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Some Key Tips for Successful Blogging

balaspa — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 17:42:38 +0000

An excellent article sharing some key tips for getting traffic and success out of your blog is HERE in an article by Ragan Communications. Are you using a blog as part of your social media/marketing plan? Have you achieved success with it? If you have a tip to share, please feel free to leave a comment below.

Is Facebook Really the Best Place to Try to Sell to People? Perhaps Not…

balaspa — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 15:04:04 +0000

Another article that shows that trying to sell directly to Facebook users is probably not the best way to go. THIS article from Mashable.com looks at a number of very popular and well-known brands who set up their Facebook stores last year when the capability became available. Many of them, less than a year later, have shut down their Facebook stores.

The debate over what good social media is when it comes to selling products continues to rage. For many companies, unless something can lead to direct sales, then it isn’t worth doing, so they skip social media. However, some companies have become smart about it. They know that social media is excellent for networking, generating buzz about their company name and products, and encouraging discussion about those products and services.

Do you use social media to sell directly to people? Has it been successful or are other social media sites, such as Pinterest, been more successful? Leave us a comment and let us know.

From Baseball Player to Astrophysicist: The Big Picture and the Quick Take

balaspa — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 16:38:50 +0000

The Big Picture

Mark SubbaRao, Ph.D., Space Visualization Laboratory Director, Adler Planetarium

Sr. Research Associate, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago

Dr. SubbaRao had two potential career paths: major league baseball or physics. After being cut from the freshman team, Mark pursued astrophysics.

The Quick Take:

Best Advice: Combine what you love into what you do. “In my work I get to use all my skills: math, being creative and technical expertise. When I was working on the Sloan Survey I took painting as a creative outlet. Now my career is my hobby,” said SubbaRao.

Greatest Failure: In the Sloan mapping project, SubbaRao and the team looked at more of the universe than had ever been looked at before and observed many unusual spectrum objects but did not stop to investigate them fully. “I left major discoveries on the table,” added SubbaRao. “If I was better prepared and had more time, I could have made more discoveries.”

Greatest Success: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the most astronomical astronomical survey ever. Just mapping the universe, no big deal.

What Makes Mark Crazy: When the ‘name a star’ people don’t give enough detail so that Mark can accurately help the families find the star that they just bought in memory of a loved one.

Some “What I Really Do” Internet Meme Humor for a Friday

balaspa — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 15:16:39 +0000

These “What I Really Do” Internet memes have really taken off. They are appearing all over social media sites and some of them are really funny. Some of them, not so much.

Since this blog article is being posted on a sunny Friday afternoon in late February here in Chicago, it seemed time to post something funny.

For a whole bunch of funny “What I Really Do” memes click HERE to read an article at Mashable.com.

Here were a couple of “What I Really Do” memes from that article that we here at K Squared found particularly amusing:

What is Your Company’s Social Media Policy?

balaspa — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 18:25:16 +0000

Does your company have clear rules about what employees can and cannot do on their own social media accounts? It can be risky, but these days it’s necessary. Some tips here in this article. What is your company doing?

Click HERE to read an article about why you need that kind of policy and how to deal with employees who are publicly criticizing.

Nice Guy Finishes First: What We Can Learn from His Side of the Desk

balaspa — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 15:45:29 +0000

Joe Levy

Joseph Levy, Jr., Chairman of Levy Venture Management

Use publicity to stand out in a crowd – Joe has used flag pole sitters and putting Chicago Art Institute-sized lions painted Northwestern colors of purple and white on the roof of his dealership to get the public’s attention.

Find out what people want and give it to them – He used clowns to entertain the kids at this dealership and in entertaining the kids, they would tell the clown what the parents wanted in a car, which the clown could covey to the salesman. He also had employees who spoke multiple languages so that they could clearly understand what was being said and use that to move the deal forward.

Find great people – Joe has had employees for life, including the ever-wonderful Athens that keeps all the cogs moving. When Athens started with Joe nearly 50 years ago, the bus and train commute was almost too much, but instead of losing Athens, he hooked her up with a car and she manages the office to this very day.

Watch for new business ideas – There are new ideas that continue to crop up that have incredible business potential – like the concept of having senior caretakers that do more than take blood pressure or do the laundry. A full service companion that is equally adept at playing cards, or reading a book aloud. The merging of services and he demand for senior care is only going to continue to increase in coming years.

Key Points

Give back - Kellogg, Culver and 99 other institutions Joe has supported
Find a way – The visionary Burnsville Eco- building
Pursue work that aligns with your interests and abilities – CDW

About the Author: Kate Koziol, president of K Squared Communications www.ksqrd.com helps entrepreneurs and other talented people and companies make more money by drawing positive attention to their products and services.

Authors Note:

I have been a member of Joe’s Entrepreneurial Group since being introduced by my good friend Rich Damisch. Heavily stacked with Northwestern Kellogg grads, I got my MBJ (Masters of Business by Joe) degree by faithfully attending early Saturday morning meetings for the last 8 years. I consider Joe to be one of my most valued business advisors and credit the group with teaching me the language of business since my East Coast theater degree did not cover business topics. Being outnumbered about 10 to 1 with men, it also taught me how to become “one of the gang.” More on that later.

