Everybody will tell you that it’s important for small businesses to be active on social media but which platforms? Here’s our guide to the best social media platforms for small businesses.

Best Social Media Platforms For Small Businesses

It would be great if there was enough time in the day to be effectively active on all the social media platforms but that’s not the reality. Here are the three social media platforms we think are best for small businesses.

Alignable – Alignable is like LinkedIn except focused on local. According to their website, it has more than 6 million members, and millions of connections spanning more than 30,000 local communities, where you can drive leads and prospects, generate referrals, land new business, build relationships, and share advice. You can get industry information, connect with your local business community (or nationwide), and get people talking about you. Alignable is designed for local business communities to connect and help each other with discussions, networking, Q&A forums, messaging, and referrals. It allows you to:

• Expand your reach with other local businesses.
• Create a community for your company to boost traffic.
• Create promotions for your products or services.

Nextdoor – On Nextdoor you can list your business and offer deals to your local community. It’s free and easy to create an account. Customers can recommend your products or services and leave reviews. You’ll also appear in searches for businesses like yours and gain insights into what people are talking about through local conversations. Here’s what Nextdoor offers for your business:

• Business Page – Your free landing page/business profile, where users can see your contact info, address, business hours, and what you have to offer, is also where you can access reviews.
• Local Deals – You can purchase ads to promote discounts or sales and target the neighborhoods you want to reach for 7 to 30 days. It doesn’t take long to buy and post a deal, and after it’s published, users see it in their newsfeeds and under the search results on the local deals and business pages.
• Recommendations – Recommendations are given by users when they tap the heart icon on your page. People can see how many Recommendations you’ve received wherever your business name is listed and give people a reason to trust you.
• Neighborhood Favorites – Nextdoor runs an annual contest where people can vote on their favorite business in various categories. People can usually vote for about three weeks and every vote you get is added to your page as a Recommendation. Winning this contest earns you a trophy badge icon next to your listing, a higher ranking in search results, a window sticker, and a letter of recognition from Nextdoor’s CEO.

Clubhouse – An invitation-only, audio-based social media app that lets you listen in on live conversations, interviews, panel discussions, and presentations in chat rooms. Any user can start a room about a topic, open the room to guests, and decide who gets to speak. Some potential benefits of Clubhouse include:

• Learning From Experts – You can join chats about things like marketing, finance, and business, and get free advice from industry leaders in these conversations. You can learn about a wide range of topics that can help you solve problems or strengthen your business by simply searching keywords.
• Finding People You Need – While visiting rooms relevant to your business, you can meet people with the knowledge and experience you need. It’s not unheard of for businesses to even hire a new employee after connecting with them on Clubhouse. Try finding a chat room discussing the help you need, explaining what you’re looking for, and then seeing how many people respond with messages about the services they offer. Then just follow up with them and see where it goes.
• Giving Away Advice/Getting New Business – You can create your own chat rooms, either one-time events or recurring, focused on your areas of expertise, and start to build a community of followers. If you’re ambitious and have the time you can even host daily chat rooms. Even if you’re not usually a heavy social media user, it can be a lot of fun and highly rewarding to connect with people and share information that’s useful for them. And as an added bonus, these conversations can even turn into new customers for your business.