Recently, the Lake Cities Sun, a local newspaper for the Lake Cities community just north of Dallas, honored Dark Horse Productions with a feature on the advertising firm. “A Horse of a Different Color,” by Marcia Rios details owner Jerry Goodale’s rise in the business and his current path of success as a high-quality, state and nation wide advertising firm right out of Denton, Texas.

“One of the things I love the most about my job is the fact I have such a chance to do many diverse things, and I love that my job gives me a creative outlet,” Goodale said.

Goodale started in the advertising and production business modestly, editing video and working for a news station in East Texas. Within a few months, he became a well-known newscaster for the local station, and went on to do production work in various parts of the country. His most intriguing experiences include filming and production work on a documentary about traveling in reproductions of Columbus’ ships.

“It was an incredible time documenting their work. It was an experience I will never forget and I feel very blessed to have been a part of their work,” Goodale said.

Among the talented individuals that Jerry works with is Miranda Goodsheller, project coordinator for Dark Horse. A graduate of TCU, Goodsheller juggles civic events, project management, and coordinates the designers and web programmers for the development of websites and ad campaigns. With plenty on her plate, Goodsheller is always working hard to keep Dark Horse Productions projects running smoothly and effectively.

Dark Horse Productions provides fully integrated branding and marketing solutions, including strategic planning, actionable marketing plans, corporate identity design, full-service branding, print advertising, television commercials, copywriting, website design, illustration, internet advertising, media buying, packaging, and label design. More creative services can be found at Dark Horse Productions.com.

There comes a time when every company needs a high-quality, high-definition video about their product or service. Peterbilt Motor Company, a 25-year old manufacturer of first-class diesel and hybrid trucks, hired Dark Horse Productions and 121 Marketing Company to complete a high-definition safety video that will go in the glove box of every brand new Peterbilt truck in 2008. After all that goes into scripting, shooting, editing, and completing post-production, let me tell you, there’s nothing more satisfying than seeing the fruits of many days’ hard labor. While we can’t put the entire presentation up, here’s a sample of the high-definition video quality that Dark Horse puts into each of our production projects:

Family owned and operated for over 60 years with offices in Lewisville and Denton, Adams Exterminating is one of Dark Horse Productions’ most loyal clients. With a recent expansion of their fleet and spring pest problems creeping into North Texas, Adams needed some commercial to run on local cable stations. Here’s what we gave them:

Check out more commercials produced by Dark Horse on our YouTube page, and be sure and check out www.AdamsPest.com for more information on quality roach, ant, termite, mosquito, and lawn treatment in the North Texas area!

What are social networking sites? They’re places for old friends to find each other again, for new friends to meet, and for networks creation for every interest imaginable. But Myspace, Friendster, Facebook–these aren’t just places for your 14-year-old to message their friends when they should be doing their homework, they’re tools for your company to connect with a broader audience. And search engines love them. That’s because they do all the work for the search engine, cataloging your information so that the search engine doesn’t have to. They’re also great places for advertising, as highlighted in this great article about the marketing possibilities of Facebook. The possibilities of knowing your audience and targeting your market are exponentiated with high-trafficked, high-interest websites that are completely free. Simply join up, add your colleagues, employees, and fellow members of your business community.

Check out Dark Horse Productions’ Myspace Page, and add us to your list of friends! Also stop by the Dark Horse Productions’ Youtube Page, where you can find our recent commercial work. And until next time, stay connected, get involved, and form your own social network.

The Peterbilt Motor Company hired 121 Marketing and Dark Horse Productions to produce several corporate videos for their annual meeting open and safety demonstrations. Here is the first installment, their Annual Meeting Opening Video:

College was fun. I’ll admit it. Eleven o’clock classes, cramming for finals while your roommates thew parties funded by financial aid—-every day was different. Walking to class could get you roped into a political discussion, a student art project, or free food. Tough life, that of the aspiring academic on the mostly liberal-arts campus of the University of North Texas. It was a good time.

