Craft: Stealth typos

Beware the ones that spellcheck will never catch.

From Associated Press

From Atlas Obscura

From TikTok

Book Club: Building A StoryBrand by Donald Miller

By Bob Decker

Once every couple of months, several of us at Dundee Hills Group, the parent company of Redpines, gather to discuss a marketing communications related book or topic that we've read or thought about. I always take a lot of notes, copying down those passages that I want to be able to tell people about later or that I simply thought were well written. Here are my top 5 favorite passages from Building A Story Brand by Donald Miller, ©2017 by Donald Miller. 

[A website with too much noise:] . . . It was as though he was answering a hundred questions his customers had never asked.

[Apple became successful] . . . by (1) identifying what their customers wanted (to be seen and heard), (2) defining their customers' challenge (that people didn't recognize their hidden genius), and (3) offering their customers a tool they could use to express themselves (computers and smartphones).

[A website needs to answer these 3 questions in an obvious way:] 1. What do you offer? 2. How will it make my life better? 3. What do I need to do to buy it?

. . . the customer is the hero of the story, not your brand. When we position our customer as the hero and ourselves as the guide, we will be recognized as a trusted resource to help them overcome their challenges.

The goal of our branding should be that every potential customer knows exactly where we want to take them: a luxury resort where they can get some rest, to become the leader everybody loves, or to save money and live better.

Toolbox: Another Pair of Eyes for Your Website SEO

By Bob Decker

Sometimes improving your website's SEO is as simple

as bringing in another pair of eyes.

Do you ever feel like you're so close to your business that you're no longer able to visualize how other people might see it?

You know who your customers are. You know what problem you're solving for them. 

Can anybody spend a few seconds looking at your website and figure that out as well? 

This is a key part of the thought process that the Redpines team guides you through when we conduct a basic SEO audit. It's like providing you with a second pair of eyes — mainly for your website, but also for your company messaging in general.

How can you tell if you need a basic SEO audit?

Here's one way: Off the top of your head (no fair copying from your website) write down what your company does and who it’s for in 25 words or less. Then delete any mention of your company name. Paste what remains into a Google search query. Where does your company come up in the results?

If your company website is popping up on the first page of results, congratulations. You're doing great. 

Not showing up on the first, second, or third page of results? We can help you fix this.

Agenda: November 2022

1. Fly direct from San Francisco to Munich on UA 194 or LH 459

2. Upon arrival at the Maritim, go for a swim

3. Spend 15th through 18th at electronica 2022, catching up with so many people whom one hasn't seen since at least 2020

4. Make a special point of checking out the interesting demos at the Vishay Intertechnology booth

5. Hear the latest on what's happening with DRAMs, SRAMs, and flash from David Bagby at Alliance Memory

6. Somehow manage to slip away to spend some quality time at Dallmayr delicatessen, which one so fondly remembers visiting with Elisabeth Feder of Electronique. Open until 7 p.m. Monday through Wednesday and until 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday. Repeat as often as possible.

7. Check out who's playing at the Tonhalle, Backstage, Milla, Muffathalle, and Strom.

8. Before leaving town, get some perspective on everything new that one saw at electronica 2022 by checking out what's old at the Glyptothek.