Lime Rock Park INTERNSHIP!!

Back in October, I decided to apply for an internship at Lime Rock Park, a popular East coast road course for auto racing! "Lime Rock is unique and cannot be compared to any other track, arena or sporting venue. Its fans are loyal, vocal and knowledgeable. It delivers what it promises: Great, safe racing at an historic but modern track, in a beautiful yet easily accessible setting." Visit their website by clicking here.
I've always been one of those loyal fans they speak of, ever since I was a little girl my family would go up and watch the races. As you may know from reading my blog, I'm all about racing and have grown up around it ever since I can remember. By being an auto racer myself, I know the ins and outs of the sport. Having a driving experience gives me that edge that some employers may be looking for when it comes to marketing for NASCAR.

Everyone knows that most people don't get the job they hope for when they get out of college, because a lot of times we hope to be a corporate owner, general manager, marketing executive, lawyer, etc. These jobs take time to reach. I call what I recently received news about a STEPPING STONE.

Definition of stepping stone in my book: A scholarly environment to which one can learn and grow in order to progressively move closer and closer to the position one hopes to work.

As I said, applying for the internship back in October gave me a sense of relief, knowing that I could possibly be chosen to take part in some beneficial experiences at a popular, beautiful, well-grounded raceway. Being the enthusiast I am, I decided to e-mail the central office in Lime Rock a few weeks after applying. They e-mailed me back, stating I won't be notified until the end of March. Within the time period from October til now I had time to create a Twitter, this blog, and a LinkedIn. The LinkedIn has shown great success. I was able to post all of my quality attributes, some recommendations from fellow students and friends, as well as a brief description of who I am and where I hope to be. In the part about myself I stated I'd hope to intern at Lime Rock Park. An old racing friend who used to help me market myself to gain sponsorship saw that I wanted to intern there. He offered to help me out by e-mailing the head marketer at Lime Rock Park, Renea Topp. Both he and I know Renea from previous racing experiences, but he was generous enough to send her an e-mail saying he think I'd be great for the position. She got back to him within the next few days, telling him to have me call her! This news was some of the best news I've ever receieved
in my life.

Mark Hann, owner and CEO of Victory Motorsports, was the gentleman who aided me in being granted the internship. I am so grateful to have made the connection I have through auto-racing. It reassures my decision to be a marketer in the auto racing industry given my background and personal experiences.

I ended up going to a meeting that Lime Rock Park was attending at Heritage Hotel, a recent partnership was made between the two. I met a bunch of really amazing people who I will be working with while interning. I can only hope this internship takes me to new levels and positions offered at Lime Rock Park. My ultimate goal is to work with a race team by being their marketing representative.

All I know is, this internship is the best thing that's happened to me in a long time! I am completely thrilled that I have the opportunity to show my passion and knowledge through marketing for a raceway. I will most definitely be posting blogs as I go from one experience to the next during my internship at one of the most popular track's of the East coast, Lime Rock Park.

Online Fundraising

The Land Trust of Danbury, as I have spoke about previously, is looking to fundraise money and gain membership. The RSS feeds that I read up on allow me to expand my ideas and gain intellect on how I can help the organization out as a student in the marketing world. I found an interesting blog that states why it is important to be ONLINE and fundraising. Here are some of the tips the blog had to offer:


"1) Free Platfoms – Facebook, Twitter and emails literally don’t cost a dime! In the time it takes to compose an update, post a Tweet, or write a letter, you could reach thousands of donors. While direct mail is certainly beneficial to older supporters, it can be costly when you take in to account the price of production, postage, and assembly.

2) Expand Your Audience – I can honestly say that the majority of my friends under 40 years old have Facebook accounts. I think that one of the biggest mistakes that nonprofits make is not appealing or nurturing the next generation of supporters.

3) It Doesn’t Take a Techie – With all of the new technology out there, it can be intimidating to enter the world of keywords, SEOs and Tweetables. One thing that I’m really impressed with concerning these new platforms is how user friendly they are. Get on the website, sign up, spend an hour playing with the system and you’ll quickly become a pro. There are also great tutorials on YouTube that can walk you through the process. At Fundly, we also have a team that strives to make an online giving website quick, easy and accessible for both nonprofit and donor use.

4) Expanded Opportunities – Building the bridge to create a simbiotic relationship is key to garnering and expanding donor support; you need hands and finances to achieve your goal and your supporters receive affirmation that they are needed and making a difference. Social media only strengthens this bond through opening more outlets of communication such as updates, calls to action, and success stories.

5) It Just Keeps Growing – Currently Twitter has over 300 million users and 1.6 billion search queries each day. Facebook boasts of having more than 845 million users and more than half of those people log on each day. This is a huge market with unlimited potential! Furthermore, this past year showed a 13% increase in online giving which equals a 35-55% growth rate over the past year. Fundly can help you utilize social media in your arsenal of marketing strategies by connecting your organization to potential donors and making the process of giving social." 

