Denver Photo A Day Challenge

Join us for a fun way of showcasing what's going on at Denver this year! Post your pics on Instagram and tag @ranchhousedesigns and #rhdphotoaday. Post your photos from ANY of the categories on ANY day. Each day we will choose one favorite photo to win an RHD prize. Prizes will vary each day but will be t-shirts, caps, RHD hoodies, inspirational metal art and more. Then, after Denver, we will post each of our daily winners on our Facebook page and our fans will choose our "Best in Show" Denver photo. That winner will receive a free ticket to our April Livestock Marketing Workshop!

Best of the Barns Nominations Underway

You may have seen on facebook, but nominations for Best of the Barns 2012 opened up this week! Best of the Barns is our annual contest to recognize the best of the best in the livestock business, and it's a contest voted on and picked by YOU!

To start the ball rolling, the first step is that we ask you in the livestock business to tell us who should be in the running for the awards. This is our nomination phase. Each day we will post a category and we ask YOU to write in and tell us who are the top people or businesses in the category. The top 5 responses will make the ballot later in the fall.

We also need your help in some new categories for 2012. Some we already have in mind are Best Livestock App, Best Cattle Record Keeping Software, and a new Best of the Barns Hall of Fame. 

So keep watching our facebook page to chime in on who should be on the ballot. And if you have an idea for a new category this year, email it to kc@ranchhousedesigns.com.

Best of the Barns Winners

Well it is only January 2nd and it seems that the cat is out of the bag on the highly anticipated winners of the 2011 Best of the Barns competition! Congratulations to all of the winners!

If you haven't had a chance to see the official announcement of the winners in January's The Showbox magazine, you can also see the winners here. If you're wondering why some winners don't have a bio written about them, it's because they did not send it in. If you happen to be one of these businesses please send your stuff to emily@ranchhousedesigns.com so we can add you to the winners featured on the website.

We send a big congratulations out to all of the winners. The livestock industry is full of very talented businesses and individuals and we consider it our honor to run this contest to help recognize those who do so much for the industry we love.

P.S. Winners...trophies are here and ready to ship! Be expecting them by the time you get back from Denver!

12 Days of Christmas is Underway

Well it's 9:30 a.m. and we have already started our fun filled "12 Days of Christmas" here at RHD...and we have our first winner. Hopefully today everyone can get a chance to see how the promotion will work.

1. First you have to be a fan on our facebook page. www.facebook.com/ranchhousedesigns

2. Each day (today it was first thing in the morning) Joelynn will post a Christmas trivia question, which was written by Santa Shanks. Each day there will a special prize. And here's a hint, we start small and the prizes get bigger each day! Today's prize was 250 free business cards.

The question was: "What is the name of Scrooge's dead Christmas partner?"
Answer: Jacob Marley (Scary fella)

Today's winner was the lovely and adorable Mackenzi Dorsey, who answered within 2 minutes!

For her Christmas skills, Mackenzi won the daily prize....which today was the business cards.

3. A little later in the day, we will also post a special 12 Days of Christmas coupon that can be used by ANYONE. All you have to do is print out the coupon and send it in or email it to us, or mention the coupon to claim the discount. And, in the spirit of Christmas, the coupons get better as the days go on too!

So what do you think? Fun huh? We love our friends and clients and we hope everyone enjoys this little fun way to celebrate the holidays. 

12 Days of Christmas: RHD Style

Did you know that here at RHD, we are a bunch of Christmas freaks. We love it. Especially Stacey. She would wear a Santa hat every day if she could!

So in honor of this special time, we are excited to announce a HUGE promotion we will have going on from December 1 to 16....The 12 Days of Christmas RHD Style!

 2011 has been an amazing year for us. Each year we keep saying it was our "best year ever" and once again, we have been really blessed with our "best year ever" in 2011.

Our customers and our fans make our success possible, without a doubt. So we have come up with the 12 Days of Christmas, RHD Style, to reward and thank those who make RHD a success.

So here's how it works.

1. First, you must be a fan of our facebook page. Click here to join and "Like" our page.

2. Each work day, (no weekends) we will be giving away two types of prizes. First, we will have a daily Christmas trivia question. The first person to answer the question correctly will win the prize for that day. The prizes start small and build up to the grand finale prize on the 12th day.

