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Comment by rvcamo | Hacker News Reader

The thing is, it's both.

Our goal is to provide a free platform for non-typical users who are just starting to understand the power and influence of social media. These people are average joes. Small business owners between the ages of 30-60. Because social media changes so much on a monthly basis it's hard for them to keep up. Youtube videos are outdated, and social media consultants are essentially snake oil salesmen charging hundreds of dollars to create a basic Facebook and Twitter page for the business owner.

On the other end we have our Pro tool. This tool will be a powerful marketing tool for social media community managers and enterprise marketing teams. We plan on utilizing the data from our free users to offer optimal posting times, key words, phrases,customized analytics, and targeted marketing on an enterprise level.

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Usually the free product gives you a taste of the premium one. It sounds like your idea for a free product is totally different (if I'm understanding your point correctly). Something to consider..

I do like the idea of a codecademy for social media as a way to generate future paid users, you just may need to reconfigure the flow. The social media tutorial piece of this is great for buzz, but ultimately it sounds like your main product is the one for community managers, and those are the people who will bounce the second they think your site is going to teach them how to create a twitter account.

Well it's not just codecademy for social media. The lessons aren't the main aspect of the platform, just a really cool free feature we offer.

Look at it this way: Facebook rolls out new product updates all the time. Where do you go if you are a non-tech savvy person to learn how to use these new features? If you're non-tech savvy you won't be reading mashable or hacker news.

The lessons are just a cool way to entice our free userbase into using the platform. The actual platform itself is meant to be considered an all-in-one tool that recommends new people to follow, offers insight and feedback on content the user is publishing, and also has an awesome free database of knowledge for reference.

Essentially the free tool is a dumbed down version of the Pro tool. This will make a lot more sense when we go live with our 2nd round of beta testing in April. We could use all of the feedback we can get, so signup for our beta and we'd be glad to take your input. We are finishing up iteration on our first beta test now and will be ready to go in mid April.

Thanks for the feedback!

I think what's throwing me (and possibly others) off is the first example on the features page. I know what you're saying, but "dumbed down social media tools" and "here's how you sign up for an account on twitter" are pretty different. I've signed up for a beta invite tho.

I think you can pursue those two goals, its just the copy that needs a little work. A user coming to your page is going to know which bucket they fit into (pro or newbie). If a pro user comes and sees "learn how to sign up for Twitter" then they might leave before fully investigating because they think the site is obviously not for them. I would take out that line for sure.

An idea might be to segment your users up front. So the front page would say something like "Our service can help anyone interested in social media, from small business just learning how to use social media effectively to power users looking to gauge influence, find optimal posting times and understanding customized analytics."

Then the newbies get sent in one direction with a button "I'm new to this, tell me more about social media"

and the pro users get sent in another "I'm pro user, tell me more about how you can help me"

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