Remember the days when social media was just a place to post pictures of your family and share funny memes? Those days are long gone!
Social media has changed the way businesses and individuals connect and communicate. Today, social media channels are widely considered must-have tools for generating B2B leads and building brand recognition.
And social media only continues to evolve as an essential business tool. Companies and business owners are experimenting with multiple social media platforms. They want better exposure and engagement, and a way to attract new customers.
Two B2B social media platforms that are frequently compared are Alignable and LinkedIn. Both sites have their pros and cons. But choosing a platform comes down to business goals and personal preference.
In this blog, I’ll break down the key differences between using Alignable and LinkedIn for organic social media, plus the benefits of each platform. I’ll also share my tips for implementing a strategy that aligns with your business goals and maximizes your marketing efforts.
B2B Companies Need to Invest in Social Media
I previously wrote a blog post outlining why it’s more important than ever for companies to use social media. It’s a cost-effective way to build and strengthen relationships with customers, partners, and stakeholders. It also helps businesses communicate their message across various platforms and increase visibility.
There are so many benefits, including building connections and partnerships, promoting products and services, improving customer engagement, and recruiting. Besides, it helps businesses connect with prospective clients and stay connected with the community.
I’m always asked if a company should be on a specific platform (usually TikTok), and my answer is usually, “It depends.” If you’re looking for tips to get started with social media for your business, I always suggest picking a social media platform that is primarily tailored for business usage.
Most often, this is LinkedIn or Twitter. However since Alignable was created as a networking website for small local businesses about 10 years ago, it’s consistently built up its user base. Recently I’ve been asked more and more if a company should be active on that platform, too. So let’s dive in.
Differences between Alignable & LinkedIn
Audience: Alignable has a smaller audience, with a focus on local business networking, while LinkedIn has a larger user base. As of this writing, Alignable has 7 million members and LinkedIn has 875 million users.
While at first, it seems like LinkedIn should be a no-brainer, don’t forget that it’s hella noisy over there on LinkedIn with that many users. So it could be easier to stand out on Alignable and be a big fish in a smaller pond.
Networking: If you’re looking to network, then LinkedIn is a great platform for personal networking on a national or global level with users from all over the world. Alignable is geared towards local business networking and aims to help businesses build their online referral network in their local communities.
Features: Both networks offer features such as polls, events, and promotions. LinkedIn also focuses heavily on job posting and content curation in addition to facilitating business connections. As a content creator, you can still generate content on Alignable, but then you need to share it in groups you join to maximize visibility. I feel that the content distribution is better on LinkedIn for individual users.
When choosing between Alignable and LinkedIn, both provide similar features and benefits for businesses. Both LinkedIn and Alignable also offer a premium version above the free account, which I’ll dive into below. However, it comes down to your goals and objectives, and the specific audiences you want to reach.
Alignable is more focused on local business networking, while LinkedIn is focused on global professional networking. So Alignable is ideal for B2B businesses looking to build a local referral network and target local business owners – think professional services firms like tax services, lawyers, or real estate agents, for example. LinkedIn is better for B2B businesses looking to build business relationships and start conversations with professionals nationally or globally.
Benefits of Using Alignable
Alignable is a social media platform that offers targeted networking capabilities for small and medium businesses in the same local community. This is an easy way for users to find trusted local business partners and build stronger relationships that can result in increased sales and referrals.
The community q&a forums on Alignable allow you to ask and answer questions from other businesses in their area. This gives you the opportunity to learn from other local businesses and it’s also a great way to show off your knowledge and expertise when you answer questions.
Setting up a free Alignable account gives you a profile page that you can optimize, and allows you to connect to 10 businesses a month within a 4 mile radius. Alignable offers three premium tiers that offer additional connections, an expanded market radius, and account analytics.
For me, the biggest benefit of Alignable is building out your local referral network. The recommendation engine on Alignable helps you find trusted local business partners by showing recommendations based on your services, interests, and location. This is a great opportunity to hyperfocus on your local community beyond word of mouth marketing.
