

Ask HN: Review our startup - MightyBrand.com - ryanwaggoner

After months of hard work and wistfully watching many other HN members debut their startups to this community, I'm proud to announce that MightyBrand.com is up and live.  Please take a look and let us know how you like the idea, and more importantly, how you like the execution.<p>Elevator pitch: MightyBrand monitors social channels for mentions of your brand, analyzes those conversations, and gives you tools to easily engage in those conversations.<p>http://mightybrand.com<p>If needed, my contact info is in my HN profile...I'd love to hear from you!<p>Edit: for those of you who are wondering, MightyBrand is a rebranded and much-improved relaunch of BlueSwarm.com, which we applied to YC with for the last round.
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rockbilly
* I greatly appreciate that the 30-day trial doesn't require a credit card. Bravo! Finally someone gets that right.

* Why do you start at 3 brands? I'm guessing that there are enough users that would like to monitor a single brand maybe for $12-$14/mo?

* The plan pricing isn't good. The Big Shot plan costs $100 for 10 brands/users while the Blogger plan costs $19 for 3 brands/users. Why shouldn't I just get 4 Blogger plans? Clearly the convenience of not having to deal with multiple accounts and who can access what where, but it just doesn't look like you're getting the value you should be getting. As 37s said about their pricing _"Each tier is roughly double the previous tier, but we deliver more than double the benefits."_ ([http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1287-ask-37signals-how-di...](http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1287-ask-37signals-how-did-you-come-up-with-pricing-for-your-products)).

Overall, it looks like a great way for companies to track their brands online
and see how things are going. I'd say you could easily create a sustainable
business model out of that.

~~~
sgk284
"I greatly appreciate that the 30-day trial doesn't require a credit card.
Bravo! Finally someone gets that right."

I'm torn between this. On the one hand, it's less friction for the user to
sign up... but then you wind up bugging the user later on. I feel like it's
better to just get all of the "administrative non-sense" out of the way at the
start. Also, if they're willing to give you their credit card (even if you
aren't charging it right away), I suspect the data would show that they're
more willing to pay for it later. I've got no data to back that statement
though. Does anyone have any experience with this to share?

~~~
timf
One reason I think it should be required is to do vetting up front. That is,
say you are offering something ISP/colo-like through your SaaS, something
along the lines of a web proxy service. Not good to have people on free trials
doing illegal things and having no way to identify them.

I understand credit cards are not great vetting but it's better than nothing
in these situations. I wish there were a way around this (which is mostly why
I'm posting this comment, perhaps someone can relieve me of any ignorance).

"Fax me a copy of your license" is out of the question ... the only thing I've
come up with is to have a pretty crippled free demo that at least gets you a
chance to see half of it in action.

~~~
sgk284
There is a large company I used to work for that we all use everyday and most
of their services are free, but before I left they were discussing using
credit cards as a means to defend against abuse in a free service. (The
specific service being discussed hasn't been released yet) While it would cut
back greatly on abuse, it'd probably significantly reduce adoption. I was
always against the move... but in the start up I'm working on now, I feel it'd
be more convenient for both sides to just take care of the credit card stuff
up front. The big difference, to me at least, is that what I'm working on is a
paid service.

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dkokelley
In your FAQ you have the question:

 _Why would I need something like this?

People 'love' to feel like someone is listening. Millions of people are
talking online about you, your competitors, and your market space. If you're
not listening and effectively communicating with them, you're missing a great
opportunity for customer support and acquisition._

From a sales perspective, I think this is a bad approach. It's a defensive
position that assumes the visitor's default position is "I don't think I need
this." When I read this line, my thinking changed from "This could be useful"
to "Yeah, why DO I need this?"

The answer to the question is good, but the question itself is what I would
change. You could ask "How will MightyBrand.com help me achieve x?" and then
answer by selling the benefits of your service.

Also, the Feadback tab hovers over the text on some pages (like the FAQ).

Goodluck with this. I think it's a great idea! Goodluck on the execution!

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Really appreciate the feedback. Sounds like we need to step back and go
through the copy and marketing approach with a critical eye after spending so
much time mired in the code. Thanks again!

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symptic
With a name like MightyBrand, while I think you've got a solid design already,
it just doesn't come across to me as something bold enough to sport the name
'MightyBrand'. I'd look to add bold, heavy, red coloring rather than orange.
The white feels clean, but it also feels a bit too open.

Also, in terms of conversions, placing the icons with links to the social
sites themselves will drive some traffic away. Instead, create case studies
for each one with very bold and obvious calls to action on the pages inviting
the user to get involved.

The screenshot is good, but the border is bigger around the screenshot than
the 'Free 30-day Trial' button. I'd sugegst either making the button 'louder'
or simply increase the border's size, or decrease that of the screenshot.

Internally, one thing I notice is very wide columns for your content. This
makes the text a burden to read. Make them more narrow. it looks like the
line-height is good, but it may need to be bigger. A lot of the text is bold
when it shouldn't be. You want a larger contrast between the content and the
headers.

The Pricing page is a good start, but it's too bland right now. Spice it up by
adding short descriptions of each benefit under the price chart. Add
background colors to the chart items themselves. make the most important item
larger and in the center. The little blurb underneath could do with some
shortening I think. "Special Request? Contact us." As it is, it's too much
text for something so simple. You can have more text on the contact page if
need be.

