[HN Gopher] Show HN: Attract more customers by highlighting why ...
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       Show HN: Attract more customers by highlighting why people trust
       you
        
       Author : sharath39
       Score  : 27 points
       Date   : 2021-03-17 17:36 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (shoutout.so)
 (TXT) w3m dump (shoutout.so)
        
       | systemvoltage wrote:
       | Is there a wall of shame product? I want to know what I'm doing
       | wrong and not just what I'm doing right. Getting a pat on the
       | back is less interesting than getting smacked by a bad review.
       | Honesty and hearing customer's frustration is far more important
       | than positivity dopamine dose. The former leads to actual
       | improvements, the latter leads to echo chamber of complacency.
       | 
       | This is why I don't shop on Amazon anymore. All reviews are
       | great. It is not truthful.
        
       | dstik wrote:
       | Very clever - great idea and execution. Embedding positive tweets
       | is something we've wanted to add to our site for a long time but
       | it's so annoying/tedious to put together on your own, this it
       | awesome. Thanks for creating and sharing!
        
       | aaaalex wrote:
       | We use Shoutout on our site -- very happy with it!
       | 
       | How's that for meta social proof?
        
       | runako wrote:
       | Very interesting product, congratulations on the launch!
       | 
       | Some initial feedback/suggestions:
       | 
       | 1) Raise pricing, especially on the $15 plan.
       | 
       | 2) The $50 plan looks like something agencies will pick up for
       | their clients. So get ahead of that and charge more for that.
       | Limit to N walls per domain or something. Then add agency plans
       | that scale by # of domains where walls are posted. Agency plans
       | probably should start at $99 (maybe for 3 domains) and go up.
       | 
       | 3) Auto curation could be cool. Run tweets through some kind of
       | sentiment analysis and email/Slack/SMS candidates to your
       | customers. Let them Y/N each. That way they don't have to log
       | into the app to get results.
       | 
       | Good luck!
        
         | sharath39 wrote:
         | Love it. This is some great feedback Ranuko. Definitely going
         | to consider adding domain limitations on walls and adding
         | agency pricing.
        
         | didgeoridoo wrote:
         | +1 on raising the Pro price.
         | 
         | I'd also reconsider the ability to publish a wall from the Free
         | plan -- you can get a hell of a lot of value out of this
         | product with a single wall, and pay nothing in return.
         | 
         | Two alternate approaches could be:
         | 
         | 1) Give away less value. Generate the wall for a proof of
         | concept, but keep it in draft until payment hits.
         | 
         | 2) Get something in return. Badge the free wall with a Shoutout
         | link/logo/"what's this?" that can be removed by paying.
        
           | sharath39 wrote:
           | Interesting ideas. Thanks for these. We will look into it and
           | implement accordingly.
        
       | amelius wrote:
       | So, selective reviews?
        
         | sharath39 wrote:
         | Can you be more little more specific?
         | 
         | The tweets we suggest are high-signal and we believe it will
         | help your product, newsletter or whatever you are selling.
        
           | verdverm wrote:
           | I believe they mean something like... you're filtering for
           | only positive reviews (best for your customers) rather than
           | unbiased perspectives (so that humans are best served by
           | unfiltered truth)
           | 
           | So the company is able to "lie" to potential customers.
           | 
           | How companies manipulate Glassdoor is an interesting case
           | study
        
             | sharath39 wrote:
             | True. Our algorithm decides which ones are the best
             | shoutouts you can use and we suggest it to you.
        
               | verdverm wrote:
               | My hunch is most of society wants trusted and unbiased
               | reviews rather than filtering or manipulation.
               | 
               | I doubt there is more money in that direction though
        
               | sharath39 wrote:
               | We believe the same. In the age of information overload
               | building credibility on the Internet is tough. That's why
               | we are building Shoutout. It will dig the unbiased
               | positive shoutouts and help creators, startups build
               | credibility.
        
