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

A blog for hard-code gamers is not where you expect a post on a birthday cake. Plus, 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. I am married to one of them. I know how these guys feel and what excite them when it comes to the gaming universe. I used that knowledge to win their heart. It all began ten months before my husband’s birthday when video game cupcakes were all the rage on Kotaku. Jerome used to point out cute tech or video game 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 cupcakes.

Jerome, who started to play video games in his youth at arcades, still wanted a retro video game theme for his birthday. Since he knew that I also used 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 like I normally do after hosting a big party. But I did something different; I wrote it for the editors of Kotaku. I wrote it 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 there 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. It did!

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 am writing this, I wish that I had tried to see how far I could have gone with that story.

Food for Thought

The reason I shared this story is that you need to pass time with your loyal fans, with people who live the lifestyle you want to reach to be able 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.