~~~
rogercosseboom
Second.

Your name stands out from other websites, but the design does not. I would
strongly suggest less a "Web 2.0" look. By that I mean lose the orange/grey
color scheme, silly white gradiated buttons, position:absolute feedback link.

A good reference would be design that utilize a more traditional poster-like
typography, rather than other websites.

This might be helpful: [http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/20-websites-with-
beautifu...](http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/20-websites-with-beautiful-
typography/)

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Geez...those are some sweet designs. We're sans designer at the moment, but
we'll see if we can dredge some inspiration from stuff like this. Thanks!

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3pt14159
Awesome product, we (FreshBooks) may even end up using it. But it is going to
be kinda cheap for us, all we need is the blogger package. This is sillly. We
are a 30 employee company, we could afford to pay much more.

You should up your prices for guys like us, or (somehow) charge on some other
metric.

Awesome site - it is totally slick.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Based on a lot of feedback about our pricing model, we're going to rethink a
few things. Really appreciate your positive feedback!

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jwesley
You need to allow brand names to be more than 20 characters. A lot of brands
are longer than that, for example school names. "University of Blank" will
almost always be too large, and those educational brands spend a ton of money
on marketing.

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unalone
I hate that Feedback tab. I don't know what service provides it, but it ruins
my process of browsing the site, it's ALWAYS slow to load, and I think a
contact form is much more useful.

The design is clean. Two things: make a hover effect on the "Free Trial"
button, it feels oddly static right now, and "60 sec signup, no credit card"
bleeds off the button in Safari 4.

Now, question, from a genuine newbie: how is your service better than my just
subscribing to a set of 6 RSS feeds?

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Thanks for the feedback...we're still working through design and layout
issues, so all feedback and advice in this area is welcome.

You can definitely put together a free service to monitor mentions of your
brand, but there's a few things that you miss:

1\. No analysis or deeper meta info about the conversations and the people who
are talking

2\. No dashboard to quickly see an overview of what topics and brands you're
tracking have new mentions

3\. Takes more time to put together the feeds and keep up on what new social
channels are relevant and should be added.

4\. No integrated ways to engage in the conversations you find, which just
saves a bit of time.

5\. No collaborative features, such as being able to see which items someone
else on your team already responded to.

Obviously, for some users, a free solution using RSS feeds or something
similar is the way to go, but if your time is worth $50 / hour, our solution
only needs to save 24 minutes per month to be cost effective.

