For many, building a website means hours upon hours of drafting up designs and even more time trying to get it all together. Still, one area that few take the time to think about is the website font. While it is important to have a great logo to represent your company, having the right font and font size is just as important as it can play a big role in overall customer experience and most importantly, conversions.

For companies that are in the process of building a website, the font they choose may seem like a simple process, but in fact, it can be quite difficult depending on the presentation and ‘personality’ you want your website to present. (more…)

I love using Whole Foods as a social media case study in my presentations.  Whole Foods is a first-mover that doesn’t wait to see what its competitors are doing; instead, it looks to constantly innovate and embrace new forms of media to build a closer relationship to its consumers.  From a sleek, professional blog, to a useful iPhone app, Whole Foods has noticeably made the effort and succeeded in engaging consumers.

The most impressive feature of Whole Foods’ social media campaign is its use of Facebook.  It not only has a central FB Fan Page where campaigns are run and conversations held, but it also maintains individual FB Fan Pages for individual stores.  Lets dive into the details of what has made the Whole Foods FB Fan Page so successful…

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Over the past couple years I’ve heard a lot of complaints from people saying they don’t know how to properly measure their own social media marketing campaigns. These tend to be smaller companies that eventually decide to just “trust that it’s working”. Big mistake. How do you know that you’re not just wasting your time getting involved with social media? How do you know you can’t be doing something better? Well here are 5 easy steps that anyone can take to measure their own campaigns.

There are dozens of advanced tools you could use to help you with each of these steps (thanks to your votes, we’re developing our own, called Dynamic Insights), but the process and ideas are still the same. Everyone should be measuring the success of their social media efforts, if only for informational purposes. Ignorance is not bliss; it’s irresponsible. (more…)

There was a time when search engines and Flash based websites were the worst of friends. Wherever Flash went, search engines would ignore them, but then something changed. Search engines had a change of heart. Through the help of Google and development by Adobe, Flash and search engines are slowly becoming the best of friends. While Flash still has a ways to go as far as search engine optimization best practices, the fact remains that no longer do website developers and companies have to be afraid of Flash.

The Problems and Solutions

Problem I: Indexing the Invisible

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The team at Viralogy wishes everyone a very happy New Year. To celebrate the start of 2010, we decided to put together a list of New Year’s Resolutions from our team, and share both our personal and professional goals. After having had a successful 2009 full of growth and change (Viralogy Year in Review), we look forward to a prosperous 2010. We wish you all the best, and would love to hear your own New Year’s Resolutions in the comments below.

Yu-kai Chou (Co-Founder & CEO)

Personal Goal: Lose 20 pounds.
Professional Goal: Raise $2M for Viralogy and get to sustaining revenue.

Jun Loayza (Co-Founder & CMO)

Personal Goal: I want to maintain a healthy and happy relationship with my girlfriend Kim Ear. We’ve been together for over two years now and have never spent more than a week away from each other. I have never been a fan of the long distance relationship, but to be honest, Kim is definitely worth it. I know it’s going to take a lot of sacrifices on both our parts to make it work, but I’m confident that Kim and I will be able to stay together throughout my new startup journey in 2010.
Professional Goal: 1. Make a sale of our new analysis product/API during March 2010
2. Get $1,000,000 in funding by June 2010 (more…)

I can’t believe 2009 is about over. Throughout the year we have truly been on an exciting journey with the startup life, fighting many obstacles, staying flexible, and remaining passionate about making an impact on the web.

Since product conceptualization, Viralogy is now one years old, and I’d like to share with our loyal community the challenges we faced and the lessons we learned during the year. Instead of a lists of facts, I want it to be more like a story that helps you understand who we are and what we have been through. Perhaps it will help you one day when you create your own startup.

The story of the Viralogy Team

To begin talking about 2009 for Viralogy, it would be useful to first talk about how the team came about and how we led into the beginning of 2009.

Viralogy is founded by a group of UCLA Alumni who met during their undergrads. We first created a startup called FDCareer in 2007, making recruiting talents more efficient through gaming. It was doing well and even got rated on Mashable as one of the Top 10 Social Networks for Gen-Ys. This continued until the market crashed midway through our good year. As firms were looking to layoff everyone they could, a tool that helped them recruit more efficiently wasn’t needed, so after various adjustments to the market, FDCareer ended up folding. (more…)

Image by zoomar

The thing I love about social media is its flexibility. Unfortunately, it’s very easy to pidgeon-hole it into one category or another. In many ways, social media is the ultimate interactive customer service platform, competing with e-mail support and call centers. But social media doesn’t have to *just* be an avenue for customer service. It can also be used as a great way to drive revenue and generate sales, if done in the right way.

Unfortunately, there are a plethora of companies that prefer to take the easy route and set up their accounts as feeds to their web presence, instead of creating a unique and individualized experience. Rather than dwell on some of the more depressing case studies, let’s look at one of the companies that best uses social media for cross-promotion. The beauty store Sephora has really done wonders to generate in-store and online conversions using simple social media tools. Any retailer with the motivation could do what they do. They’re a prime example of a company that doesn’t just mail it in, but one that reaches above and beyond to improve a user’s social media experience and exposure to their brand.

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