Creators: Understanding your audience

It's not magic

Your audience is a collection of the people who follow your work, taking interest and ultimately buying your product. So how important is it to understand your audience? Well, if you don't have your own marketing team or money to dump into advertising, it's fairly important. If you aren't already considered some kind of guru or master of your craft, it's fairly important. Your audience is how you make a name for yourself. But how do you manage that?

Right now, you can break your audience reach into three forms; internet, local, and in person. Internet offers connections to far more people at great distances, but can be super difficult to navigate and gain the acceptance of those audiences. Anything in person is usually much simpler because you have the human connection that the internet lacks, but you are limited in access to people based on who is physically at whatever event you are part of.

Let's look at the internet audience. Everyone goes to the internet. You practically have the entire world at your fingertips. Or do you? You certainly have access to a great diversity of consumers. But there's a huge catch. Unless you are paying for advertising (and this session of my blog assumes you aren't) you can't just jump into some forum of people and say, "here's what I'm selling, everyone!". It won't work. That's because the one thing you have to understand about the internet audience is the universal bloody eyed hatred of spam. This hatred is so strong that it makes internet social marketing a veritable mine field.

This is even if you are talking to people of a group that is all about the product you have created. That's even if the forum you are taking part in, has clear rules that allow you to share your project in certain time intervals. It's not evil to be excited about your product. It's a great achievement for you. But this is the rule you need to follow.

Be a person first. People on the internet want to know that you are personally a human being they can take interest in. That means the want to have idle chat and basic entertaining post share. They are going to want to that for a significant amount of time as well. After all, how long does it take to get to know someone. They want to know that you aren't just a market bot on the net. No, just saying you aren't isn't going to work.  This is how you market yourself as a person. Just take part in the average discussions and present yourself as an interesting human being. Be yourself as much as you can.

Local audience is important too. This is audience you can go out and spend time with in person. Making local connections branches out into more local connections. But what's the secret? Be interested in other people. Learn about them and their projects. Be supportive of their projects. Often enough that will come back around to you. Be social and prepared to just shoot the breeze. Be personable. Remember that in many situations where you are approaching other people, the dynamics are the opposite of the last point I'm about to make.

The best way to find that "in person" audience is at events like conventions. The primary difference is that people are now coming to you to find out what your product is. It's a big part of the exact reason they are there. If this goes well, word of mouth will carry news about you. The more events you can go to for your book, game, etcetra, the better. This is practically the polar opposite of trying to market via social media outlets.

To sum up, remember that your audience is made of people. You need to understand what they want. They want you to appeal to their interests. Find the people who have the interests that match your product/project, and you will move forward (so long as you remember they are people first).

The SPAM trap: Getting your product known on social media

I don't play golf, but I sometimes find myself comparing my journey with my brand to hitting a ball out of a sand trap. But what I call the "SPAM" trap is much harder to miss. When you are trying to get your brand out to your prospective audience, you have to remember one thing:

EVERYONE HATES SPAM.

And everyone seems to have a hair trigger response to anything they think qualifies as spam. There was a discussion on the Boardgame Geek Facebook page recently that highlighted this very point. It began with this:

This led to a long drawn out and very messy conversation/debate from many angles. But then someone added this:

It rings true. There is such a fine line between being seen as spam and getting actual interest in your product that it's decayed and broken. It's like tightrope walking on a wire that's fiber thin. So what do you do? Well, you can look to the advice of those proven successful or simply look at what they do.

James Mathe (Minion Games) and Jamey Stegmaier (Stonemaier Games) are established pillars of the gaming community in multiple fashion. They each have blogs that will give you detailed examples and "how to"s that are considered the cornerstones of game manufacturing information today. But how did they do that? And what if you aren't going to be a blog writer gaming guru? 

I asked James Mathe and his group over at Tabletop Game Kickstarter Advice how you get word out without becoming a spammer. 

James Mathe said, "That's not an easy question to answer. You kind of have to be a spammer; but a nice one that doesn't go overboard."

But how to do that?

James Campbell of "I will never grow up gaming" said: "Contribute to the wider community for months before getting the word out. Don't push your product continuously. Provide helpful and informative commentary about things other than your product regularly."

And he's absolutely right. You have to give people a chance to get to know you as a person. Not as a designer or anything else. A person. After all, unless your brand skyrocketed and got word out everywhere at once, no one knows who you are. It's going to take time in talking to people and learning about their interests. That means that not all your posts should be about your product. The same rings true for books if you are an author. So what do you do? 

While it's hard to post to lots of groups and keep up, you should try to be involved as much as you can. But you should only post updates about your product once a week at maximum. All the rest should be interest in group discussions. Your product may become relevant to some discussions, but avoid making all discussions sideline to your game or book. Take interest in other peoples interests. If you don't have tons of advice to offer, then become the student rather than the teacher. Aim to learn new stories, games, and get to know people for who they are. 

Over time as people watch you online (and make no mistake, they will be watching) interest will grow. You will get approached with questions. When that happens, you are in a good position. Don't overdo it. Keep your response simple and give a link to where they can get a good look at your game ( if you aren't on Boardgame Geek, why not?). Or be able to give a nutshell run down on your game. Then leave it up to them to continue for more information. I like to give a link to my page on Boardgame Geek and remain approachable if they have questions. 

Never send unsolicited messages to people in social media about your game. If you see someone posting interest in a game like yours. Ask them on the public forum: Hey, I have a game that fits what you are asking for, would you like to know more about it? Then back off. 

Keep these realities in mind; even though you have an accomplishment you want to shout to the mountain tops.

-People hear about this guy or that guy has made a new game, every single day. Some people get sick of it. So bear that in mind. The better they know who you are, the more likely they may want to hear what you have to say.

-There is no holy grail of gaming. Don't pop in out of nowhere and claim that your game is the greatest ever made. It's one of the biggest red flags out there.

-Never bash another designer, especially when you're new. Just don't do it. Stick with what's good about your and your brand, not what's bad about someone else's.

-Patience is a virtue, no matter what aspect of your brand or reaching people you are thinking of. Rushing only looks desperate.

Do you have a tip you'd like to share? Feel free to post in comments.