Benefits of using LinkedIn
Let’s start with the obvious: LinkedIn is the largest professional network, with over 875 million users. If you’re in B2B, your target market is pretty much guaranteed to be on LinkedIn.
The basic, free version of LinkedIn is very robust. Its ‘people search’ feature provides easy access to potential customers so you can easily connect with your target audience. Users can become thought leaders by posting regularly and sharing their expertise, insights, and relevant industry articles. There’s a great opportunity to grow your reach and exposure on LinkedIn at a scale that is typically only available to a national brand.
You can turn on creator mode and build your personal brand by publishing your own articles or newsletter and featuring posts and resources that can help create a portfolio of your work. This helps in building strong, meaningful relationships and trust with your customer base and prospects.
LinkedIn also offers a few paid subscriptions which allow access to premium services and features such as the ability to send connection requests to other users (called InMail), access to the LinkedIn Learning library, and additional business development and recruiting tools.
Building out your company’s presence on LinkedIn is the industry standard for businesses of all sizes.
One caveat I always mention is that LinkedIn Company Pages don’t perform as well as personal accounts. Even though it’s a business networking platform, the reality is that people want to buy from people. So I always recommend that clients use Company Pages in tandem with strong employee engagement to help amplify the reach of your content.
Tips on using Alignable and LinkedIn for your B2B Social Media Strategy
Social media is no longer optional for companies in 2023 (and beyond). Your customers, partners, prospective leads, and even potential employees will look to your social as a way to communicate with you, get support from you, and make sure you’re legit. A well-crafted social media strategy can help you connect with your target audience, increase brand awareness, and drive consumers to make purchasing decisions.
If you’re getting started with social, or reassessing your current strategy, it’s important to clearly define your objectives and target audience. This will help you develop content that resonates with your audience, speaks to their needs, and addresses their pain points.
Here are some example goals and tactics:
- If your goal is to increase visibility in your local business community:
- Alignable works well for this and you should focus on building out and optimizing your Alignable business profile
- Make connections with local businesses that offer complementary services and reach out to them to see how you can collaborate
- Requesting Alignable reviews can be especially valuable for small business owners as they build up their profiles and grow their local business network
- Alignable works well for this and you should focus on building out and optimizing your Alignable business profile
- If your goal is to grow your followers and make new connections for your LinkedIn Company Page:
- Set a realistic goal for how often you want to share content and stick to that goal
- Hold training sessions where you educate your employees on the importance of your LinkedIn strategy, and teach them how to interact with and share your posts
- Create a process for notifying your employees when you have a new post or upcoming events to promote, and then ask them to share it with their networks.
- For both platforms, make sure you’re taking advantage of relevant groups – Alignable and LinkedIn both offer groups that can be a great source of information sharing, referrals, and exposure for your business
Final Thoughts
Alignable is a social media platform for businesses that focus on networking in your local area. This can add huge value for small businesses, but medium and larger companies can also take advantage of this network. The platform provides a platform to ask questions and get advice from the community, which helps business owners connect and collaborate with other local businesses. Alignable also provides free tools for companies to help them manage their online presence effectively and efficiently.
On the other hand, LinkedIn is a social media platform for businesses that aren’t as focused on local marketing. The site offers job postings, content, and functionality, which helps businesses with growth and recruitment. In addition, LinkedIn offers advanced features such as paid advertisements and professional networking opportunities, providing a platform for businesses of all sizes to build relationships and develop customers across the globe.
On the face of it, it makes sense to use one platform over the other. However, at the end of the day, the choice between these two platforms comes down to business requirements. If you have the bandwidth to use both LinkedIn and Alignable for networking purposes, you’ll be able to increase your reach considerably and make meaningful professional connections.
Building out a strategy for your business to find success on social media is my favorite thing to do! If you’d like help with your social media in 2023, let’s chat!