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3 Sites Your Small Business Can Leverage During Downtime (COVID-19)

If you didn’t have enough to worry about during the current pandemic, I’d like to introduce you to 3 websites / tools that I have found to be great tools for improving relationships and referrals during downtime.

I know I know, who has downtime right?

Which is why the four criteria made to narrow down this short list of websites includes:

  • Quick Navigation & Signup
  • Easy to Fill out Profile
  • Available Connections / Referrals / Reviews
  • Not one of the common top 4 (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram)

Let’s get started!

Alignable

Alignable Website

Alignable

Alignable calls itself “The Small Business Referral Network” and I’d have to agree. Currently since working with the website I have increased my local presence and reach through connecting with other local businesses.

Additionally, it’s a well-designed website, full of options and features for free users to leverage the free time they have by connecting with businesses around them doing the same.

It takes about 10 minutes to completely fill out a profile and sign up, as long as you have your logo, company motto and related imagery to upload.

You get 10 credits every month as a free user to connect with others, which seems to be a little less than what you’d like to have initially starting out, but I believe this is a way for them to eliminate spamming and the “set it and forget it” mentality.

Trust Pilot

TrustPilot Website

TrustPilot

TrustPilot is a Reviews website that offers countless paid abilities to connect and obtain reviews from customers. I find this website to be valuable even on the free plan but moving to a paid option can really make a difference for a larger audience business like a pizza restaurant or bowling alley.

As with Alignable, TrustPilot is another well designed website that offers a variety of ways to communicate with customers, promote and share information, and a big benefit, it also is pulled into the Knowledge Graph in Google, allowing reviews to be collected and shared alongside Google Reviews.

One of my favorite features of TrustPilot is the embeddable widgets they provide you to place on websites to gain reviews. These widgets are well-designed, coded and definitely add value and trust to any page they are on.

Google My Business

Google My Business Website

Google My Business

The “end all, be all” for almost every small business, Google My Business, and the reviews area is such an important part of any small business owner’s online marketing toolset.

Built with base-level users in mind, GMB is easy to use once signed up (using a @gmail.com account), and of course you’ll need the same materials as before (logo, image, messaging).

In reference to today’s post, GMB has really stepped up and built in some nice COVID-19 and business update information options that you can leverage during the pandemic, offering near real-time updates to customers as they are searching and considering your business.

In Summary

During this time period, or any period in your day to day where you have some downtime, it’s incredibly valuable to you as a small business to find ways to gain more ROI for your time. Using well-crafted, popular web tools offers SMB’s the ability to compete at their own pace, and still see results.

Thanks so much for reading this article, and if you’ve found it helpful, share it with another small business owner.

We’re all in this together, let’s do the best we can! ❤️

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