But all good things must come to an end. The classroom taught me to do good research, to learn new things quickly and synthesize them in presentations, papers, and group projects. But it never taught me how to implement these into a working situation. Most of what I learned was how to analyze Chaucer in a post-modern feminist aesthetic, which is about as valuable as a beeper (if you were born after 1990, don’t even bother). As my first job at an advertising agency here in Denton, Texas, Dark Horse Productions is a great segway into the commercial world. Working with small businesses, electric cooperatives, elected officials, and even horse ranches, my world has changed quite a bit. While I initially applied for a job as a creative copywriter, I’ve learned quickly in the last few months that in a small business, the last thing employees can do is compartmentalize.I’ve learned a great deal about Search Engine Optimization and Web Statistics Reporting, and that adaptation is more than survival of the fittest. It means cooperation, attending conferences and training, and yes, even embracing your inner geek. But in this past year, I’ve also gotten to ride along as a Production Assistant on commercial and corporate video shoots, like the Peterbilt videos that I’ll be posting here soon.

No one can learn it all. But the learning process is far from over after you get out of the classroom–in fact, it’s just begun. Thankfully, I’ve found a place to do that. Here at Dark Horse Productions, we do things a little differently, but we do good work by being flexible, creative, and sometimes just little bit weird.

by Cheryl Anderson

When was the last time you updated your website? If your answer is, “I think it was during an election year…” or “uh…college?” you might want to consider reading further. In addition to the Search Engine Optimization techniques I’ve mentioned in previous entries, the importance of updating the content of your site cannot be ignored. In the February issue of The Costco Connection, there was a small article on “Cobweb Sites,” or sites that have not been updated since pre-historic times. Here are some tell-tale signs of a Cobweb Site:

1) Gushing news updates in Comic Sans font regaling the glories of the economy.

2) The cursor mysteriously turns into a flashing trail of mist and you can’t seem to navigate away from “Home.” Or back to it.

3) Your domain name looks something like this:

www.angelf–re/somethign msspelled/nameofyourthirdgradeteacher/random number/yourpet’sname/productyou’re trying to sell…/8&kd-.html

If your website fits ANY of the three above criteria, please, give us a call. But first, take all the steps you can to make sure your site is updated. Go through every page of your website. Is what you’re trying to sell easy to find? Easy to navigate? Can you locate specific information quickly?

Finally, here’s some helpful tips on keeping your site current:

1) Establish a schedule to release new content. It could be every week, every month, even every six months depending on your traffic and your business.

2) Get rid of what you don’t need. Do you still have offers from your 2006 sale? Refresh, revise, go through your meeting minutes and see what you can do to update the site. Add press releases, news entries, blog about your recent jobs–anything you can do to help make your site more relevant to your customers and to the search engines.

3) Check for broken links. Websites change, domain names change, but if your links are not changing, you’re sending your clients to your site that could lead them to dead ends. You want your site to be a virtual storefront, not a garbage dump. Clean up your links, make them useful, and remember–your client should always be able to access your contact information on every page. Make sure your email addresses are correct and working.

These tips may not solve all your problems on a truly cobwebby site…but they will help. And remember, your biggest asset is your domain name–find a strong name that tells what you do or who you are, and stick with it–the older the domain, the better. Unless you’re really attached to: www.doityourself.com/backfire/randomSmurfsReference/yourname/#$%%.html

by Cheryl Anderson

These last few weeks have been pretty busy around here. On top of our normal print production, graphic and web design, brochure design, and other day-to-day tasks of Dark Horse Productions, we’ve been working on three corporate videos for Denton’s own Peterbilt Motor Company. Peterbilt is a well established community leader here in Denton, Texas. In the past, we’ve produced high quality print and promotional material for Peterbilt, and we were delighted for the opportunity to work with them again.

Working in cooperation with 121 Marketing of Houston, Texas, we began production of Peterbilt’s video projects. The first video is a product instruction and safety video that will be featured on a DVD in every glove box of every new truck that comes off the Peterbilt line in 2008. We’re also creating a manufacturing video to be used in instructional seminars, and 2008 Annual Meeting video opener. Check out the Dark Horse Productions YouTube page for some examples of our commercial video production, and stay tuned for next week when I’ll post the completed videos right here.

by Cheryl Anderson

I know many of you sit around, day after day, wondering, “What will it take for my site to be number one on Google?” It’s a question almost as pressing on the minds of many Americans as, “What’s Jamie Lynn Spears doing right now?” Each day, millions of American businesses must face the fact that their product or press release has little chance of competing with such pressing news issues. Indeed, penetrating the vast and mysterious wasteland of Internet Marketing and positioning yourself or your business at the forefront of the common internet user’s mind seems quite daunting. Unless, of course, you know a little somethin’-somethin’ about Search Engine Optimization.

