NewsOctober 2010

Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring

Business Development DirectorChuck Fleming

Marketing SpecialistsSara KelschStephanie SinnerChelsea WatterudKatie Meier

Dickinson Harvest Showcase

Pride of Dakota Day

Pride of DakotaHoliday Showcase Time

Featured Company: Angell’s Images

Featured Store:Robert’s Floral

Technology Tidbit: Get Listed

In This Issue

Pride of Dakota News

Dickinson Harvest ShowcaseThe first snowfall of the season chilled the outside air, but not the inside of the Dickinson Recreation Center, home of the 2010 Harvest Showcase, Sept.18-19. Al-most 3,000 shoppers strolled the aisles, enjoying tasty food, handcrafted art and each other’s company.

In just its second year, the Dickinson Showcase was a hit with vendors and visitors alike. Customers left with their shopping bags full, some even making several trips to their cars to carry out all their purchases. Many came both days to get the most of their Harvest Showcase experience. Vendors happily reported increased sales from last year and said they were pleased with the turn-out.

North Dakota Department of Agriculture interns Chelsea Watterud and Katie Meier also enjoyed the Showcase experience and getting to know Pride of Da-kota members. They are looking forward to the upcoming Holiday Showcase in Minot, Grand Forks, Fargo and Bismarck.

A customer samples Mable’s Taste of Home products

Oct. 11-12 Social Networking Training - Fargo

Nov. 6-7 Grand Forks Showcase

Nov. 13-14 Minot Showcase

Nov. 19-21 Fargo Showcase

Dec. 3-5 Bismarck Showcase

Upcoming EventsThe State Capitol once again welcomed Pride of Dakota with open arms on Sept. 16. The annual Pride of Dakota day was a highlight of the Council of State Employees (COSE) Appreciation Week.

More than 50 vendors showcased their items for state employees and the general public with products ranging from food to clothing to gift items. The attendees really enjoyed it.

In addition to Pride of Dakota day, the Capitol also served a North Dakota lunch in the cafeteria. The lunch featured ingredients from North Dakota vendors such as Cloverdale Meats, Pan O Gold Bak-ing, Dakota Slims BBQ, Dean Foods, M & W Meats, Baker Boy and Simplot.

Overall, the day was a great celebration of Pride of Dakota and North Dakota state employees.

Pride of Dakota Day

It’s Holiday Showcase time again. If you want to get in on some of that holiday shopping action, you better work quickly! The Fargo showcase is already com-pletely booked and the other showcases are filling up fast as well.

Pride of Dakota will take North Dakota’s largest cities by storm in November and December. We start out at the Alerus Center in Grand Forks, Nov. 6-7. The showcase will be open from 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. on Satur-day and 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. on Sunday. Then we head to Minot the next weekend, Nov. 13-14, to the Minot All Seasons Arena with the same hours as Grand Forks. After Minot, we move on to Fargo on Nov. 19-21 where we add a few extra hours on Friday. The Fargo showcase will run from 6 p.m. – 9 p.m. on Friday night, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. on Saturday and 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. on Sunday at the Fargo Civic Center. We’ll close up the holiday season at the Bismarck showcase on Dec. 3-5. This showcase, held at the Bismarck Civic Center, will continue the Friday night special and run the same hours as the Fargo showcase.

And remember, it’s the season of giving! So please support your fellow Pride of Dakota members by coming out to the nearest showcase, even if you’re not selling there.

For more information on the showcases, contact Sara at sakelesch@nd.gov.

Holiday Showcase Time!

Customers shopping at the showcases!

Pride of Dakota Featured Company

Pride of Dakota Featured Store

Almost everyone has had that amazing, but rare, op-portunity to see a wild animal close up in its natural habitat. Dave Angell has made a career photograph-ing these moments. It takes amazing patience and a great appreciation for the beauty of nature to take such unusual and intimate photographs. His subjects range from birds that visit his rural backyard to a fox kitten to full-grown bears. He also captures the beauty of the environment itself with picturesque nature shots.

Dave has been photographing nature and wildlife for more than 30 years, and he enjoys sharing his per-sonal view of nature on his company’s website,www.angellsimages.com. Angell’s Images also ex-hibits at about 20 shows each year.