               | smoe wrote:
               | Personally, from a consumer perspective I'm not convinced
               | postive reviews are actually that useful, vetted or nor.
               | 
               | E.g. on Amazon I ended up only ever reading 3 star
               | reviews. Not for their positivity or negativity, but
               | because they often point out some shortcomming of the
               | product that might or might not effect me. Say some audio
               | hardware not supporting some MIDI feature. I might not
               | care about it at all, or it is a dealbreaker. I have made
               | more pruchase decision based on those reviews than
               | positive ones. For the latter what usually lacks is
               | knowledge about the context, the use case they have.
        
               | TeMPOraL wrote:
               | > _It will dig the unbiased positive shoutouts_
               | 
               | If you filter for positive shoutouts only, the result
               | becomes strongly biased by definition :).
        
         | motoxpro wrote:
         | Social proof is to give credibility, reviews are to make
         | decisions. This is for social proof. Also, by definition social
         | proof is positive or else it wouldn't be valuable.
         | 
         | It's an easier way to source all of those testimonials that
         | people have on their website and really cool because it shows
         | that people "like me" value the product. If they do their job
         | right, you could have a testimonial that is more valueable than
         | anything you could have sourced yourself because you are
         | surfacing that diamond in the rough. Especially if you a big
         | brand with thousands, or millions, of people tweeting at you.
         | 
         | Cool prooduct, nice work guys.
        
           | sharath39 wrote:
           | Thanks! Couldn't put in a better way.
           | 
           | What you said about social proof is absolutely true! It is
           | the relevancy that helps people make a decision and through
           | credibility it is even easier.
        
       | tkiolp4 wrote:
       | Interesting. How do you guys filter out not so nice @ mentions?
       | Is it a manual process?
        
         | sharath39 wrote:
         | Thanks for checking us out.
         | 
         | We have build an algorithm that curates the high-signal
         | mentions and we suggest them to you.
         | 
         | We have a mechanism in place to avoid the low-niosy tweets.
        
       | trulykp wrote:
       | love the product - been a fan since the MVP which was built on
       | Bubble :) Wondering if you could send a weekly email with top
       | Shoutouts to my Twitter account?
        
         | sharath39 wrote:
         | Thanks KP for being an early believer since day 0 :)
         | 
         | Yes, daily/weekly reminders is a feature we already planned.
         | Stay tuned, for it to become live.
        
       | markdown wrote:
       | Am I understanding right that this is just a testimonials feature
       | with the limitation that it only shows tweets?
       | 
       | If so, I don't understand why one would pay $15/month for this
       | when you can just embed tweets in any html page or CMS for free.
        
         | amelius wrote:
         | Also, you can't just pull tweets from the web and show them as
         | testimonials. You will need to ask the sender for permission.
         | (I would personally hate it if my tweets were pulled out of
         | context and used like this for commercial purposes, without my
         | consent.)
        
           | markdown wrote:
           | I can understand feeling that way, and I would too. But
           | you've signed over to Twitter the right for them to display
           | your tweets in any way they see fit, and they've given
           | everyone else permission to embed your tweets wherever they
           | want (subject to some TOS no doubt).
        
           | exolymph wrote:
           | Uh, you absolutely can, unless the account is locked. All the
           | person who tweeted can do is delete the tweet.
           | 
           | You can embed any tweet anywhere you feel like (and actually
           | the embed won't fully disappear when the tweet is deleted,
           | but I digress).
        
           | pedalpete wrote:
           | But does Shoutout ask the OP for permission to display the
           | tweet? I've never heard this "you can't just pull tweets from
           | the web.." twitter provides the embed capability, and doesn't
           | mention anything in their terms (from what I can find) about
           | asking for OP permission.
           | 
           | This strikes me as something that took longer to build as a
           | service, than it would take an individual to build for their
           | own app.
        
