5 Simple Tips for Marketing to Nerds Nerds, geeks, eggheads and wonks are an influential audience -- Nerdist's Chris Hardwick offers tips to reach them.

A broad demographic with fickle yet discerning tastes, nerds can be either a super-sidekick or an archenemy to small businesses. Nerdist's Chris Hardwick and Peter Levin speak geek, and they offer these tips for casting a level-12 charm spell on this influential audience.

Share your passion. "You can nerd out on anything," Levin says. Say you run an auto-parts dealership--that really means you're into classic cars and engineering. If you own a vineyard, you're nerding out on agriculture, weather and topography. "You can extrapolate that pretty far, as long as you stay true to the intersection of passion and information."

Find your niche. The internet makes it easy to access specialized content, so don't try to be everything to everyone. For instance, when Hardwick expanded the Nerdist blog, he hired writers whose interests differed from his. "We had a guy, he proposed writing about sharks, and I was like, 'Sure! Write about sharks!'" he says. They also hired experts on beer and wristwatches, making the content broader and expanding the site's readership.