Dave started photo-graphing nature in college when he took up birdwatching with his roommate. He went on to teach biology and ecology at Bismarck High School for 30 years, sharing his love for nature photogra-phy with his students

through many wildlife slideshows. In the last few years before retiring from teaching, Dave and his wife Chris attended a few art shows to try it out. Apparently they enjoyed it because Chris says “now it’s our new life!”

To get such wildlife shots, Dave takes patience to an extreme. He has built his own photography blinds so his presence will not scare off the animals. Once, he spent 36 continuous hours in a 4-foot square blind. According to Chris, he couldn’t stand up straight for hours after getting out!

For more information on Dave Angell and his wild-life photography or to find out how to purchase prints or notecards, visit his website or look him up on the Pride of Dakota website.

For some families, tradition is the food prepared for Thanksgiving or other holidays; for other families, tradition is a way of life. That is exactly the case for Roberts Floral in Bismarck. Now 53 years in business, Roberts Floral is still going strong with three generations regularly working in the store.

This full-service, floral company offers traditional and specialty flower arrangements made by talented designers, many of whom have 10 to 20 years experience. Roberts Floral also carries a variety of Pride of Dakota items including Pastime Prints by Dave Pauker, Laura Robert’s book By Faith, Lighthouse Soy Candles and Stillpoint Photography. They also carry a wide variety of gifts from plants to Egyptian glass to paper made from elephant poo!

Roberts Floral is happy to be a part of Pride of Dakota because “as a state, and as people we should be very proud of all we do, make and create and as a business it is very important to bring those wonderful things to our people and visitors to show them and help sell their wonderful products,” said owner Laura Ressler, a third generation Roberts.

Diamonds are a girl’s best friend, but flowers never fail. So next time a gift is needed for a friend or you need to treat yourself, stop into Roberts Floral located at 210 N. Eighth St. in Bismarck; call toll-free 800-896-8311 or 701-258-8311. Flowers can be ordered from the company’s website at www.robertsfloral.com.

Pride of Dakota Social Networking

Technology Tidbit: Get Found Online

Pride of Dakota now has a Facebook© page, Twitter™ ac-count, WordPress blog, Ning network and YouTube account. Our Facebook fan page reaches nearly 3,600 people daily with feature stories about our members, little-known facts about the program, status updates and feature videos.

If you want your company to be featured on Facebook, please take the following steps:1. Call or email us and ask to set up an interview to be the

featured company of the week. Pride of Dakota retail stores are welcome and encouraged to do the same.

2. Fill out the “Tell us about you” form and email, fax or mail it back to us so we can share some “Little known facts…” about your company.

3. Let us know if your company has been in the news.

If you have questions on social networking, email Sara at sakelsch@nd.gov.

So your business has a website. Now what? You can hope that whoever is searching for your company or your products happens across your information online and that what they find is actually correct. Or you can make it easy to find your company online and know that the details about your company are accurate. Getlisted.org makes it simple to judge how well your company is using search engines and gives you direct links for updating your data.

According to the president and CEO of Getlisted.org, David Mihm, most basic business data came up from the old print yellow pages in some form. And now, after it has passed through various tiers of search en-gines, it finally reaches the user who pressed “Search.” These various tiers cause a bit of a problem. The main search engines – Google, Bing and Yahoo – do not find all the info themselves and must rely on the assistance of second-tier search engines, such as Superpages and Citysearch, for a lot of their information. This means you need to make sure to update these sites too. It sounds like a long process, but that’s where Getlisted.org comes in.

When you first get to Getlisted.org, you are asked to input your company name and zip code. Within a minute you are given your Listing Score. This is a percentage that estimates how effectively your business is using free listings on major search engines. Then click “Learn How to Improve Your Score,” and you will get a list of the major search engines. In one look, you can see where you have claimed your listing (veri-fied that it’s correct and gained the ability to edit it) and where you haven’t with quick links to how to do so. Each process is a little different, but basically you get an account, and you gain the ability to update your info.

Getlisted.org also offers a list of companies that can help you improve your placement in search engines and opportunities to learn more about search engine marketing through its blog or seminars.

The internet offers more communication options than ever before. Make sure your company is saying what you want it to and maximize your search potential with Getlisted.org.