3. While only one person wins the daily prize, each day we will also be posting a special "12 Days of Christmas" Coupon that ANY of our fans can print off and use for our services here at RHD. Each day will be different. You'll have 1 week to book a project and claim the coupon.

And we promise, the prizes aren't going to be chinchy little things like a free koozie. They are going to be stuff you will LOVE!!!!

Watch for the First Day of Christmas....Thursday, December 1st.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!
and Remember..JESUS is the Reason For the Season!!!

LOVE Y'ALL!

Best of the Barns 2010 Awards

We are really excited to announce a new, fun project being produced by RHD....BEST OF THE BARNS! The Best of the Barns Awards is an online contest where YOU get to vote for your favorite products, services, hobbies, and anything else livestock related.

Here's how it works.... Each year we will be hosting the Best of the Barns awards program. This year there are 30 categories ranging from Livestock Friend of the Year to Best Way to Kill Time at the Barn. The questions are tailored to the national livestock show industry, but most of the focus is on cattle and hogs.

For the first year, we determined the categories from a consensus of our expert consultant panel, who helped us create the categories and questions. So, if we missed something, feel free to write it in. For future years, we'll be happy to add any categories or responses that our fans suggest.

So here's how you vote! In the style of modern reality shows, you can vote a few times. First, you can complete the entire survey at once by visiting http://www.bestofthebarns.com/ and clicking on the online survey link. Only one response per computer.  We will also have voting going on daily at the RHD facebook page. Each day we will post one of the categories and our fans can "LIKE" the choice they want to vote for.

Voting is open December 1-31. Results will be tabulated and announced in January. The winners in 2010 will receive a winners media kit including logos and other tools to use in their marketing campaigns.

So feel free to share the news with your friends and let's honor those who are the BEST OF THE BARNS in 2010!

Employee of the Year

Here at RHD,we like to have fun, and one of the most inspiring "fun-lovers" is Jessica Hobbs, a friendly face to many of our web site clients.

As previously mentioned, Jessica always likes doing little jokes around the office. For example, one time, she filled up Tricia's office with pictures of herself. She also recently suggested that instead of answering the phone with "Good morning, Ranch House Designs," that we might spice it up by saying "RHD, What's Poppin?"

One of the stunts Jessica pulled on me was about a year ago, when I arrived at work one morning with a picture of Jessica on my desk, with this caption:

She also did a similar photo on Liz's desk:

So in the spirit of Jessica's fun jokes, I thought we might actually have a REAL contest for RHD's Employee of the Year!! And just to be fair, I listed Jessica at the top of the poll. You can vote on this poll over on the right side of the blog. We'll leave the voting open til December 15th, right before Christmas, so the winner can get their PRIZE!! (Now I'm not saying what exactly the prize is.....it might be that the winner gets to take out the trash at RHD for a month....or it might be something good ha ha)

But seriously, vote for your favorite, and we'll see if Jessica really does live up to her title! :)

Halloween Costume Contest

Last year we had a fun little "contest" here at RHD for the cutest Halloween costume.....and we're doing it again this year! We're asking all our friends to send us the cute pictures of their little ones all dressed up for Halloween. Actually, the contest isn't limited to just kids....it can be adults as well. Last year's winners were Avery Blunier of Duis Farms and Heston Turner of Melatonin Implants.

So after you get those adorable Halloween pictures off your camera, send them to us. We'll give everyone a few days to get the pics on their computer then announce our favorite costume winner about a week after Halloween.

THE PRIZE: The winner of our favorite Halloween Costume Contest will each receive credit for one free quarterly web site fee if they are a current customer....and if you're not a current RHD customer and you win, you can cash that prize in when you do get us to do your web site :)

Christa is going to be our official coordinator of this contest, so send in your cute pictures to updates@ranchhousedesigns.com or christa@ranchhousedesigns.com and we'll pick the favorites!

Friend of the Month - Ramona Petrosky

Last month, we created a new contest at RHD which is our "Friend of the Month" and is awarded to the person who makes the most comments on our blog or facebook page. This was a lot of fun and gave us a way of making more friends and interacting with people from all over the nation who are fans of RHD.

