools to help you manage contacts and relationships more efficiently
• Use a Chrome Extension to manage contacts directly from LinkedIn

Cons

• No tools to help with other social media accounts
• It only focuses on contact management, so you must pair it with other tools to get the most out of it.
• Not the cheapest tool, but it may be worth it for people with growing audiences.

Features

The core of Lead Delta is the Network Manager, which allows you to manage all your LinkedIn connections from a single, simple dashboard.

Managing your contacts with Lead Delta gives you more control over interacting with them. You can:

• Add tags to group contacts together
• Bulk follow/unfollow
• Message directly from Lead Delta
• Filter contacts

Lead Delta also allows you to manage your LinkedIn conversations using a more robust messaging platform.

You can pin, star, tag, and filter messages using the Smart Inbox for easier management.

Reviews

Lead Delta gets positive reviews, with many commenting on how much it adds to their LinkedIn toolkit. Some of the most frequent positive comments are about the messaging system and the ability to sort connections into easy-to-manage groups.

While few, there are some more negative reviews. Most of these mention a missing feature that those users would like to see. However, even the reviews with negative comments still highly recommend Lead Delta.

Pricing

Lead Delta starts at $22/month paid annually or $34/month paid monthly. They also offer a 10-day free trial with no credit card required, so you can decide if it’s the tool for your business.

This plan includes ALL of Lead Delta’s tools, so you don’t have to upgrade if you want access to their best features.

Best tool for LinkedIn analytics: Databox

Databox is one of the most popular data visualization and analytics softwares on the market.

It quickly and easily links to your LinkedIn account to pull your desired data into a beautiful analytics dashboard. You can even combine your LinkedIn data with other data sources to create custom dashboards and visualize your data more effectively.

Pros

• Easy to setup and use with drag and drop dashboard creation
• Powerful analytics make using LinkedIn even better for your business growth
• Link multiple data sources to the same analytics dashboard
• Great free plan
• Easy reporting for working with clients

Cons

• Very expensive if the free plan isn’t enough for you
• Some of the better features like unbranded reporting aren’t available until you’re spending more than $130/month on this tool

Features

Databox isn’t just a social media analytics tool. It’s designed for pulling data from ALL your sources into comprehensive dashboards where you can see it all.

HOWEVER, it works amazingly well as a LinkedIn analytics dashboard. All you have to do is connect your LinkedIn Company Pages account, and Databox will start automatically pulling data.

You can create your own custom dashboard by dragging and dropping the different fields until you’re happy with how it looks.

If you just use Databox with LinkedIn and a couple of other social channels, you should be able to get away with just using the free version. However, if you want to work with more than 3 social media accounts or report for clients, you’ll need to upgrade.

Reviews

Databox gets amazing reviews. People consistently talk about the intuitiveness of the platform and the ease of use. Many also mention how powerful the reporting features are for working with clients.

Those who mentioned negative aspects of the tool tend to mention some restrictions related to the overall flexibility of the program. In other words, some metrics were mission, or the platform felt too restrictive because of the grid-style layout of the dashboards.

Pricing

Databox has a great free plan. It gives you 60+ integrations and 3 data source connections. That means you could combine your Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn data into a massive social media dashboard without paying a penny.

However, things can get expensive if you need more connections than that. For the starter plan, which only includes basic reporting, Databox costs $72/month for 4 data source connections.

If you need more in-depth reporting features, custom date ranges, or Google Sheets integrations (among other advanced tools), you’ll need to expect to pay $135/month at a minimum.

Best free LinkedIn tool: LinkedIn Analytics

Have you ever wondered how your LinkedIn posts perform?

LinkedIn Analytics is the perfect free tool to get you started on analyzing your posts’ performance and your audience itself.

LinkedIn Analytics isn’t the most in-depth tool on this list, but it’s free and still provides precious data, so don’t write it off yet!

Pros

• FREE!
• Good data that will help you understand your content’s performance
• Get a better understanding of your audience
• Easy to use

Cons

• This tool does only one thing: helps you look at LinkedIn analytics. Don’t expect it to help you do anything else.
• It’s a free tool, so uses are limited.
• It’s hard to list many cons about a tool that provides you with analytics for free.

Features

LinkedIn Analytics is a free tool that provides insights into your:

• Account activity
• Post views and impressions
• 
• Follower demographics
• Engagement levels

Not only does this information help you understand your audience better, but it also allows you to adjust your content strategy for maximum impact.

Whether you’re a seasoned pro or just starting out on LinkedIn, Analytics is a must-have tool for any professional looking to make the most of their online presence.

Reviews

Since LinkedIn Analytics is a free, built-in part of using a LinkedIn company profile, it doesn’t have its own reviews.

