HopStop Offers Small Businesses A Free Advertising Opportunity

Small businesses around the U.S. will soon have an opportunity to test-drive an advertising opportunity that's targeted directly to commuters in their respective cities. HopStop, the online service that provides door-to-door subway and bus directions for major cities in the U.S. and abroad, has kicked off "HopStop AdLocal," a new program that offers businesses up to 12,500 free advertising impressions over a 30-day period, a value of $250, the company says.

Here's how it works: Business owners can sign up for HopStop AdLocal online and build their own ad -- including business name, address and advertising message. After choosing a start-date for the 30-day trial period, their geo-targeted ad will appear within the directions results provided to HopStop's online users, tailored to the specific neighborhoods they are traveling to. HopStop plans to expand the program to users of its mobile apps by mid-2012.

The idea, according to HopStop CEO Joe Meyer, is that consumers will be likely to make purchases on their travels between destinations, specifically when walking to and from transit station stops. "If a HopStop user is headed to the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan, for example, and there's a cupcake store there, we'll give that store owner the opportunity to advertise directly to our user who's headed to that neighborhood," he says. "As a result of our core service of providing point-to-point directions, we have knowledge of people's whereabouts -- their current location and the location of their destination. … It seemed like a no-brainer to start working with local merchants."

Meyer says HopStop AdLocal was created after several months of fielding requests from small businesses about how they can advertise on the site. Until now, HopStop's stable of advertisers has included larger-market companies including Starbucks, Bank of America and CVS.

After the 30-day period expires, business owners will have the choice of dropping out of the program or signing up for one of the program's three paid options: one day for $250, one week for $500 and one month for $1,000. "We didn't want to treat local merchants as though they are big-budget advertisers," Meyer says. "We realize that every dollar is very meaningful for them."

There is no purchase required to qualify for the free trial, HopStop says. However, the company does require that participating businesses post a free HopStop direction link on either their main Website or mobile Website. "It's really another free service," Meyer says. "Say you go to a site's 'contact us' page or directions page, where it shows their address and gives directions, if that business is part of our program HopStop will power that directions link for free."

HopStop isn't alone. Last month, Facebook said it was offering free ads to small businesses.

So far, HopStop AdLocal is only available to business owners in New York City. HopStop plans to roll the program into other northeast cities in the coming months and nationwide after that. HopStop says it gets about 55 million users annually.

This post originally appeared on Entrepreneur.

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Social media costs businesses $65k a year. Or does it?

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Posted 16 August 2011 17:13pm by Chris Lake with 8 comments

WebTitan has built a tool that has estimated that allowing your staff to use social media would cost the average company $65k a year, according to a report on Silicon Republic.

But is this really the case? And aren’t there plenty of benefits to be had from allowing your staff to use social media in the workplace?

The tool is based on the notion that staff might spend 20 minutes a day on social networking sites. It then looks at the average salary and performs a rudimentary calculation. Obviously it was created to help sell WebTitan’s filtering software, which will block access to the likes of Facebook. But as far as I’m concerned, that isn’t a wise thing to do for a number of reasons. 

The idea that social networking always costs businesses money is entirely wrong. Econsultancy has definitely benefited from allowing staff to freely access social media platforms, and we encourage new employees to develop their own presence on sites such as Twitter.

Here’s why I think firms need to adopt a laissez-faire approach to the use of social media in the workplace…

Transforming organisational culture remains a hell of a challenge for many firms, especially the bigger ones. In a job ad I wrote recently I specifically stated that candidates should not want or need to be micromanaged. Forward-thinking companies don’t hire people to monitor their every move. They hire brainy people who are able to exceed expectations. Staff should be trusted to do their best for the company. If an employee spends hours using social media to comment on videos of kittens then surely that person isn’t right for the organisation? 

Cultivating trust is essential. What is the cost to businesses that do not trust their staff? I’d love to see some data on staff satisfaction and retention rates, with hands-off companies compared to those that impose lock-down rules. Restricting access to social media (and other) websites might actually cost you money due to a higher-than-it-might-be staff turnover rate. 

When I started to use Twitter my status updates were almost entirely related to my profession. But my Twitter account is very much a personal account and as time has elapsed I have broadened the scope of my tweets, to reflect a wider range of interests. 

This is good and bad, I guess, and is why I wanted Twitter to introduce the kind of filters that Google has created with Google+ (Circles). The point is, I’m not simply retweeting the @econsultancy Twitter feed, and because of this, my followers have also widened in scope. The reach I have is not purely linked to my role at Econsultancy. So when I share Econsultancy links they’re being pushed in front of new people who might not otherwise have been tuning in. This is one way in which we have raised awareness of our brand.

I’m not a big fan of outsourcing your social media tasks. There should be ownership and participation within the business, as I believe that your employees are pretty much your greatest asset when it comes to communicating with people (via social media platforms or any other channel). 

Questions directed at Econsultancy are answered by individuals, and not just from the @econsultancy Twitter account. This is a far more personal approach and helps people to build new connections.

What better way is there of training up your staff in the art of social media than to allow them to play around with their own Twitter account? Maybe you think it doesn’t matter, but if you’ve bought into the idea that social media might be beneficial to your business then why not encourage staff to jump in? 

Think about it: would you really want novice managing your brand’s Twitter account? Isn’t it better for them to mess around with a personal account first? When I joined Econsultancy I set up a blog, partly because I wanted to, but also because I wanted a platform for experimentation. It helped me to learn, and it ensured that I made no killer mistakes on the Econsultancy website!

I suggest that you undertake some social media training for employees. It may seem like common sense to you but not everybody is up to speed, and your brand may require different guidelines to ours. We're currently compiling a kind of house stylesheet for Twitter, much in the same way that we have one for our blog. It is intended for internal use but we may share it. We already have a very simple social media policy, and there's a more in-depth Twitter best practice guide to check out (the latter is subscriber access).

Who takes an hour for lunch these days? Who doesn’t come in early or work late when required? How many of us check and respond to work-related emails in our leisure time? Who charges their employer for this kind of thing?

I believe in a big picture approach to social media measurement, though you can also look at the detail if it helps. What’s missing is a framework for measuring the impact on the brand. This is something I’m keen to develop. Such a framework will be anchored around comparisons and correlations over time, using data from multiple channels (rather like measuring a TV ad campaign, only far more accurate!). 

Measurement approaches may be a curve ball. Rather than wondering about what social media might cost your business, you should be thinking about the costs of having a dictatorial organisational culture. I believe that your staff can play an important role in creating a bigger social media footprint, and as such you should encourage them to develop their own presence on platforms like Twitter. They will love you for it, and your brand should benefit in the long run. Staff that abuse the system were probably bad hires in the first place. Those that you can trust will become the best brand ambassadors that you can imagine.

What do you think? Is social media a cost, or an opportunity?

The Twitter for Business report is aimed at companies and individuals who are thinking of joining Twitter and want to find out more about the social platform, as well as people who are currently using Twitter and want a deeper understanding of best practice.

The 90-page document covers best practice tactics, including statistics and case studies, as well as practical tips on getting started with Twitter and how to engage with your followers. It also includes the findings of consumer research conducted by Econsultancy using Toluna QuickSurveys.

By reading our best practice guidelines, we’ll help you to get the most value from the social platform by understanding Twitter etiquette and avoiding common Twitter mistakes.

Chris Lake is Director of Innovation at Econsultancy, an entrepreneur and a long-term internet fiend. Follow him on Twitter or connect via Linkedin.

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