Not everyone gets Labor Day off!

The staff at RHD took a Labor Day holiday today, but not EVERYONE gets the luxury of having this holiday.....
This lovely little hard-working lady is Miss Piper Gayle Hoskins of Beeville, Texas. She is one of the many cute cousins we have from our friends and relatives in the Locke family. Piper's mom, Elizabeth Hoskins, put her little darling to work on this holiday :) Between the cuties of Lauryn Locke, Austin DeBerry, Parker DeBerry, and Jessica DeBerry, we love all these little angels!

Liz always shares her photos with us of Piper at the holidays and this one is so cute, we had to share!

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!

Special people to us

For some reason today I was curious to run a quickbooks report to see who are our longest-running clients at RHD. We've been in business for 10 years (2 years as Two Girls Web Design, and now 8 years as Ranch House Designs.). The people on this list have been with us from the beginning, some of these even with us the entire 10 years. So, we'd like to take a little time to give special shout outs to these very special people to us....in no certain order.

V8 Ranch - My family ranch. This has always been our "guinea pig" and actually how we did our first web site. My mom has always been into technology and she had a web page through an old company called Ag Direct. We wanted to expand our site, but didn't want to invest that much money into a new technology (remember it was 1999) and so we taught ourselves how to do web sites. And, as they say.....the rest is history!

American Brahman Breeders Association - This was our first "paying" client. The ABBA's communications director had resigned and they needed someone to temporarily update the web site while they were looking for a new communications director. We did little things like update the calendar and news page. This was our first major beef breed association client, and now we proudly do the web sites for the national breed associations for Brahman, Charolais, and Beefmaster.

WHR Shorthorns - Cassie and I first did Mr. Rasor's web site after visiting with him in Denver one year when me, Cassie, Dad, and Matt Williams went with the V8 Shorthorns showstring. Last year, we re-did the WHR site and it's still one of everyone's favorites. We get lots of calls of people saying they love that site.

Brian Martin - We first made a connection with Brian because of his hometown friendship with Cassie in Hereford, Texas. Through the year's we've done Brian's web site, and various ad projects for him. Our last project was him was his sire representation for the Copper Penny bull he displayed in Denver this year.

Purple Reign -The Mullinix family is another one that my family holds in very high regard. My dad became friends with them while he was judging on the east coast. We booked our project with Jamie and Randy while Dad and I judged showmanship at the Hoosier Beef Congress in 1999. We judged one ring and the Mullinix's judged the other.

Top Sires became our client when we met Mike at the Michigan Beef Expo back in the good ol' days at Michigan State. Cassie and I were helping put on the show with Kathleen Hawkins and we greeted Mike to help him with his trade show booth. A few pieces of pizza and cheese bread at Leo's Lodge sealed the deal and we've been doing Mike's web site ever since.

Cherie Carrabba -A little known fact is that I got my start in graphic design with Cherie's help. I worked there part time in college, and started out doing the most mundance tasks of all - scanning photos. I would come to Crockett on some nights and weekends to work, and I interned at The Showbox between college and grad school, where I actually got to design my very first full page 4c ad -- an ad for Wessington Springs Club Calf. I firmly believe that this experience with Cherie is what gave me the foundation in graphic design. By starting at the bottom, I was able to learn the ins and outs, and though I rarely scan photos anymore - I learned the basic principles of graphic design that I still use today. Through the year's we've done the web sites for The Showbox, Enchanted Pines, and Keep Um Sound.

Aegerter Marketing Service - Jeff and Darla are fellow Shorthorn breeders and were one of the first sale management sites we did. This is also one of our most visited web sites, where lots of Shorthorn people go to see sale catalogs of upcoming sales and private treaty listings. Of course they are some of our longest-running clients because they are progressive minded marketing specialists and they are always on the cutting edge of things.

So, again, maybe I'm in a vintage mood today, but we just want to say a big THANK YOU to these very special people to RHD. You've helped make us the leading livestock agency of our kind!

Ranch House Invitations

We are excited to feature our newest expansion at RHD -- Invitations! For many of our loyal clients who've been with us for a few years, you might be thinking -- this isn't new....you did invitations for me 5 years ago! Well it's new and it's not. True, we have been designing custom invitations since we opened our doors. We've done lots of moving cards, holiday cards, party invitations, etc for lots of our friends for the past 10 years.

We've been searching and we've teamed up with two of the leading nationwide invitation suppliers...Tiny Prints and eInvite.com.

We are now able to offer thousands of personalized invitation examples at a price that can't be beat. So whether you're looking for a birthday party invitation, save the date, birth announcement, holiday card or more, we hope you'll visit Ranch House Invitations and browse through the exciting assortment of choices.

Of course, we'll still offer our custom designs just like always, we're just able to now offer a lot more options at a very affordable price. And for our high rolling friends, check out the choices at eInvite.com -- they are a little more pricey but they are really cool!

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
  

Update on the telemarketing....

After posting yesterday's blog, we got this e-mail from another one of our clients complaining about these solicitations.

Rachel,
I just read your message and blog regarding the 3rd party repeated sales calls. My hats off to you for making a point to explain your position and view point on the issue. After I read your message I checked my cell phone and counted 9 times in the last 25 days I have been contacted by the individual you are talking about. I have talked to him twice and indicated to him that I was not interested to link my website to his directory. At first I didn't think much of it until he kept calling and never leaving a voicemail. Although I never suspected that Ranch House was distributing my contact information, I respect your decision to clearly explain your views on the issue. I also found it interesting that during one of the phone calls that I answered he actually mentioned your name, like it was part of his sales pitch "just let Rach know to link your site to our directory". I guess you can look at it as a compliment that other people in the industry know your product/service is premier and they are willing to risk their own credability in order to get ahead.

