Is Alignable Worth It For Businesses?
All you need to know about the small-businesses boosting platform to advertise your brand
Many different platforms aim to help micro and small businesses succeed, and Alignable is one of them. Launched in 2014, and intending to create a unique community of locally-owned businesses, Alignable has offered multiple services, tools, and resources that might be beneficial for your business.
In this post, we share key insights about Alignable, including how to get started, what you can achieve with it, and some pros and cons so you can decide whether to make the investment or not.
Keep on reading to learn all you need to know about Alignable to boost your business in 2023.
What Is Alignable?
Alignable is a small business network designed to help micro and small businesses connect with others, find new clients and get their name online. It is similar to LinkedIn but specifically designed for locally-owned businesses and stores.
In Alignable, you can add a profile photo, name, events, products, and more, similar to a storefront. Plus, you can get into detail about who your audience is, to help people discover you and also to connect with similar businesses.
There are free and paid features, which vary on how much exposure your business will have. The free entry-level features are quite good and will grant you all the tools and resources you need to start advertising your business online.
Alignable for business has a great reputation for reaching more people and connecting with loyal clients that are looking for quality products or services.
Today, the U.S.-owned platform has over 7 million members across 35,000 local communities. Since its launch in 2014, Alignable has been working alongside businesses to grow their network and reach their market goals.
In the following sections, we’ll dive deep into how you can get started with Alignable, the pros, and cons, and if it's actually worth it for your business.
Starting With Alignable: First Steps & Tips
If you’re looking to start using Alignable, we created a brief but detailed step-by-step guide with everything you need to know, including requirements, key information to add, and more.
1. Create Your Profile
As we mentioned above, Alignable is similar to LinkedIn, therefore you’re going to see a space to upload a profile picture and a cover photo. You can use your logo as your profile picture, a photo of your store as a cover, or anything that will catch a client’s eye.
After this, you can use the bio section to describe what you do and who you want to target. Spend time doing this to achieve a cohesive, engaging, and readable description. Finally, add your products and their respective definitions and pictures. You can add hashtags to all of this to make discovery easier for people.
Similar to social media, we recommend you set up your profile first and later invite people to connect with you on the platform. Having a half-empty Alignable will not cause a very good first impression, and can make people not want to follow you.
2. Recommend & Connect With Others
The main goal of Alignable is to connect with others and build great relationships between businesses. After you set up your profile, look for local businesses you know and that you’d recommend to other people for their services, products, great customer service, excellent quality, and more.
This will allow you to advertise other businesses that can return the favor if they feel the same way, but most importantly, will show your clients and future clients that you are a positive, enthusiastic business that cares for other companies.
Plus, your recommendations will appear on other businesses’ profiles, therefore more people will be able to discover you.
3. Participate
Alignable has a forum in which businesses and clients participate, sharing reviews, questions, and answers to gain more visibility and build a trustable relationship.
When you create your Alignable account, the platform will send you questions from connections and non-connections in your field to promote your participation. You must answer most of these questions to allow others to get to know you.
Keep your answers accurate and positive to boost your online presence and showcase your business as it really is.
Alignable Pros & Cons
Alignable has great features and can help you maximize your business as they advertise, but, is it really worth it for your business? Check out the pros and cons of the platform and make your own decision.
Pros
Alignable has many different features, such as:
- Network suggestions
- Recommendations (AI-Based)
- Connection search
- Keyword search
- Support (chatbot, DM, email)
- Forum
- Mutual connections
- Rating system
- Tools for promoting the engagement of local communities
- Metrics & analytics dashboard
With a free account, you can have 10 monthly connections, an online referral card, an optimized profile, multiple local connections covered, access to the advice Forum, and the option to forward your referral card and any relevant content found in the forum.
Cons
As for the cons, Alignable’s quality features have a limit, and if you want to make use of them you’ll have to pay a fee. There are three different paid plans: Local (monthly payment of $15 or annual payment of $12), Regional (monthly payment of $30 or annual payment of $24), and National (monthly payment of $90 or annual payment of $72).
The differences between them have to do with the mile radius available to make connections and referrals.
Final Words
In this post, we talked about Alignable and if it’s as worthy as they advertise. We included key information about what the platform does, how to get started, and the most relevant pros and cons to help you make a decision.
Overall, Alignable is a great place to advertise your business, but since it has limited free features, if you have a tight budget, you might want to devote your time to creating professional, and quality-looking social media profiles to gain more followers, attracting more clients, and easily direct users to your website