Of course, I do know somethin’ about that.

Last night, I attended a seminar hosted by DFW SEM with my good friend from ADX. The meeting was sponsored by Lead Maverick, certainly one of the names on the cutting edge of Search Engine Marketing development. Between these well-respected marketers, I gleaned some very useful information. Here’s an overview:

1) Site Maps: GET ONE. To a search engine crawler, it’s like the skeleton of your website. Oftentimes this is the first thing it sees, and if it doesn’t see relevant keywords in the page index, you’re out of luck.

2) Age of your domain: Like fine wine, Older=Better. The longer your domain name has been established, the better your odds of being found by a search engine crawler. So while you may need to change your “image” considerably over the years (just throw in the towel if you’re still using comic sans in your copy), try to keep the same domain. Unless, of course, your site could qualify for this list. Or if you think this is cute.

3) Links–Internal and External: Search engines want to see that your site is relevant to the search criteria, and one of the ways they can do this is through examining your links. Are they relevant? Or are they extraneous?

4) Site Navigation: Across the board, experts agree, the navigability of your website is key for search engine crawlers, not to mention potential customers, to find their way through your site. This is generally just a best practice; you want your site to be easily navigable and full of useful content.

5) Media Links: Did you just hire a star SEO analyst? Put out a new product? Give your copywriter something to work on! Send out a press release. Create a press release section of your website. Put your work out there, and watch your rankings grow! Include those media links in your site, and you’ll find your rankings creeping up like old boyfriends’ pictures in your sock drawer. (Where did that come from? I blame the hostile takeover of this nation’s consumer centers by the pundits of Valentine’s Day)

I hope that you find some of these tips useful. Try not to spend too much time worrying about your rankings, overdosing on chocolate hearts and sappy romantic “dramadies” to fill the void between you and Google’s top 5…just take these helpful hints to heart, and incorporate them into your web marketing strategy. May you be number one.

by Cheryl Anderson

T.W. Hicks, Inc. is a successful Industrial Flooring business here in Lake Dallas, Texas. They work with high-end clients laying custom floors for airplane hangars, manufacturing warehouses, and food and beverage companies. Using top-of-the-line products from time-tested vendors and quality customer service, their customer return-rate is high, as are word-of-mouth leads. But T.W. Hicks wasn’t getting the traffic they desired from their website. So they called Dark Horse in to solve the problem.

Think of all those times you’ve walked into a store and found exactly what you needed. What makes you go back? It’s likely the store is more comfortable, is inviting and easy to find, and has employees that are ready to assist you at any time. You’d tend to stay longer to shop for other things you may need, right? The same goes for a website, which is a virtual storefront and the first impression many leads will have of a company.

With these things in mind, we analyzed the T.W. Hicks site for a makeover.

Turns out, their virtual storefront was beautiful, full of professional photography highlighting their work. But the pages were loaded down with browser-unfriendly Flash, so it was like trudging through peanut butter with bricks on your feet to get to the home page to load. Lovely, but inviting? Not so much. The site was fairly navigable except for the excessive loading time, but when we ran diagnostics, we saw that search engines could hardly find it. Pretty signs and a flashy office don’t do much good when the building is located in the virtual equivalent of “a couple miles off the paved road…” So, working off the same basic design, updating the code, transforming the navigation, and adding a customer-response box and phone number to every page, Dark Horse made the new T.W. Hicks site easy to spot, just off the information super highway.

Each page on a website is like a different section of a store; there should be a well-designed, clearly labeled space to shop and a breadcrumb trail to follow back when you’re ready to leave. Employees can’t come to your assistance on a webpage, but it should be easy for you to go to them with a contact box and store phone number. These tools help make a Dark Horse Website stand apart from the rest with unique, accessible, and dynamic design. So check it out. The difference in your online traffic will floor you (I know, that was cheap).