Pricing

LinkedIn Analytics is FREE, but it will only appear if you have a LinkedIn company profile. It won’t appear on a standard LinkedIn page.

Best LinkedIn outreach tool: Expandi

Have you ever manually sent out dozens of LinkedIn messages with little to no response?

Expandi makes that a thing of the past by automating your LinkedIn outreach.

We should be clear that using automated messaging isn’t strictly allowed by LinkedIn’s prohibited software agreement, but using a high-quality tool like Expandi makes it possible by imitating human behavior.

Pros

• Save who knows how much time on LinkedIn messaging campaigns.
• Expandi imitates human messaging behavior, meaning people are less likely to ignore you.
• You have total control over your messages, and you can personalize them as much as you want.
• Powerful outreach tools go far beyond simple message sending.

Cons

• Very expensive for smaller companies
• Automating LinkedIn messages is technically against LinkedIn’s agreement, meaning your account can’t get in trouble (although this is highly unlikely with Expandi).

Features

This tool has revolutionized the game of LinkedIn outreach by providing features such as automated messaging, smart targeting, and detailed analytics to improve your outreach strategy.

One key feature that enhances the messages you send is Smart Sequences, which allow you to determine what sequence of messages someone receives from you. For example, you might choose for someone to get a message:

• After they visit your profile for the first time
• After they like or comment on a post
• If they endorse one of your skills on LinkedIn

With a user-friendly interface, it’s also easy to navigate and customize to fit your specific needs.

Reviews

Expandi gets great reviews from its users. Most of the reviews mention how much time they save by automating LinkedIn outreach. Many people also mention the ease of use and the ability to expand their LinkedIn outreach through automation.

There were a couple reviews from people who said the platform didn’t function properly for them. However, given the number of 5-star reviews, it’s hard to know if these lower reviews are due to user error or actual problems with the tool.

Pricing

Expandi has a very easy pricing system. You simply pay $99/month per seat.

For smaller businesses, this pricing may be out of reach. Fortunately, the benefits of automation are more noticeable with larger businesses, so we recommend this tool to businesses with enough LinkedIn connections to warrant the automation.

Best LinkedIn tool for social selling: LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is the ultimate tool for social selling on LinkedIn.

It is designed to help sales professionals identify leads and develop relationships with prospects and customers. It accomplishes this by personalizing lead recommendations and giving you the tools to track new leads and potential customers.

Pros

• Find personalized lead recommendations
• Integration with CRMs makes managing leads much easier
• Simple to use and incredibly beneficial for selling on LinkedIn

Cons

• Expensive, so it’s only worth it if you’re making sales on LinkedIn
• Limited to a very specific purpose, so it won’t help your entire LinkedIn strategy

Features

LinkedIn Sales Navigator offers features that enable salespeople to identify and target the right leads, engage with decision-makers, and stay up-to-date with the latest insights in their industry.

From advanced lead and account search to personalized lead recommendations, LinkedIn Sales Navigator provides the tools that salespeople need to effectively and efficiently sell on LinkedIn.

The main benefit of LinkedIn Sales Navigator is the ability to search for better leads and prospects using these tools. Most people who use LinkedIn for social selling will benefit from using this tool.

Reviews

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is the most popular tool for social selling on LinkedIn, so there are plenty of reviews. Almost all of them are positive, meaning nearly everyone who uses this tool benefits from it.

Most of the positive reviews mention the ease of finding new prospects and customers through search functions and analytics tools.

Complaints normally center around small missing features or the price being too high for some people to stomach.

Pricing

If you want the basic version of LinkedIn Sales Navigator (which is probably what most people will need), it’ll cost you $79.99/month, billed annually.

The Advanced plan is $131.25/month, billed annually.

While LinkedIn Sales Navigator is an extremely valuable tool, some businesses might feel like these prices are just too high to justify–especially if LinkedIn isn’t one of your primary selling channels.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best LinkedIn automation tool?

It depends on what you’re trying to automate!

For automating content discovery, we recommend Post Planner.

For automating outreach, we recommend Expandi.

For automating your writing process, we recommend Jasper.ai.

What tools does LinkedIn have?

The basic version of LinkedIn has very few tools, but you can get access to LinkedIn Analytics for free with a LinkedIn company page.

If you’re willing to pay for third-party tools, the options are almost endless! Start with the tools mentioned above and see what works for your business.

Conclusion

All in all, having the right LinkedIn tool can help you better manage your contacts, improve engagement on your posts, make more sales, and accomplish many other LinkedIn goals.

If you’ve been on the hunt for a good LinkedIn tool that checks all these boxes, start with this list of 9. You won’t be disappointed!

What other LinkedIn tools have you used to improve engagement? Let us know in the comments below–we would love to hear about them!