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ewoodh2o
Looks well thought out - I think the idea has great potential! Just a few
points on the marketing pages:

* Why do the Twitter / Yahoo / Digg links on the home page actually link to those sites? Maybe it's because the arrow pointing up to the T for Twitter, but I clicked one of those links expecting more information about how your service integrates with that site. Instead was swept off your site. I'd gander that most of the people in your target audience are well aware of what these sites are.

* Is there really no audio on the screencast? A little explanation along with it would go a long way.

I'll look into it a bit more later on. Seems to have promise though! Good
luck!

~~~
sam_in_nyc
I also clicked on a logo, expecting it to change the picture beneath it.
Completely agree, audience already knows about these sites, and besides, the
UI suggests it's going to switch the picture.

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eisokant
It looks like a great site especially since you allow filtering to some
extent. I was just deleting my account with Techrigy.com earlier since they
just didn't get it right, MightyBrand has a lot of potential.

When I tried blocking an author though I got the following error from Google
Chrome:

The webpage at <http://mightybrand.com/brands/block> has resulted in too many
redirects. Clearing your cookies for this site may fix the problem. If not, it
is possibly a server configuration issue and not a problem with your computer.

All the best,

Eiso

~~~
ryanwaggoner
We'll definitely look into that error. Thanks for the feedback!

(Note to self: check site in Google Chrome next time!)

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brandnewlow
three things.

1\. The "keyword" concept can be better explained. I wasn't sure what to put
there during registration. It was only after I saw it in action, and saw that
it was actually asking for specific search terms, that I understood. Then I
went back in and changed the keywords for my brand to specific terms I wanted
to tack, rather than words that described my business.

2\. When I see my latest results, I want some kind of a refresh button that
will tell the system to go check for new results.

You know how some people refresh their inboxes all the time hoping for new
mail? I would totally do that with this, hoping for new results. So give me a
refresh button that checks for new terms.

3\. The language on the brand-editor page near where I enter my Twitter info
is confusing. Under the "change password" field there's a checkbox....with no
text near it to explain what the heck it does. That needs to be fixed.

There's some big text to the left just kind of floating that says "Don't
display tweets from this account." I guess that might apply to the check box.
If so, shrink it and pull it closer to the check box.

Also, with the twitter setup, when I enter my twitter info, I want a little JS
message confirming that Mighty Brand successfully linked up with my twitter
account, so I know that's working and the pipes aren't goofed up or something.
Put me at ease.

I may think of more stuff later.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
New pricing model: we add a refresh button, connect it to TipJoy, and charge
you 10 cents per click :-)

Just kidding...all your feedback is helpful and I've added it to the list
(which is growing at an alarming rate). In particular, we're going to
completely overhaul the "add brand" page to make it more clear and give you
sample results as you're filling out the form so you can see what to expect.

------
redorb
I think your prices should be $5/month "blogger" then I would just rename the
others and perhaps shift the price downward too, "startups" will probably do
this themselves with google alerts or other services.

I think your market is small; I feel those who know enough to care about brand
mentions - care enough to already have ideas of how to do it, and those who
don't won't probably 'get it'.

Good luck in your endeavor

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Thanks for the feedback. We're definitely still working through our pricing
model, so I appreciate the suggestion.

As we state in our FAQ, there's a number of ways you can cobble together a
free solution on your own that will accomplish some of the same things, but
it'll take longer and will lack a lot of features. At $20 / month, our
solution doesn't have to save much time to be worth it, or at least that's the
thinking. Guess we'll see :)

~~~
jdamer
Pricing really seems to be the most troubling point. I really think there
should be some free scaled back option. The question is where to draw the line
of what you can give away for free and what people absolutely must pay for. I
guess you could draw the line at "things you can't do with a Google Alert" so
things like responding directly, monitoring multiple brands, filtering, etc.
But at least let me see buzz about 1 brand for free. Then I'll sign up and
I'll consider paying for premium services.

~~~
redorb
How about the first 20 mentions of your company free per month for the basic
account - then go into the packages..