- Click here to go to the ONLINE FUNDRAISING BLOG and learn more about innovative ways to ensure your organization is impacting those who are reading and hopefully donating.

All of these valid points helped me in reassuring what I am doing for The Land Trust of Danbury is correct. It is a great path to take when dealing with social networking these days and creating accounts for the top notch social networks is what I've done, so now it's implementing them to make sure we can use them to their greatest advantage!

Non-profit Organization Blogging

In my previous post I talked about RSS and what it's all about. I had mentioned I'd be posting about a blog or two that sparked my interest and how it may help me with The Land Trust of Danbury (a non-profit organization).

Katya's Blog is one of the feed's that shows up when I go to my google reader to gain some information on non-profit organizations in social media and more! One of her blogs talks about how it is important to have a great donation page. Some of her tips include:

• Having impact levels
• Listing donation amounts
• Other ways to give
• Reassuring text (to hopefully eliminate cognitive dissonance)

I actually sent the link to my client for The Land Trust of Danbury, allowing her to read up on it and see if this is a possible avenue for us to take. I think that this could really help in increasing membership for the organization.

Click here to learn more about 'Elements of a Great Donation Page.'

Reading up on RSS

Recently, I was assigned a project for my MKT315 course. It had to do with RSS feeds, if you've ever had experience with RSS it's really helpful and interesting. Click here to go to google and get started! Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it. RSS solves a problem for people who regularly use the web. It allows you to easily stay informed by retrieving the latest content from the sites you are interested in. You save time by not needing to visit each site individually. You ensure your privacy, by not needing to join each site's email newsletter. By doing this project, I was able to centralize many blogs and web links that I found helpful to aiding me in my internship with The Land Trust of Danbury.


The Land Trust of Danbury has a blog you can read to learn more about. My RSS feeds are mainly about non-profit organizations, and what people who are promoting and running these organizations can do to create a buzz and increase awareness.


I will be posting about a few blogs I found interesting and helpful, they may even be of interest to you as well!

Great News

Right now I am really stressed out with all of the exams and projects I have to work on within the next week until they are due. But, I am beginning to get good at managing my time wisely. I'm just going to be extremely relieved once everything is all done and over with!

I had a meeting with a man from Stafford Motor Speedway, a racetrack in Stafford Springs, Connecticut that I have raced at for several years. He said he would like me to race his car this coming season! This is a really great opportunity seeing as I have been absent from the racing world for about a year now, focusing on school, learning about sponsorship, and trying to gain some knowledge on where to go from where I had left off. Stafford Speedway has a lot of people who follow the buzz within the raceway. By this I mean, it is a great place to build awareness that I will be returning to racing. If you're wondering more about how I started racing and what I race exactly, you can visit my webpage - which I have to admit, hasn't been touched in about a year and a half, but I plan on revisiting the editing process very soon. There is a bunch of information on my racing career at http://www.laurencooperracing.com/.

Bill, the man who is interested in having me race his car is an awesome man. He claims he had been asking around Stafford where I'd been and why I wasn't racing. Everyone had come to the conclusion that the funding for me to race just wasn't there anymore. He saw some talent in me that he'd like to take advantage of. I am more than willing to work with him this coming season and race as much as I can. Stafford Speedway races on Friday nights, unless there is a special weekend such as Spring Sizzler (opening weekend) or Fall Final (closing weekend) in which we race Friday thru Sunday. For more information on Strafford Speedway and how you can come watch me race, go to http://www.staffordmotorspeedway.com/.

I will definitely be updating you on what is going on with Bill and how the racecar is looking for the 2012 season.

First Blog Ever!

I must say, I was the type to admit blogging was something I'd never take part in. But with the continuous increasing rates of use among corporations, small businesses, employees, students, professors, and many others I can see it has the same social media effects as Facebook and Twitter. Blogging is essential in the marketing world. People can have access to quick information on a specific topic or business they'd like to learn more about. It's sometimes easier for a consumer of a product to go read blogs written on products or related brands of a product, even corporations employees blogging about the the ins and outs of the business they work for without all of the extra information that could be placed on a website. After being introduced to a blog, someone may spark interest in the organization that was blogged about, thus leading them to possibly visit their website and in turn creating an even more populated media market for that particular product or company.

I can now welcome myself into the blogging world with confidence that this can bring me great knowledge amongst this end of the social network. I am very familiar with LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook which are also great social networking sites that I have a background with regarding that spectrum of marketing.

This blog will be based on day to day experiences that we all can relate to as well as some information on marketing that I'll be obtaining from courses I'm enrolled in at Western Connecticut State University. I will also be posting some up-to-date information on how my racing career is going.

This is a picture of the racecar I drive, it is an SK Light Modified and can be raced at Thompson Speedway, Waterford Speedway, or Stafford Motor Speedway (all located in Connecticut).

The #25 car was mine about 2 years ago, but my family sold it because we couldn't supply the expensive funding it requres any longer.

I'm excited to have a blog because it is somewhere I can post my thoughts, ideas, and updated status on racing for those who are interested. It can really help me out in the future!