Just thought you would like to hear my view.
Thanks,
XXXXXXXX

Livestock's do not call list....

This week we have had several of our RHD clients calling us complaining about a specific 3rd party livestock directory web site has been making numerous, repeated sales solicitation calls and e-mails to our clients, almost to the point of harassment.

Nobody likes telemarketers, and nobody likes harrassers.

RHD values your privacy and has not, NOR WOULD EVER, distribute our clients contact information to outside sales vendors. What appears to have happened is that this directory stalks our web site, and then calls or e-mails every single person that has a web site done by RHD.

We apologize for this nuisance and assure you that RHD values your privacy just as much as we value your business.

We do encourage our livestock clients to consider purchasing a link on livestock-related directories to help boost their exposure. There are several different sites who claim to offer the "best results" by purchasing a listing on their site, but after researching which sites provide the best results for our livestock clients, we only recommend ShowSteers.com, ClubCalves.com, Cattle.com, and SteerPlanet.com for our cattle clients, and ShowPig.com for our swine clients.

Additionally, Ranch House Designs maintains ShowToWin.com, and as an added bonus, all livestock-related clients will receive a free link on this site at no additional cost. Most all of the purebred breed associations (national and state) also offer free links on their website to their members as a benefit of joining your breed association.

If you receive a sales or solicitation phone call from a web site directory or listing service trying to convince you to purchase a listing in one of their directories, please exercise caution. Feel free to call our office at 979-532-9141 to discuss whether or not it would be worthwhile to invest your money in directories other than the ones listed above.

Meanwhile, maybe someone will develop a do not call list for livestock people. We realize you have a lot better things to do this time of year than trying to dodge annoying phone calls from people trying to sell you links on their web site.

Social Networking and Blogging

Though we've been loyal bloggers for about a year now, in the past few months we have really seen an gigantic increase in our clients who are interested using blogs and social networking sites in their marketing programs. So we felt it was time for a little review of what we offer in terms of social networking and share some tips with you.

BLOGS:
This week we launched our first internally hosted blog site - which is http://rinckerlaw.com/blog/. We did this site this week for our fellow Aggie friend Cari Rincker who is agriculture and environmental attorney licensed in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and District of Columbia.

The neat thing about Cari's blog is that it if you notice, her blog is hosted on her own web site. Ours is hosted at blogger -- so our address is ranchhousedesigns.blogspot.com. Cari's is hosted at her own web site which just gives more promotion and credibility to rinckerlaw.com. With this project we set up her blog and also designed the matching supporting graphics and icons to have a seamless integration with her web site.

If this is something you are interested in for your site, just let us know and we can help you get set up to start blogging away! The main thing about a blog is keeping the information fresh and current. You have to commit to blogging regularly, otherwise the blog loses it's appeal.

FACEBOOK:
In April we did a test experiment using our family's ranch as a guinea pig and we created a ranch page for V8 Ranch on facebook. At this time this was the first U.S. cattle ranch page on facebook to the best of our knowledge. So we created it and within a matter of weeks we had over 400 "fans" on our facebook page. If you are a member of facebook, you can easily create your own fan page yourself and then invite friends to join your group. This is a great way to socially network with others online and share news, success, and stories.

We've also found that there are many other ranchers on facebook and it is really fun to interact with them. For example, a couple of weeks ago my mom posted that during our first rain storm of the summer, unfortunately we had 4 baby calves that died in a lightning storm. This post resulted in 13 comments from other ranchers all over the world. So it's definitely fun and easily something you can get addicted to!

TWITTER:
When we made the V8 Ranch facebook fan page, we also gave them a Twitter page. We have to give the credit for this to Luann Williams who was the person who suggested the facebook and twitter accounts for the ranch. Currently we have 45 followers on our twitter page, so you can see it's roughly 10% of what we have on facebook. Personally, I can't quite get into twitter as much as I like facebook....but there are definitely those who prefer it and so we try to update our twitter page just as much as the facebook page.

On all of these 3 services, you can easily set them up yourself or we are happy to help you set them up if you aren't quite as computer savvy. Once they are set up, we can also gladly design custom graphics for these pages for you to use as your icons and backgrounds.

June Web Updates Report

Just when we think our web site updates reports can't get any better -- the ladies of our web division continue to raise the bar!

For the month of June, we are happy to report that 99% of all web updates were completed on a SAME DAY turnaround. The average web update was completed within 1 hour of our clients requesting their update!

Great results like this are due to the excellent customer service and teamwork here at RHD. When web updates come in, we know you want your work done as fast as possible. This month, everyone on the RHD staff worked on web updates - and we have added two new members to our updates team (Dollie and Emily).

As always, we do want to remind you that our GUARANTEE is a 5 day turnaround on web updates, however for the past two years we have always EXCEEDED that guarantee with an average of a half-day turnaround.

This month's winners for most web updates are.....

Grand Champion June Updater: Matt Lautner

We had a 4 way tie for Reserve.....
Bauman Cattle
Beefmaster Breeder's United
Illinois Club Pig Assn
Washington County Fair

Other honorable mentions doing a great job of sending in web updates are:
Adam White
Effective Stockmanship
Grumbles Performance Horses
Brad Hanewich

So to all our clients keep sending in your updates -- and we'll do our best to get them cranked out for you as fast as possible.