So for our first "Friend of the Month", our winner is Ramona Petrosky, who is a special friend to RHD in many ways. First, she's a fellow Boling, Texas citizen who can be found at just about any event in Boling. She is a loyal Bulldog fan and helps out with lots of things like the FFA, Athletic Booster Club, and lots more!!

Secondly, Ramona is a fellow cattle person. She and her family show Red Brangus Cattle along with our good friends Charles and Sue Atkinson of Wharton.

And finally, Ramona is DOLLIE'S Mom!!!!! Dolllie is our newest web site update team member at RHD and has gotten to be friends with lots of our clients in the past 6 months she has worked here.

At RHD we are so lucky to have the support and friendship of people from all over. It makes us so happy to hear from people who follow us on the internet or through the magazines our ads appear in. Ramona is one of those very special people who encourage us, support us, and believe in us. So thanks Ramona, for everything you do to help us at RHD!!

1 Hour Turnaround in January!

One of the best things about Ranch House Designs, in my humble opinion, is the great people who work here and their dedication to our clients. Just when I think we can't get any faster on web site updates, they go and blow me away once again!

This month, Jessica, Christa, Dollie and Stacey completed 291 updates in the month of January. And their average turnaround time was 1 hour. Yes, that's correct -- on average, our clients web sites were updated within 1 hour of their request. Now of course, we can't guarantee this on EVERY update, but as always we do our very best to provide timely, accurate service, because we know how important it is to have your web site updated when you want it updated.

This month's top update winners were:

January Champion Web Updater: American Brahman Breeders Association
January Reserve Champion Web Updater: Southern Jewlz
Honorable Mentions:
Beefmaster Breeders United
O.H. Kruse
V8 Ranch

Don't forget to send in your updates! This year's contest for all time most frequent updater is just beginning so keep sending in your news and photos.

Top Updater of 2009 Award

Drumroll please, I am happy to announce our most frequent breeder web site updater of 2009 for Ranch House Designs......Matt Lautner Cattle.

As our loyal blog readers know, each month we post the winners of our most frequent web site update contest. At RHD we have a huge commitment to providing fast and timely web updates, and this contest is our fun way of encourating our clients to keep their web site updated as often as possible.

In order to win this award, Matt completed 55 web site updates in 2009, which is at least weekly updates, and sometimes more. It's no suprise that Matt's site is one of the most visited and most popular cattle web sites on the web.

So, instead of mailing Matt his award for being the top updater of the year, we saved it until Denver where we could make a personal presentation. This award was created by Sandy Meyer of Classic Leather Designs, who is also a RHD client and who commented that next year she was going to be gunning for this award herself! If you look closely, see if you can guess who the animal featured in this award is. The first person to comment and correctly identify the animal will get a free RHD cap.

Here are the photos from the presentation, I love this first one, where I am showing Matt the award. I love the look on his face, and my face too. I think he likes the award, don't you! Then, the next photo is our official photo!

And for all of our RHD clients, the 2010 contest has just started! So keep YOUR web sites updated, send in those requests to updates@ranchhousedesigns.com and then next year, maybe we'll be presenting this trophy to YOU!!!

Favorite Halloween Costumes

We are happy to announce the winners of our Favorite RHD Halloween Kids for 2009! Thanks to all of our clients who sent in photos of their adorable youngsters all dressed up for Halloween! We had so many great photos sent in, it was impossible to choose just one. So, we chose a cutest girl costume and favorite boy costume. RHD clients are the best, and we loved seeing all the photos!

Cutest Halloween Girl Costume: Avery Blunier

Miss Avery Blunnier, daughter of Julie Blunier and granddaughter of Bob Duis. Neice of Robbie and Chelsea Duis. Avery represents RHD client Duis Farms of Illinois. Avery's grandmother Duis hand-made this adorable teddy bear costume! How cute is this little angel!

Favorite Boy Halloween Costume: Heston Turner

Our favorite boy costume winner, Heston Turner, must have been so busy helping his dad Matt Turner with the shipping of all of their melatonin implants that he decided to take on a job as a UPS man to help with all of the deliveries! Heston is the son of Matt and Kristi Turner of Texas, and Heston represents RHD client MelatoninImplants.com.

Congratulations to these winners, and thanks again to all of our clients who submitted all of the great Halloween photos! They really brightened all of our days!

October Web Update Winners

Congratulations to our October web update winners at Ranch House Designs! This month our average turnaround time was 3 hours.

