The BBISD then welcomed Anne Sullivan who gave a presentation on the Ingalls Homestead. It is an educational experience as well as a tourist attraction. They offer covered wagon and pony rides, an old country schoolhouse on the area homestead to demonstrate how they learned in the 1890’s. They show how wheat was ground back then and exemplify the hardships of that point and time in history. The BBISD members signed a thank you card and donated $100.00 to the Society of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Afterwards, we all journeyed to the Prairie House Manor B&B for coffee and dessert.

The third session of our annual business meeting reconvened on Saturday morning, January 19, 2008, at 8:30 am. Sara Steever, Public Relations/Newsletter Chairman, gave a presentation on “Marketing Your Inn on the Internet” and shared a wealth of information about website management. She stressed the importance of a professional photographer, which increased her business 50%. It’s important to have your own domain name, it’s costly but very beneficial. She said to check your search engines. We need title tags, meta tags, headlines and subheadings, need 250 key-words/dense words per page, alt image tags, links to/from bbonline.com and to check key-words for relevancy. Be sure to give valuable information: where to eat, what to do, recipes, why you are unique, attractions, events in your area. She instructed us to check out the free stuff: setting up a dmoz.org listing, setting up a google.com account and Google.com/local for map listings, set up a yahoo submission, submit your site to MSN.com. Also paid economical advertising: Google keywords and targeted ads (buying google keywords is cheaper than the yellow pages), MSN Ads and Yahoo ads and use the following directories: bbonline.com; bedandbreakfast.com, lanierbb.com; theinnkeeper.com, travelsd.com; and Iloveinns.com. Make sure your emails contain all your B&B information: phone #, website, email address, blogs. Since Sara has taken over the maintenance of www.southdakotabb.com it has risen from being buried on the 4th or 5th page of the top search engines to being one of the top three (3) on the first page!

Joan Hegerfeld, Extension Food Safety Specialist at the SD State University Cooperative Extension Service in Brookings, SD, gave a presentation on Marketing your Jams and Jellies. She covered the microbiology of Food Preservation and that jams and jellies are basically low risk foods. For those considering selling home-cooked products as part of their business, get information relating to regulations and safe food handling practices that reduce or eliminate possible risks. She discussed environments that cause botulism poisoning and stressed the importance of following strictly the national home food preservation guide and required food-labeling restrictions.

Our final session was a group discussion presented by Ron Kaaz on “Knowing Your Rights as an Innkeeper.” Seek legal council if you have questions, there are changes to the laws; guest records: make sure you have the names, number in the party, guest residence, date of registration, date of departure, daily rate charged, vehicle license plate number and keep your records for one year. Consider your guest’s safety: remove snow and put out salt - show an attempt to keep cleared; areas and walkways well lighted, proper handrails; follow safety codes: water temperature is suppose to be set at 120 degrees; if you suspect there might be a crime going on - report it; place deadbolts where needed and stay consistent with your policy. If you are going to do packaging with another entity (recreational service/restaurant etc.) have an agreement prepared and signed that you/they are operating as an independent contractor so that you are not liable for any accident or injury that happens while they are using a portion of the package they purchased from you.

Meeting adjourned at 11:15 am.