Worried About Facebook Timeline? Read this Article

balaspa — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 15:47:24 +0000

Facebook is making changes again, and this time they are calling it the Facebook Timeline. Some people have become early adopters and already jumped on the bandwagon. Some people are still angry over the changes that Facebook made last year and are not ready for the new look. Some want their Facebook back the way it was!

This ARTICLE from Mashable.com has some interesting ways that, if you use Chrome as your browser, you can get the old Facebook back.

Using Google+ As Part of Your Social Media Strategy? Here’s a Great Article to Check Out!

balaspa — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:23:27 +0000

Google + has shaken up the social media world. When it was invite-only it had people adopting the new platform so rapidly that many were terming it a “Facebook killer.” While the hundreds of millions that are currently on Facebook seem to indicate that people will be on that site for a long time to come, there are many who have made the switch to Google+ and plan to stay there.

At first, Google + only allowed people to post and create sites and companies were actively removed. This is not the case anymore. Now companies can create Google + pages.

This article from Ragan Communications has some great tips on how to create a Google+ page and then make it effective.

Are you using Google+ already within your companies’ social media strategy? Do you have any success stories or disaster stories?

You can make K Squared part of your Google+ circle by clicking on the symbol to the right, by the way. Check us out!

Nice Guy Finishes First: The Back Story – Beyond the Cars

balaspa — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:11:18 +0000

Joe Levy and Jim Steuer

Joseph Levy, Jr., Chairman of Levy Venture Management

Joe has extensive collections including vintage toys, match safes and mechanical banks plus countless photos, paintings, letters from friends and business allies adorn his office walls. His pocket watch collection started with a single watch that was his grandfather’s and grew to include a watch given to General Lafayette in 1782 for his service from the people of France. He amassed and then donated his collection of Will Rodgers memorabilia to the Will Rodger’s museum in Oolagah, Oklahoma. http://www.willrogers.com/ He also collected Evanston, Illinois artist Walter Burt Adams’ paintings, many of which he donated to the City of Evanston. The first day I met Joe I got a tour of the garage and saw the Flintstone mobile. Really?? The Flintstone mobile? For years Joe drove it in Evanston parades – just for fun.

Joe has been a strong supporter of his alma maters, Culver Military Academy http://www.culver.org/ and a ’47 graduate of Northwestern University http://bit.ly/yuQCXw. His contributions to Northwestern was so extensive that when the Business School was being named, Dean Jacobs asked Joe if he’d like the school named after him, but Joe turned it down because he said he didn’t need the publicity. The Levy name is attached to several programs at the school and on three Senior Centers that he and his lovely wife Carole have built and donated to communities in the Chicago area.

Through and through, Joe is a giver. Newcomers to the group might get Joe’s “Make it Happen: A Handbook for Entrepreneurs” book, or an angel pin or some other token of welcome. Joe has published several books on his collections, entrepreneurship and other interests and is an ongoing inspiration on what can be done when you, as Joe says it, “take your foot off the bag.”

Nice Guy Finishes First: The Back Story – The Car Years

balaspa — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:13:12 +0000

Joseph Levy, Jr., Chairman of Levy Venture Management

Joe went on to run dealerships from coast to coast and is still involved in dealership real estate today. About 30 years ago Joe’s plan to build a new dealership in Burnsville, Minnesota met with some resistance from the Burnsville mayor who did not want another dealership in town. Not to be daunted, Joe sponsored a $1000 prize for local architecture students to design a compelling, cutting-edge building that would inspire the mayor to approve it. A painting of the solar panel, wind turbine, earth berm building that won mayoral approval still hangs in the halls of Joe’s offices. There was such interest and excitement in the building that Joe sold it for three times his investment even before the building was finished.

Joe had winning strategies to keep customers happy. If a customer ever had a problem or issue with a car they bought from Joe, Joe would offer to lend them his car or his wife’s car until the problem could be resolved – a genuine gesture that won him staunch loyalty. When Buick came out with the Wildcat model in 1963, Joe loaned some to Northwestern University Wildcat coaches and faculty and was rewarded with nationwide record sales of the model.

A young Michael Krasny met with Joe some 29 years ago with hopes to buy a dealership that Joe had for sale. Joe explained that he already sold the dealership, but spent some time discussing Krasny’s dreams. Krasny says he was afraid that Joe would encourage him to rejoin his family business but was pleasantly surprised when Joe offered his support and encouragement to making his own path. Joe analogized his leaving his father’s dealership to Krasny leaving his father’s business. This encouragement became the needed stimulus for Krasny to continue to pursue his own success. Ten years later Krasny asked Joe to be a founding board member of Krasny’s newly public CDW, previously known as Computer Discount Warehouse. Today CDW is an $8 billion dollar operation.

Have you had an experience with Joe? Tell us about it in the comments section below. Or, if someone has mentored you or given you advice that has made you a success, let us know that as well.