The Keys to My First Car

The first car that I ever drove was my parent’s Jeep CJ-7… not the easiest car on which to learn to drive. Though my parents were pretty generous in letting me use it, it wasn’t mine. No, the first car that was really mine was a little Ford Escort. (Also not the easiest car to drive since it had no power steering.) I remember when I started driving that car I was overwhelmed with the responsibility of the care and tending of the car. If something went wrong with the Jeep, that was dad’s problem. If something went wrong with the Escort though… that was my problem.

The launch of the Spring Insight website feels a bit like taking over the responsibility for that used Ford Escort. I had driven in the past, but the care and tending to the car hadn’t been my responsibility. In this case, while I have certainly been responsible professionally for managing and producing content for multiple websites, those websites haven’t been mine. This time it is different. This time the site is mine.

So, here are a few rules of the road for my new car:

• I look forward to working with small businesses and ecommerce companies to leverage the power of cause marketing to improve their business
• Through this site I will create and distribute content via the blog, white papers and other resources to explore the state of cause marketing in the small business and ecommerce landscape
• While I want to keep the tone here light, fun, and engaging, this (unlike my other blog) is a professional blog and the content will reflect that.
• I hate feeling like I am talking to myself. The content and in particular, the blog is meant to be interactive. In other words, please pretend to be my daughter and talk back!

A sad and embarrassing truth about my Ford Escort is that I didn’t tend to it properly (I was even more flighty about oil changes then than I am now) and it died a premature death of a broken head gasket. It isn’t the best outcome for my analogy for obvious reasons. It does work well though as a cautionary tale. The feeling of responsibility and commitment on day one is a good, but it is not enough. As I talk to people professionally about their websites one of the biggest mistakes I hear is discussion of the website as a one time or at best, periodic inconvenience. Treating it that way insures that the website will cease functioning in the way it was intended.

So, my toast to myself is not for today but for six months… one year… 18 months and three years from now. Here is to adding oil regularly and keeping the tires rotated on the web site when it is needed. Please check back often to see how I am doing with that.

~erika