Grand Champion October Web Updater: Dismukes Ranch

After that, we had a 4 way tie for Reserve. So we'll just list the remaining top updaters for October.

Gorman Milling
J3 Cattle
Stock Horse of Texas
Tusa Show Cattle
Williams Show Cattle

Remember it's super important to keep your web site updated. So keep your updates coming in to us and we'll do our best to get them done in the fastest turnaround possible!

Cutest Halloween Costume Contest

Send us your photos of the Best Halloween Costume and we'll post our favorites here on the blog! We know that all of the RHD clients have some adorable little ones who are going to look as cute as ever in their costumes this year. Or, maybe you're an adult who likes to dress up too and you want to submit yourself in costume.

So send us your kids Halloween photos and show off your cute-ness (or scary-ness) to the rest of your friends at RHD!

Please send photos to rachel@ranchhousedesigns.com. We'll give everyone a few days to get their pics off their digital camera and post the photos here in a week or so!

Favorite October Ads

We are happy to announce the winners of the October Ad Design contest at RHD! This month's contest was judged by Courtney Coufal, who is the communications specialist for the Department of Animal Science at Texas A&M University. Courtney and her family live in College Station, Texas. Courtney coordinates all of the marketing and communications for the department including being the editor of the weekly e-mail newsletter called "Animal Science Weekly."

We sent all of our October ads to Courtney and asked her to pick her top 3, but she said there were so many she liked, she had to pick more! She said: "Overall great ads! I love the work y’all do. The ads I selected as my favorites really stand-out!" So here are this month's winners, in no certain order. Congratulations to these clients!

Clay Farms - At first glance, this ad stood out and caught my eye. There’s something attention-grabbing about a giant boar standing firm staring you in the eyes! Definitely attention-grabbing!

Forgason – Again, very attention-grabbing with the large image of the calf. Very cute image, overall soft feel, welcoming and makes me want to call these people because they appear friendly and inviting.

Dismukes-Ranch – Great use of colors and graphics. Love the image! The image and tagline “…Something New in the Barn?” entices me to read on.

J-R Farms – Overall very nice, clean, classic ad and feel. Sometimes less is more. Great use of color. Professional. I may even like this one more than the other three but the other three are more attention-grabbing and memorable.

Brad-Harrub – Again, attention grabbing with “does God exist?” Makes me want to read on. Nice use of typography and colors. Great use and placement of the opened hands.

V8-Ranch – Love the colors and typography. Eye-catching.

Sandpoint – Great tagline “power of the point!” Enjoy the layout of the logo and text.

September Web Updates Blowout

As to be expected with all of the busy club calf sales during the month of September, RHD recorded our biggest web updating month in the 10-year-history of RHD in September 2009!! This month we did a record-number 333 updates from September 1-30!!!

Recently I was visiting with someone who has a web site done by a company other than RHD. This person was complaining that they had sent in some photos to be added to their web site and 5 days had passed, and the photos still weren't added. Their sale was coming up, and they wanted their photos up right away. Wouldn't that be FRUSTRATING!

At RHD, we know that time is money. That's why we make it a top priority to keep our clients web sites updated as soon as possible. Of the 333 updates we did this month, 271 of these were done on the VERY SAME DAY the client requested the update. The remaining updates were done within 1 day of the client update request.

So yeah, we're tooting our own horn a little bit, but we feel this is important.

Our Grand Champion Updater for September 2009 was Beefmaster Breeders United. This is a great group of people to work with. By and large, their updates are due to the very popular Buy/Sell listing on their web site which is a great service to BBU members. They had twice as many updates as any other client.

Our Reserve Champion Updater for Sepember 2009 was the American Brahman Breeders Association.

Other sites in the final drive for this month's updating championships were:

• Virginia Club Calf Producers
• Rincker Law
• O.H. Kruse Grain & Milling
• Matt Lautner
• Graves Cattle Co
• Cross S Arena
• Aegerter Marketing Service

"Trading Spaces" RHD Style! - September Ad Design Favorites

I've always been a fan of the old show Trading Spaces and more recently I've started watching the show "Split Ends" where two hair stylists swap beauty shops for a week. So while watching Split Ends recently I thought, wouldn't that be cool if we could do that between ad agencies. While this isn't possible, I thought of a way to kind of give us a fun educational experience at RHD and do a mini-trading spaces kind of deal.

