Check out Lauren’s article on Forbes about the entrepreneurial journey:
When I left my last “real job” in marketing and operations at the end of 2007, I could never have imagined what going it alone as an entrepreneur truly meant. But with my stuff in my hands and a lot on my mind, I began my entrepreneurial journey.
A lot can happen in five years, and my company Perks Consulting hit our five-year mark just this spring. In that time, we have been fortunate to work with successful organizations such as Microsoft and Pfizer, collaborate with entrepreneurial organizations like General Assembly and NY Angels, and create partnerships like our new corporate training venture with Startup Weekend. One of our newest accomplishments is our Women Business Enterprise certification, marking our commitment to diversity in vendor procurement for corporations and supporting fellow female-run enterprises.
In the past few years, you may have seen our CEO Lauren Perkins teach various education and training courses related to branding, marketing, and startup business strategies. While we started at NYCʼs original startup campus, General Assembly, we’ve taken the classes from NYC to DC, on livestreams, to accelerators, and Meetup groups, diversifying our curriculum formats from 6-part workshops to all-day and abbreviated classes, while joining some of our industry friends in teaching together.
As of today, we’re pleased to announce that the Perks Consulting Training and Education roster now includes an hour-and-half online video version of our original course, Cultivating a Community. You can find the class on Udemy, for $59, which includes lifetime access to the entire course and content. The course still encompasses all the fundamentals and conceptual topics necessary for successful community management but our aim is to offer broader access to new audiences through this platform and price. In total, the entire course encompasses 11 lectures, quizzes, and supplemental materials all aimed to prepare entrepreneurs, students, and business executives with the strategic and tactical insight necessary to increase their knowledge of community management.
Check out our class preview video below, or to view the actual online course visit:
Social Media Week is fast upon us and with it comes the difficult decision of what to attend. With so many good speakers, 224 events and after-parties, how do you get the most out of this week while still pretending to go to work and attempting to grab longer periods of rest than the quiet between train stops? Since we haven’t got a spare time machine, we’ll offer up a list of events that should not be missed: (more…)
On Monday, Lauren Perkins will explain how dating tactics can be beneficial to new and existing business relationships. Events starts a 7pm. Check Social Media Week’s website to attend.
Lauren Perkins has been featured in TheNextWeb.com:
For small businesses and big corporate companies alike, mobile is the latest frontier. Yet rather than simply developing a mobile-friendly version of your website or adding a cool e-commerce capability to the mobile user experience, more and more entrepreneurs are wisely delving into the mobile market by developing a smartphone app.
But not all apps are made equal — scroll through the iOS App Store and you’ll find countless offerings that are useless to users and a waste of money from companies. In fact, some apps actually make the businesses that produce them look worse to potential consumers than if they never put that app on virtual shelves.
I asked a panel of successful young entrepreneurs the following question:
Designing a mobile app for your small business? Name one must-have feature to make for a positive user experience.
Here are their best answers.
6. Social media login
Start the user experience out right! Use Facebook Connect or another single sign on technology solution to allow your customers to use their social media logins to sign into the mobile app (and keep them signed in). And always give them a way to retrieve their user name/password or remind them which social network they used when setting up the app.
Wishing all of our clients, partners, friends and colleagues the warmest holiday wishes and creative inspiration for 2013. We look forward to reconnecting in the New Year!
As the year comes racing to its end, I wanted to take a moment to reflect and share some news as myself and the Perks Consulting team prepare to ring in a new year.
It’s been a great year. While we were busy with new projects, new clients and expanding our training and education offerings, we had a pivotal, game changing moment. Pfizer came to us to ask for help embedding digital thought leadership and best practices for their emerging markets team. This became an affirmation that our growing vision to create a new kind of digital consultancy was on the mark. We saw an opportunity to ‘in-source’ digital competency for our clients and have been testing this very concept all year.
So after some retooling, we are officially announcing a shift in our client services model from a full service agency focused on marketing execution to a digital brand and marketing consultancy dedicated to building digital competency within organizations. We will do this by embedding the foundations needed to integrate digital strategy into the larger brand and business vision to ensure customer engagement.
Our aim is help organizations first build their digital resources, and then embed a standard approach to organizational structure and resource allocation towards their digital strategies. You can now check out our new offerings and philosophy of “Think Like a Brand, Act Like a Startup™”, launched this week on our new Perks Consulting website at www.perksconsulting.com
That’s is not the only change afoot. We are pleased to welcome Christina Vuleta who has joined our team as Managing Director. With 24 years of branding and marketing experience in a multitude of industries, Christina offers significant expertise in brand development, consumer insight and strategic planning. Prior to joining Perks, Christina was SVP, Director at The Futures Company. Her previous experience includes Saatchi and Saatchi Advertising, Faith Popcorn’s Brain Reserve and KBS+P. She also runs 40:20 Vision, a resource to mentor entrepreneurs and young professionals.
We’ve made adapting to change and innovating our mission here at Perks. We’d love to hear more about what’s new in your world and the changes you are facing!
Thank you for your support and collaboration over the past five years. Happy holidays to you, your team and family.
While we believe traditional marketing is on its’ way out for the same reasons here, we don’t believe it’s completely dead. Instead there are many facets that can be realigned and reimagined in the digital and social landscape.
On The Huffington Post, the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) asked “What’s one creative way to use location-based services to market a brick-and-mortar business?” Read more for an answer by Perks CEO, Lauren Perkins.
Recently, Hubspot blogger Corey Eridon released a post titled “How Not to Steal People’s Content on the Web” which, within hours, was a trending topic on Twitter, and had racked up numerous retweets and comments all before noon of the day of its publishing.
The article covers proper citation on the web, and how we often neglect Internet etiquette, which is especially problematic when people consciously try to pawn off other people’s work as their own. The popularity of this article can be attributed to people’s heightened sensitivity to the duplication of content. Plagiarism is a serious offense, very often leading to expulsion from universities and law suits against companies and individuals.
