Community Guidelines
Thank you for taking a moment to review the community guidelines. The guidelines are here to: 1) help you become a valuable contributor to the community, 2) explain what kind of conduct to avoid, and 3) make sure the community is enjoyable for - and respectful of - all our users. Please interact with other users accordingly and conduct yourself as you would in any professional setting. We expect everyone to abide by the User Agreement and follow these guidelines.
The goal of the Small Business Online Community is to empower our members to build and grow successful businesses. We hope you enjoy visiting the community, return often, and become an active member and frequent contributor.
- Keep it clean, keep it professional. Every post should make a positive contribution to the community and should be suitable for all users. The community is open to all points of view on the intended business-related topics; mature, polite debate is encouraged. But we will remove any post or reply that includes derogatory, abusive, offensive, obscene, violent or inappropriate content of any kind. Always interact with other users respectfully, as you would in any professional setting.
- Stay on topic. Good contributions help the entire community by providing relevant, insightful information or asking important questions. If your post contains anything unrelated to the topic of the forum or article, it may be removed.
- Be honest, be yourself. The community is intended to be used for the helpful exchange of information between members. False, inaccurate, or otherwise misleading information is generally not helpful. Please be sincere in your community participation by only contributing content you know is accurate and not misrepresenting your identity or your business qualifications.
- Keep marketing efforts separate; minimize clutter. A post or reply with a personal agenda only benefits the person who writes it, not the community as a whole, and unsolicited advertising adds distracting clutter to the forums. Please respect the community's mission by not using it as a marketing channel or submitting any content you've been paid or otherwise rewarded by a third party to write.
- Submit only your own, original content. Help us maintain the community's reputation and observe the intellectual property rights of others by only submitting content you have personally written or else properly attributed. The community should not be used to distribute unauthorized copies of any copyrighted material.
- Respect the privacy of others. It's up to you, and only you, to decide whether or not to share personal information about yourself or your business. Any post or reply that includes another user's postal or email addresses, phone numbers, or other contact information will be removed immediately.
- Remember your readers. Writing in ALL CAPS or using HTML tags can make your contribution difficult to read. Excessive typographic symbols, special characters, and instant/text messaging slang can be equally hard to read and may also be confusing to users who are unfamiliar with their meanings. Try to follow standard email etiquette.
- Help look after your community. The community is here for the benefit and enjoyment of members like you. If you notice content within the community that does not abide by the guidelines or User Agreement, please report it to our site moderators by selecting Report inappropriate.
Please refer to the User Agreement and the Help section for more information about the Small Business Online Community.
Bank of America, N.A. Member FDIC. Equal Housing Lender
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Bank of America is not responsible for user posts and other user content appearing on this website and does not endorse or guarantee the perspectives, the advice, the users, the businesses, or the products or services sold by any users or businesses that appear on this website.