Helping Blog Readers See the Rest of the World

Back in March of 1976, Saul Steinberg created a cover for the New Yorker Magazine that’s become a classic.  The image shows how New Yorkers might see the rest of the world if they faced west on 9th Avenue; the image became so popular that parodies of it ending up being challenged in court.

What made the map funny was the way it portrayed New Yorkers as totally self-absorbed, centered around a few New York City blocks, with Washington, D.C. depicted as a remote location near Mexico. National Post journalist Robert Fulford described the perspective of the map as “one in which the entire world is a suburb of Manhattan.”

Business owners and professional practitioners need to avoid that narrow perspective at all costs. And for us blog content writers engaged in telling their stories, we need to keep in mind that, for every piece of information we write, each reader will be asking “So what?”

Potential buyers want to know about Radio Station WIIFM – What’s In It For ME. Simply put, buyers care about benefits, not features. Remember, there are millions of blog posts out there making claims of one sort or another. Each claim we puts into a corporate blog needs to be put into context for the reader, so that the claim not only is true, but feels true to  our clients’ online visitors.

Steinberg had it right – everything’s a matter of perspective. We can use blogging to offer searchers the relevant, up to date information they came to find, giving it to them in short paragraphs and in conversational style, then leading them to take action.

But in all our content, it’s crucial to present information from the customer’s perspective, not ours. Our “9th Avenue” represents the ending point to which we aim to draw the client. Where we are is never the starting point!