I cringe every time I read something that is writer-centred. Look at me, aren’t I wonderful! Frankly, I couldn’t care less and neither could your reader – don’t believe me? Then read on.
The other day, a sales flyer appeared through my door with my other post. It was very colourful and had several nice images dotted here and there to break up the text.
It was quite pleasing to the eye so I thought, why not? I was just about to have a coffee so I had a bit of a read just to see what they had to say – I believe it was from a conservatory company.
Well, after the first paragraph I’d learned all about how long they’d been in business, they had told me about the wonderful calibre of their sales team. I then moved on to read about the amazing glass they used and their wonderful weather resistant frames. They had also won a local award or something…as you can tell, I was beginning to flag by this point.
They had made one fatal mistake – they had forgotten who the flyer was going to.
Paragraph after paragraph they told me about themselves. I am sure they are very good at what they do and undoubtedly deserved the award, but what they didn’t do was tell me how their company’s product would benefit me.
OK, you could argue that I am intelligent enough to work that one out for myself. But because the flyer was all about them my reaction to it was ‘so what?’ Why should I spend my time and money contacting a company that paid so little attention to the needs of its potential customers?
The moral therefore is no matter what medium you are writing for, your writing must be centred on the reader. They probably aren’t particularly interested in how long your business has been going. But what they are interested in is what you can do for them to help them save money, time, etc.
Sally Ormond
