With millions of businesses across the globe, one of the ways of growing your business is by building relevant connections across your industry. These relationships can produce good referrals for your business, thereby increasing your clientele and sales.
Building a small business network has a lot of advantages for small business owners, and social media is one of the best ways to build relationships both far and near that will be beneficial to your business. Alignable is a social media network that can help you make these business connections and get referrals from them.
In this guide, you’ll get to know what is Alignable, the Importance of Alignable to your business, how to get clients with Alignable, and some tips to optimize your profile so you can get the most from Alignable social network.
Alignable is a social media network exclusively for small business owners, Alignable was created is 2012 and now has over 4.5 million users, it is a business directory where small local business owners get to meet, connect, and build relationships with the aim of getting referrals from these connections.
Alignable Is a great way to learn about your industry and your competitors because it also serves as a question and answer platform where local businesses can ask important questions and get answers among themselves.
Alignable can be likened to LinkedIn except that Alignable is focused on small local businesses; small businesses get to meet other small businesses within their geographical locations. With Alignable, you can reach more customers through referrals and increase sales.
Importance of Alignable to your business
The fact that alignable focuses only on small local businesses, it offers a lot of advantages to these business owners, below are ways Alignable can help your business.
Alignable is one of the ways of building online citations which is very helpful in boosting your local SEO. Local citation building involves making mentions and references to your business on the web through third party websites.
This can significantly affect your Local SEO positively as your business name, address, phone number, and other vital details about your business show up when your business is searched online.
Alignable helps improve your business visibility as your alignable business listing comes up each time someone searches your business on search engines like Google.
Alignable helps local small businesses to connect, thereby growing valuable networks that can be useful to your business in the future. Building connections in business is vital to business growth; through these networks, you can meet businesses that provide what your business wants and also meet businesses that need what you offer.
You can also be recommended to others from the networks that you’ve build on Alignable, the good thing about Alignable is that it provides different ways for you to grow your network.
For example, you can import your contacts from LinkedIn, you can build business contacts with the “My community” and “My networks” sections on Alignable, and you also get notified whenever a new business opens in your geographical area.
Alignable provides a platform to promote your business to other businesses that might need what your business offers within your local area. Your alignable profile is a way to promote your business as it contains information that allows others to learn more about your business.
Essential parts of your profile, like your business profile, product or service photos, and events section, allow you to sell your business to your potential customers, so you must utilize them properly.
Later in the article, you’ll learn how to optimize your profile to get the most out of Alignable social network.
With the business connections you’ve made on alignable, you can get referrals for your business, which means more clients and sales. Making connections on alignable isn’t enough to get you referrals for your business, though; you must make sure that your customers are satisfied with the products and services you offer.
This is because only satisfied customers will refer your business to others, so you should make sure that you provide the best of whatever your business offer to your customers. These referrals also show that your business is trustworthy and reliable.
Alignable has a forum on its platform that allows you to help other businesses with answers to their question and also get help from others. There are different categories in its forum, and you can establish yourself as an authority in any category by helping others with advice, this can bring customers to you as they can see that you are an expert in your field.
You can also get help from other knowledgeable business owners in your industry, alignable forum feature can provide you a way to learn a lot of things about your industry and also improves your knowledge.
How to get clients with Alignable
You can get customers through Alignable social network if appropriately utilized. Here are five ways you can get clients from alignable:
To get clients from alignable, you first have to build a connection with other business owners on the platform, to get customers, first search for other businesses in your area that might need your service and request to connect with them.
You can then tell them about your business and how your product or service can help their own business. Do not try to sell your business to them immediately; try to build a relationship with them before pitching your business to them.
Content marketing has always been a way of getting leads and customers to your website, and you can do that on alignable. Posting relevant content about your industry that is helpful to other small business owners can get you leads, this content could be blog posts, case studies, infographics or any other content that can create publicity for your business.
Forum participation can help you learn the important aspects of your industry and also provides you the opportunity to share your ideas with others. You can also indirectly promote your business through your answers to questions being asked.
This can bring in clients when you least expect it.
Referring others can be another way of getting clients on alignable. When you refer others, they get to see who has referred them and might want to return the favor by also recommending you to their contacts. That way, you get to reach more people who need the services you provide.
Alignable has both a free and premium version, and although the free version is okay to start with, you can reach more people with the premium version of alignable. The free version allows you to make only ten connections per month and access to business within 2 miles, but the premium version will enable you to build more connections and reach more businesses.
Tips to optimize your Alignable profile
You want to make sure that your alignable profile is fully optimized for conversion; it should contain the necessary information to make your profile look professional. Here are some tips to improve your alignable profile:
Branding is an integral part of a business, and photos are a great way of branding your business. Begin your alignable profile by choosing a profile photo for your business that represents your brand; this could be a logo or any images that project your brand.
The about us section is a section that allows you to explain what your business is about, your mission, core values, and what you offer to your customers. Try to go straight to the point and don’t include any irrelevant information.
This section is the place to talk about your target audience; in other words, who your business is meant to cater to. A short description of who your business is made for will do, avoid vague terms and unnecessary details.
This section allows you explain what exactly your business offers to its customers, whether it’s a product or service, make sure to talk about it, so your potential customers know how your products or services help their own business.
Alignable allows a business owner to use tags on their profile, this further optimizes your profile as tags will enable you to reach more businesses when tags that are related to your business are searched for. There are three types of tags that you can add to profile:
Alignable allows you to include both categories and featured tags in your profile. Category tags show what class or category your business belongs to, while featured tags show your specializations within the category you choose.
These tags are visible on your profile, together with your business name, to everyone who views your profile. They are also included on your referral card when your business is referred to others.
Another tag you can add to your profile is the customer tag. The ideal customer tag is divided into two; the “our customer types” tags and “who we are interested in working with” tags.
In our customer types, you can include the people your business appeals to, for example, this could be a landscaper, a supermarket, banks, etc.
On the other hand, you also need to add the “who we are interested in working with” tags, these tags tell the people you want to work with that will enable you to reach your ideal customers—for example, accountants, customer service personnel, etc.
The products and service tags section shows tags related to what your business offers. These tags make it easy for other alignable business owners to find your business when they search for these tags.
You want to make sure that members can quickly get to you when they need your services; therefore, you need to include relevant contact information like your location, phone number, website URL, and Facebook profile address.
Alignable has provided a way for small local business owners to connect, an area that has been neglected by other social platforms. Alignable is an excellent way to generate leads for your business effectively through its network of businesses.
Long-lasting professional relationships can be built with alignable if utilized well. Don’t expect to reap the benefits of alignable if you leave your profile lying idle without doing anything. If you don’t put effort and time into building connections, you won’t get the most out of alignable.
All in all, Alignable is a great platform to grow your business through business networking.