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.

Christa's Big Project

In the web division, Christa did a mini celebration last week when we launched the new web site design for Beefmaster Breeders United. This project has been in development for about a month and has been keeping Christa busy! We are really excited to be working with the Beefmaster group and invite you to check out that site.
http://www.beefmasters.org/
When the Beefmaster group talked to us a few months ago about a proposal - we were really excited because we also do the Charolais Association web site and Brahman Association web site, and we love it! Working with these organizations is such a pleasure because of their talented staff. We're on a daily communication schedule with Chris Shivers and Armi Ibarra at the Brahman Association. I have Molly Mader's email address memorized and we can pretty much quote you any detail or upcoming event of the Charolais Assn from memory. And so now, we are happy to be working with Dr. Perkins and Collin Osbourn at Beefmasters.
I have to say -- I've really become a fan of Beefmasters over the past few years. A couple of years ago I purchased a pair of Beefmaster E6 replacement heifers from Collier Farms. They are just about the coolest recip cows I have on the ranch -- their chocolate colored motley faces and they are best friends. I loved them so much I went back and bought a few more last year too! So Beefmaster E6's are top of my list.
Plus -- two very important friends in my life - Kim Candler McCuistion and Matt Karisch are both Beefmaster enthusiasts. :)
So, we invite you to check out the new site and leave us your comments on what you think!

August Ad Reminder

It's that time of year again when all of our midwest clients are busy snapping photos of their calves and getting ready for the fall bid off sales.

This is our favorite time of the year in the print division because for about the past month we have been in super ad design mode working on ads for August publications. We made an in-office rule that if the number of ads to design on our list gets over 100 that we aren't going to take any new ads until we get it below 100 again. But lucky for us (and our new clients) we are managing to get several approvals per day so we're getting ads off the list as soon as new ones come on the list. Last week our ADC (Average Daily Count) was around 76, and this week we've got it around 45 -- so we're making a lot of progress! With the July 1 deadline for most major magazines like Show Circuit and Livestock Plus and The ShowTimes -- we do see an end in sight!!

About a month ago when Travis Pembrook was down at our house he asked me if I had to can I just get into an "ad design mode" and just start cranking things out. And I replied to him -- um, yeah, every month! But to be real honest, I love it. The way we have our print division set up is that as soon as we have the clients information, we put them into our production schedule, and they usually get a proof in a day or two. Then each day I schedule X number of ads to work on. I do all the major design work as far as design, concepts, and layout. Once I have the 1st proof on the ad started, I turn it over to Liz, who is the one who sends the proofs out to the clients and then makes any necessary corrections.

So, the only thing that is kinda bad now is that it's June 25th and I personally know what ads I like, and which ones I think are the "cool" ones -- but we have to wait 5 weeks until they actually come out in the club calf handbook aka August Show Circuit. It's a little anti-climatic but it's still fun when you actually see them come out in print.

This is just a reminder to those of you who haven't send in your ad information for your August ads -- go ahead and get it sent in. There's a few days left til the ads are due on next Wednesday so call us or email us and let's get it knocked out before the deadline!

RHD Print Item in Druckenmiller Benefit Auction

We invite everyone to check out the Druckenmiller Family Benefit Auction, going on now through May 25th at Clubcalves.com.

This online auction is set up to help support some of our fellow friends in the cattle business. Bode and Brystol Druckenmiller of Iowa are two wonderful boys with loving, caring parents. Both are hemophiliacs with Factor 8 deficiencies and Brystol was also born with a complex heart defect requiring multiple additional cardiac surgeries. Each has has multiple recurrent hospitalizations over essentially their entire lives, yet today they are strong, bright young boys that I hope the cattle community will see fit to help.

RHD has donated a 1 page ad design that can be used for your ads in the August 2009 State Fair issues. We will create and design your ad for you that you can place in any magazine(s) you wish, or even have flyers made of this ad if you don't plan on advertising anywhere.

We are also working on getting a web site donated too!
Our print ad donation item is at http://members.boardhost.com/druckenmillers/msg/1242931832.html

If you are the winning bidder we will need your ad materials by June 25th and you will need to contact the publication of your choice and let them know that you are wanting an ad.

If anyone is interested and has questions just email rachel@ranchhousedesigns.com