Q&A Forum is now Advice
Alignable’s Q&A Forum is now called Advice. It’s a place to get help from your peers and industry experts who can help your business. You can also offer your expert advice to others. It’s a great way for small businesses to empower each other, and to boost their reach and credibility.
What's New
For member businesses who use and love the Alignable Q&A Forum, here’s some of what has changed:
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It’s easier to find the answers you’re looking for. With millions of answers from small business owners, there’s a lot of advice on the topics you need to take your business to the next level.
Type your questions or keywords into the Search bar at the top of the Advice page to find existing posts, or ask a new question, which our team will review and help to distribute to the right businesses to answer it.
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You have more control over what you see. Customize the questions, answers, and articles in your Feed and in your emailed digest by following topics. Pick from general topics, or click on topic tags (shown below) to visit a more specific topic page and click “Follow”.
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See questions and answers from businesses like yours. You have a lot of expertise to offer, and there are businesses in your industry and related industries that could learn from your advice, and vice versa.
If the category tag shown on your “Asked by” and “Answered by” feeds does not accurately describe your business, you can update it here.
Using Your Advice Feed
Advice is great for helping others, and for showcasing your expertise. The great answers you give will show on your business profile and can generate new interest in the products and services you offer by increasing your visibility.
Navigate Advice using the left-hand menu.
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Find Advice - Your Advice home, where you can search, see recent and popular questions from topics you follow, and questions that were asked and answered by small business owners and employees like you.
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My Feed - Your feed of questions, customized by topics that you follow. Customize the topics that you follow by clicking on a topic tag (to follow or unfollow from the topic page) or clicking on the topics you follow link. Sort by Recent, Popular, or Unanswered in the upper right-hand corner.
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My Advice - Here you can find all of the questions you’ve asked and answers you’ve given, sorted chronologically. It’s a great place to revisit some of the advice you’ve received, or share out some of the awesome answers you’ve written.
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Brand Ratings & Reviews - If you’re looking for a new brand to use for your business (from Accounting to Marketing Automation to Website), it can be overwhelming to choose. Alignable’s Brand Ratings and Review can help you narrow down your options based on feedback from other small businesses, and you can rate brands to help others based on your experiences.
- Alignable Blog - The Small Business Beat is a place to find more articles and resources about word-of-mouth marketing, networking, and more, curated by the Alignable team.
We’d love to hear your feedback, questions, and comments below!
Comments (81-90)
Our TV station has seen an incredible jump in audience numbers. However, so many businesses are closed and/or not advertising. I know companies need to maintain their awareness, and can particularly gain an edge by advertising during a crisis - but, not sure where to find companies that are most interested and can benefit the most at this time from the increased exposure. Please let me know if you have any suggestions of who I could reach out to. Thank you,
At Leesburg Lifestyle, we believe strongly in what we call the "halo effect" of marketing where businesses gain support by helping others. It would be neat if there were a section where you could just post fundraisers or opportunities to help other people. I know it's yet another section, but it would be even helpful for us to identify the businesses who share this philosophy. You came close when you asked for good stories about people responding positively in the Covid Crisis. I'm hoping open ended questions like this are actually an invitation to share what we and others are doing to help.
I read that independent contractors are covered by unemployment by the Covid-19 stimulus and business owners also if you had to close down and were affected. I also heard that the special extended payment program for businesses also applied to independent contractors, but I am not sure how that would work as how much would you pay them? Someone said their average monthly earnings? Anyone know for sure?
My business is cyber security consulting and tech staffing. The business has dropped dramatically. Candidates will not travel so remote work becomes a necessity. But staffing has dropped dramatically
Cyber safety will NOT stop. People will attempt to hack into businesses. There have now been hackers focusing on the auto industry. Ransomware can close a business permanently. We must be diligent and remain focused.
These are difficult and don’t forget your neighbor
We have a tough two or three weeks ahead of us. Let’s stay aware of each other.
Jim
Hi: I appreciate your site and desire to help the small business man or women to succeed. My company provides Security to families and businesses and Medical Alert Button Services to the elderly and the shut ins. We have recently relocated from the East to the West and are having trouble getting the word out about our business to acquire new clients. We are the lowest priced company in the market and we provide a great service to our clients, but getting that word out has been very challenging. We've tried placements in Doctors office, pharmacies and in a numerous amount of other places, but that has not been very successful. We have joined local Chamber of Commerces and that has not been very successful either. We have tried social media like facebook and even have ran some ads with them, but still haven't found the answer yet. If you have any ideas or suggestions for us, I would greatly appreciate your ideas. Thanks os much Dan Taylor Family First Alert llc xxx-xxx-xxxx
We are in the music business. We were directly affected. We perform and book entertainment for upscale country clubs. All of our jobs have been cancelled. We lost a significant amount of money. The other problem is also when this is over it is off season where we make 0 income. We do not know if we will be able to keep the business running so we can work next season which starts at the end on October. Is there any help for us?
The Title has changed, but Advice was what small businesses were requesting initially.
Interested to hear from other realtors how they are handling showings on their Active listings. I chose to not put a lockbox, and to have no showings during the Stay AT Home Order. I've put in my private to broker remarks that I will accompany a showing for a serious and ready buyer, provided their lender qualification/approval letter is emailed to me. That way, I can be the only one to touch anything. Thanks for your replies
Appreciate the changes you are making to streamline this process. I love to help employers and I often seek advice for things outside of my experience.
The switch from Q & A to Advice is good but I think the Q & A feature is much better because it enhances more interaction and engagement on Alignable bringing business owners together to engage and interact with each other which brings more traffic to Alignable. You need that steady engagement and interaction unless you will create a feature that allows each premium business profile to post on its feeds with either public visibility or limited visibility to the profiles connections as Linkedin does.