Today, I want to talk about the power of intrinsically knowing your audience. To do this, I will tell you how I, as a food and entertaining blogger, orchestrated being featured in 2008 on Kotaku, the most influential video game blog and the 19th blog of the world at the time.

A blog for hardcode gamers is not where you’d expect a post on a birthday cake. Moreover, my timing was out of sync. I succeeded because I perfectly understood what their editors wanted in a story. My pitch had the right ingredients. With my husband’s help, I designed a cupcake tower filled with clever gaming details.

I have an edge when it comes to adult gamers since I am married to one. I know how these guys feel and what excites them when it comes to the gaming universe. I used that knowledge to win their hearts. It all began ten months before my husband’s birthday when video game cupcakes were all the rage on Kotaku. Jerome often pointed out cute tech or video game-themed cupcakes that he saw on Kotaku. I decided on a video game party earlier on. By the time of his birthday, Kotaku had moved on. They stopped featuring game-themed cupcakes.

Jerome, who started to play video games in his youth at arcades, still wanted a retro video game theme for his birthday. Knowing that I would use his party as materials for my blog, he reminded me that Kotaku didn’t featured cakes anymore. I told him that it didn’t matter. I told him that they won’t be able to resist my story once they read it.

I wrote a post for my blog as I normally do after hosting a big party. But I did something different; I tailored it for the editors of Kotaku. I wrote for guys in their thirties who adore video games, which fitted the profile of their editors and writers. I still kept my regular readers in mind, but the details were written to capture the attention and imagination of Kotaku. Since Jerome was already a member of their community, I asked him to submit my story to Kotaku. I assumed that it would be better received if it came from him, instead of me. And it worked!

This was a vanity trip. My traffic jumped that day. I reached 5,000 visits in a day for the first time. I did this challenge knowing that they were not my audience. This is why I didn’t pay more attention to these visitors and sought to attract more people from the gaming community. I accomplished my goal. As I write this, I wish I had explored how far I could have taken that story.

Food for Thought

The reason I shared this story is that you need to spend time with your loyal fans, with people who live the lifestyle you aim to reach in order to truly capture their attention and get them to care about what you are doing. Even in a crowded and competitive market, there are always ways to get noticed if you play it right. By knowing your audience, your chances of success hugely increased.