So each month we have been voting amongst our own staff of our favorite ads we did the previous month at RHD. Each staff member got to pick their favorite ad to be featured on the RHD home page for the month.

Well now we have a new idea! Instead of us picking our own favorites each month, we're going to ask an "outsider" to look at all of the ads we create each month and pick THEIR favorite! What a great way to get outside feedback and also have a little contest between staff members about who's projects get voted as the best.

Our first "judge" for this idea was Julie McMahon French of McMahon French Promotional Strategy in Beaverton, Michigan. Julie is a pioneer in innovative livestock advertising and has handled many advertising accounts of leading cattle ranches and horse operations. Some of her notable clients include Belle Point Angus, Great Shorthorn Revival, 6666 Ranch, 7L Ranches, and many more. Prior to creating McMahon French Promotional Strategy she operated Creative Exchange, an advertising agency based out of the Fort Worth Stockyards. What a dream job!!! She and her husband Steve (pictured here) also own and operate Little Cedar Cattle Company, a registered Shorthorn operation.

Here are Julie's favorites and her comments!

SJ Cattle Creations - Excellent use of color and horizontal space (sometimes hard because we get so used to 8.5 x 11). Cool all the way around.

Sidwell Hay and Cattle - The pasture photo and the way it was framed got my attention, I really like the way the info is segmented. Lots to read, but easy to get through it.

Gehrke 2 pages - Green & orange is refreshing and a stopper, I like the skewed photo key lines, different but not too wacky as to take away from the photos (a real pet peeve for me).

Lindner / Show Rite (5 page) - Amazing organization and utilization of what seems like jillions of photos, I wasn't really sure what that rope was doing...but I like it. I just kept looking at it! There are a lot of elements but you kept them all in check to keep my focus on the product.

Scarmardo Cattle Company - You know I love black and white....and always really appreciate the excellent use of it!

So, we hope you enjoyed looking at some of these recent ads created by RHD that appeared in September publications. Julie's comments showed us that regardless of if you're doing a 1/2 page black and white -- or a 5 page 4-color campaign -- good design is important in all aspects and when executed properly can help you get the most exposure --- regardless of your advertising budget.

Thank you Julie! Watch for next month's favorites and guest judge coming in a few weeks!

August Update Winners

It's time again for the August web site update report! In August, we did exactly 200 web site updates, which is an average of 10 updates per day. Average turnaround time for August was a 2 hour turnaround, and 90% of the updates were done on the very same day that the clients requested them.

This month's top updaters were:

Champion Updater for August: Washington County Fair
Reserve Champion Updater for August: Aegerter Marketing Service

These clients maintained weekly updates throughout August:

• American Brahman Breeders Association
• American International Charolais Association
• Beefmaster Breeders United
• Matt Lautner
• O.H. Kruse
• Strolberg-Eckloff
• Sullivan Cattle - Maternal Legends
• Swanson Shorthorns
• TMAC Show Steers
• Virginia Club Calf Producers
  

As always we encourage our clients to send in your update as often as possible to keep your web site continually updated. We're excited about September to see how many updates we can do that month! We're shooting for 300!

Update-A-Thon

It's that busy time of year where we're burning the midnight oils with updates in the web division. Yesterday we put up 40 new videos on Jeff Miller's site, and over 100 new photos of calves for sale this fall. Mondays are always fun since we get the rush of updates sent in over the weekend.

Updating your site - and letting people know it's updated - is crucial this time of year. Whenever you start updating your web site, your traffic is going to dramatically increase. Here are just a few examples of sites and the traffic they are getting:

Great Shorthorn Revival - They have been posting sale previews over the past few days, and their daily traffic has increased 4 TIMES OVER for the month of August. On August 1, they were averaging 60 visits per day. Yesterday, after posting thier 2nd sale preview, they had 286 visitors. GSR is one of our most well listed sites, as they do a great job of promoting their URL in their advertising. When reviewing their web site traffic, GSR is getting hits from showsteers.com (purchased link), shorthorn.org (free link), cattle.com (free link), etcow.com (free link if you are their client), showtowin.com (free link for RHD clients), humphreymarketingsolutions.com (free link for their clients), and ranchhousedesigns.com.