             | sharath39 wrote:
             | We don't ask for permissions. We believe in positive-sum
             | game.
             | 
             | Social proof is given in the first place by people to
             | people whose work or service made a positive impression on
             | them.
             | 
             | We focus to showcase that and leave the rest.
        
         | sharath39 wrote:
         | There are many reasons why people are paying for it:
         | 
         | 1. Save time - We find the best shoutouts for you so you don't
         | have to search them in bookmarks and find them. 2. Design
         | beautiful walls - We are offering design layouts(grid view,
         | carousel view) with custom settings like changing colors, dark
         | mode etc. 3. Zero maintenance - Once you setup an embed on your
         | website you are done. All you need to do is add shoutouts to
         | your wall and the embed automatically reloads with news
         | shoutouts. 4. Ultra-fast embeds - Our embeds load ridiculously
         | faster than Twitter embeds. 5. We are not just limiting
         | ourselves to Twitter but will expand it other platforms. So we
         | are here to monopolize the social proof niche.
        
       | sharath39 wrote:
       | Hey there HN community
       | 
       | I'm Sharath co-founder at Shoutout. This is my first posting a
       | product on HN so I'm pretty stoked at the same time heavily
       | nervous about it!
       | 
       | Five months ago, I had this idea of gathering all the shoutouts I
       | get on Twitter under one place, and I thought it would be cool to
       | launch an LP and validate it with everyone. As a no-code maker, I
       | shipped the LP in less than 24hrs, got 120+ signups, and saw
       | people saying we need this! I then shipped a no-code MVP, tested
       | it with few close friends who asked for more features. The signs
       | were so clear that I went ahead and put a bat-signal on Twitter
       | searching for a co-founder. Curtis Cummings from nowhere
       | approached me, and we clicked in our first meeting and started
       | building a fully coded product.
       | 
       | We launched our private beta 2 months ago and got the opportunity
       | to onboard some iconic creators like Jack Butcher, Julian
       | Shapiro, Lenny Rachitsky, and startups like On Deck and Knowable.
       | We've iterated on our early believers' feedback and made a
       | product that delivers value to creators and startups!
       | 
       | A month ago, we launched Shoutout to the public and on Product
       | Hunt and secured #3 product of the day. We now have 36 paying
       | customers and got Product Maker Grant Recipient award.
       | 
       | Today, I'm pumped to announce Shoutout to the Hacker News
       | community! We truly believe creators and startups should leverage
       | the social proof they are getting on Twitter, and our mission is
       | to make it easy for everyone!
       | 
       | Shoutout lets you tap into your existing social proof and turn it
       | into a beautiful "Wall of Love"
       | 
       | How does it work?
       | 
       | Curate and Organize: With an infinite feed that is constantly
       | updating every second, tracking social media shoutouts* is an
       | invaluable task! Shoutout removes the tediousness and spotlights
       | all the high-signal tweets in one place.
       | 
       | Customize and Design: We believe in personalization and value the
       | importance of custom branding. Shoutout quickly turns the bunch
       | of tweets into a beautiful wall within minutes. Rearrange these
       | shoutouts according to your need and add custom colors that
       | represent your brand.
       | 
       | Showcase and Embed: Share your public wall or embed it directly
       | on your site without any coding. Our embeds are blazing fast, so
       | they won't slow down your site. As you update your wall, your
       | embed will show all of your latest shoutouts, making the
       | experience frictionless.
       | 
       | What's next: We are not stopping here, and this is just the
       | beginning of our mission to help creators and startups to
       | leverage the social capital they gain on Twitter! We are excited
       | to launch many more features based on your feedback and look
       | forward to delivering more value to you constantly!
       | 
       | If you have any feedback, feel free to comment or say hello to us
       | on Twitter @shoutoutso_!
        
         | aryamaan wrote:
         | Great product. Good luck with this.
        
           | sharath39 wrote:
           | Thanks and appreciate your time checking it out!
        
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       (page generated 2021-03-17 23:01 UTC)