Good luck

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pedalpete
I think your messaging is a bit off in the "add brand" section

I created a brand, and then it asked for keywords or phrases, so I entered
keywords, not the brandname itself as I thought this was a tag kinda think,
maybe you were doing analysis on cross-section of Brands (that's capital B,
'cause you are calling your brand grouping a 'Brand').

Not a bad idea to have Brand keywords. Anyway, of course I was supposed to
enter the brands I wanted to follow in that box, like the comma delimited list
said, but of course, I didn't do that the first time.

Then I had to create another Brand (I'm beginning to think that Brand is a bad
word for that, Brand Group or something might be better). I couldn't find how
I edit a Brand I already created. Of course, the "edit brand' is in the menu
on the left, but for some reason I expected it to be up near the to by the
"add brand" button. Add/Edit do go really well together.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
We were just talking about cleaning up the add brand page and making it more
intuitive, as you're not the first person to do this :-) Thanks for the
feedback!

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jbenz
The design is really great. Very clean, lots of white space, clear call to
action. Just wanted to say: Good work!

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toddc
Good idea, now just start refining it.

Users love a sparse UI, but you've gone overboard. You need to add
descriptions to the different pricings; the labels aren't intuitive. I assume
you mean 3 brands = monitor three brand destinations (e.g. youtube.com
mentions, twitter mentions, and yahoo news mentions). That is confusing to
marketing people. Try to make it more clear that you offer increasing depth
penetration for a single brand. The multiple users feature isn't intuitive
either. \--Neither of these items were adequately answered by your FAQ.

I would revise your FAQ language, it comes across as too chatty and
colloquial. Your trying to get into the wallets of marketers, act
professional. Your design is clean and well done, now bring the writing up to
the same level.

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jwesley
A few suggestions:

There needs to be a way to sort the results by source so people can see only
mentions on twitter, digg, blogsearch, etc. Currently it can be tough to tell
where any given conversation was found.

It would be helpful to have negative filters for removing false positives.
Some brands have similar keywords, so it's annoying to see the same irrelevant
topics coming up.

The positive/negative filters need some work. About half the results in the
negative tab were actually positive in the test I did.

You're tracking the keywords by sucking in RSS feeds for search queries
correct? You might have a challenge convincing savvy individuals to pay for a
service they could basically recreate in an hour inside their own feed reader.

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kbrower
Definitely interested in this and would become a paying subscriber, if: 1\.
prices were lower 2\. it was more comprehensive(went through tinyurls for your
domain, scanned other social websites)

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Great to hear. A couple quick questions:

1\. What's the price point that you'd be willing to pay for? What would expect
for that price, in terms of number of brands tracked and number of users on
your account?

2\. Can you explain the tinyurls thing a bit more? What other social networks
would you like to see added? (we're working on a long list right now, btw)

Thanks!

~~~
avinashv
re (2) I imagine he means that your application followed through shortened-
URLs to see if they point through to the client's brand and monitor that--it
comes up a lot in Twitter, for example.

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ivankirigin
Definitely a cleaner design than BlueSwarm. Nice work.

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bretthoerner
Nitpick: make a PNG logo from the original and replace your JPEG - it is your
brand, after all. (the fuzz is annoying, and stands out against an otherwise
very clean site)

<http://mightybrand.com/img/mightybrand.jpg>

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asnyder
You should have another option for a single brand. Currently I only want to
monitor one brand, and wouldn't use the extra 2 the blogger option provides.
Furthermore, this discourages me from signing up because I feel that after 30
days I would be paying for something that I'm not using.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Yeah, we're hearing more and more that our pricing plan isn't ideal. We're
considering adding a "solo" plan that allows one user to track one brand at a
lower price point. Thanks for the feedback!

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rokhayakebe
Finally a startup with "Pricing".

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joshuarr
<http://mightybrand.com>

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jpwagner
Looks good. Great concept. Pricing section MUST be reworked. no on "big shot"

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flexterra
I like the idea

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geuis
In FF3, clicking on Feedback shows underneath the video on
<http://mightybrand.com/features>