Jeff Miller has been continually updating throughout the last few weeks. On August 1, he was averaging 15 visits a day. Over the weekend, his site averaged 250 visitors per day! Jeff is also listed on several directories and getting lots of hits from showsteers.com (purchased), clubcalves.com (purchased), showtowin.com (free), facebook (free), http://www.maximumexposurephotos.com/ (free to his clients), ranchhousedesigns.com, and http://www.theshowcircuit.com/ (free to their advertisers)

Here are some more tips to build web site traffic:

1. Put your web site address on everything.... your ads, signs, e-mail signature, etc.

2. Send your friends and past clients a quick email letting them know that your site is updated. People love to see new things! Social networking sites are also great ways to announce that your new photos are up. If you have a facebook profile, post your calves there in a photo gallery too. And don't be afraid to call up your friends and tell them too. I would put money on the fact that Steve French (Great Shorthorn Revival) has made more than a couple phone calls to his friends letting them know the sale preview is up on his site!

3. Consider purchasing links on outside web sites. RHD isn't affiliated in any way with any of these sites, so we just make our recommendations based on the sites that have proven to give our clients the most traffic in the past 10 years we have been doing sites.

We recommend choosing one of the paid directory sites, and then purchasing a link there. Of course, if you are a show cattle breeder it's a given that you need to be listed on showsteers.com. This is "THE" directory. If you aren't listed, e-mail becky@showsteers.com right away to get listed. The cost is $250 and that'll be the best $250 you spend promoting your web site. Once you are listed, let us know so we can notify them whenever your site is updated.

Two others to consider are clubcalves.com and EDJEcattle.com. These sites don't generate as much traffic as showsteers, but our clients that are listed here averaged about 100 hits a month from these two sites.

4. Get listed on any and all FREE sites.

• Most all breed associations offer free links to members. Some state breed associations offer this too.
• Cattle.com is also a must -- click here to suggest your site to cattle.com.
• Steerplanet has a directory too, submit your site here.

The Show Circuit also has a breeder's directory, you can email roland@theshowcircuit.com to get listed. I believe they charge a small fee or sometimes they offer links as incentives to their advertisers. If you advertise with other magazines, check and see if they offer free links.

Before spending additional $$ to be listed on these sites, I recommend checking out their actual traffic. Don't just fall for the bogus line of "we have the most visited site on the internet". Cattle.com does great research on what sites actually get traffic. Their top ten sites for August is available at http://www.cattle.com/webmasters/marketshare.aspx. They do full research on all cattle related sites, but their show cattle related ones are:

• Cattle Today Sites 17.55%
• Cattle.com 8.73%
• Cattlegrower.com 7.00% (9)
• Showsteers.com 5.18% (7)
• Cattlepages.com 3.21% (8)
• Steerplanet.com 2.09% (>10)

Others close but not quite in the top 10 were: Clubcalves.com, Cattleconnections.com,
EDJECattle.com, and Showtowin.com.

And, remember, all RHD clients get a free detailed web site statistics program through us. If you want information on this or need a reminder about how to access your stats, let us know.

1 Hour Web Turnaround in July!

Big news from the web updates division! In the month of July, we completed over 150 client web updates with an average turnaround of 1 HOUR! Just when we think we can't get any faster, Jessica and Dollie continue to do it again. But seriously, I don't see how we can get any faster than a 1 hour turnaround on updates, so I'm thinking this is going to be the top turnaround.

Our Grand Champion Web Updater Awards have become very popular among clients. Which is great....because we encourage everyone to update their site as often as possible to keep things fresh.

We have some new faces in the July Update Top 10 list.

Grand Champion July Updater: Washington County Fair
As the oldest county fair in Texas, and one of my personal favorites, the staff at the Washington County Fair are working hard to prepare for their 141st Annual County Fair. This year's dates will be September 16-19, so you can see they are updating quite frequently with all of their upcoming information. This client is averaging 2 updates per week.

Others in the Top Ten web updaters for July include:

• Airhart Show Cattle
• Beefmaster Breeders United
• American Brahman Breeder's Association
• Catching Tractor
• American International Charolais Association
• Effective Showmanship
• Hanewich Cattle
• Knight Show Pigs
• Stock Horse of Texas