From Posts to People: Turning Fans into Lifelong Followers

Hey everybody, welcome back to the Beyond Social podcast. I’m Reggie, one of your hosts, and this is the show where we go behind the scenes in how we’re building an awesome tool for social media marketers actually.

So we’re going to switch gears instead of talking about some of the strategies and tactics that are more theoretical. We had an opportunity to speak recently with John Stephen on a couple different topics and we were really excited to bring him on to the show today to talk about Community Management and really he’s got some very heartwarming stories, some stories that show you tactically how Community Management can transform a brand in the eyes of an audience. And so John Stephen, for those of you who may not know him, he’s a social media consultant, he’s a speaker, he’s a Founder, also of Saturnine Media, where he’s worked with brands like Prime Video to manage socials on TV shows like Invincible, Sausage Party.

The Accidental Path to Social Media Success

So John Stephen, thank you so much for being here with us. Yes. I’m so excited to be here and I’m going to, this is the third time today but I’m going to apologize, I called you John. It’s gonna take me a little bit, got a lot of friends named John, but by the end of this episode, John Stephen, it’s, it’s gonna be there.

Well, my original goal was not to be a social media manager. I wanted to go back to school, get my PhD, my Master’s in the literature and teach literature at a college level and i was teach, it’s about 2008 and I was teaching English as a as a second language at a university and noticed my students weren’t paying attention to me. They were on their phones on Facebook, back when college students were still on Facebook uh and all the teachers in our department were very frustrated. They’re like, why are they, you know, what can we do? They were collecting cell phones at the beginning of class and I was like, this is not the way to go. We need to figure out how to use it as a tool and not a toy.

Higher Ed: The Perfect Community Building Training Ground

Definitely higher ed plays a big part of that. You know, college campus is just a vibrant community and there’s really nothing else like it in social because it’s almost like, I compare it to like running social media for an entire city because you have like housing and transportation and all these different departments that are all kind of coming together and different audiences. You have alumni, you have prospective students who are still in high school, you know, coming to campus and trying to reach out to those people personally when a student would post, hey, I just got accepted to Texas State University where I was working. Uh, sending that message and saying, hey, congratulations. If you have any questions about the campus, just let us know.

The Photoshop Moment That Changed Everything

We, we once, uh, I was working one day and noticed that a, um, somebody had posted a photo of their son, said, you know, oh, my son wanted to do his best Invincible pose. We went to the comic bookstore, wanted to do it and he did the pose. If you haven’t seen it on the first issue of Invincible, he’s like up against a brick wall, he’s got his fist out and like ready to punch and the kid was wearing an Invincible like costume shirt and I saw, man, this is so cool. The kid’s a little too young to watch invincible but that’s neither here nor there for another day but so I ran to my laptop, open Photoshop and photoshopped his son into the actual image of the first issue and sent it back to them and just said, you know, you tell him he’s doing a great job and you know, it didn’t get a huge amount of engagement, but that’s not what matters.

It’s that we made, you know, that dad and his son’s day and that’s something that they’re never going to forget.

The Allen the Alien Phenomenon

So, you know, other things that we do is just, we always want to try and make our audiences feel heard and recognized. You know, on another thing we do on Invincible is, we’ve got a, uh, every episode, we do a, uh, a poster for each episode, kind of a, a old school movie style poster for every episode every season and during season one, we started to notice every time we posted one, uh, one of the first replies would be the poster needs more Allen.

Now if you haven’t watched the show, Allen the Alien is a a pink, big, pink, oneeyed alien voiced by Seth Rogan. He’s a fan favorite character. Uh, and we noticed that you know, this guy was chiming in every, every week. We, you know, for, for about the first half of the season and then we said, hey, why don’t we make a special Allen poster? So immediately, that next week we posted the show poster, our fan replied, poster needs more Allen and then we said, here you go.

Building Trust with High-Profile Brands

Yes. And you know, every you know, as a freelancer, I get to work with lots of different clients and on different projects and everyone is different where you know, of what level of comfort they have with that. I’ve had some where every reply has to be approved, even even linking a post. I have this, you know, hey, is it okay to to click like on this post? Uh had to be be approved and I understand, especially on high-profile projects, the, the need for that because you don’t want to accidentally interact with somebody who you know you look at their profile and it’s like, oh maybe that’s not somebody we want to interact with.

The Celebrity Voice Shortcut

At one university, we used the Mythb busters build team, not the two guys, the the three build team, like this is how we’re going to talk, you know, this is kind of the voice and it’s a shorthand way to do it. We have of course, had longer tone and voice documents, but Celebrity Shorthand was probably the easiest way to, to do it.

Navigating Embargoes and Spoilers

Oh, that, that that’s like the ultimate line you do not cross that you have to be very aware like and especially in the entertainment industry, that like release dates, information, spoilers. That’s a big one, like because sometimes we get to see the shows ahead of time or for for programs, I’ve worked on. It’s an adaptation. You know, I work community management on on the Shogun series for FX and Hulu and I read the book so I knew what was going to happen next week, you know, and anybody who’s read it knows what’s going to happen.

Beyond Entertainment: Community Management for Any Industry

You know, like real estate, somebody buying a new house is their, I I just bought, we moved recently and bought a new house. It’s a, it’s a big deal. It’s huge. It’s the biggest purchase you’ll make in your life and you know, just being able to chime in to people who are, you know, your customer who just bought one, replying to them, making them feel good about that purchase, uh goes a long way into them recommending you or looking for people who, you know, you know, you can find those Facebook groups.

The 90/10 Rule: Replies Over Posts

Yeah, well, yeah. I would say like talking about Cadence of posting, what you post on your public profile goes on the timeline should only be about 10% of what you actually post everything else really should be replies. That’s, that’s, that’s the the the tip of the iceberg and the replies are really where the magic happens and you don’t know how, you know, we’re seeing it on TikTok already where where brands will reply on someone else’s post and it will get so much engagement more than one of their actual videos.

The “Us” Reply That Went Viral

Um another example on on Invincible is when we announced the launch that we had been greenlit for seasons three, uh two and three we made the announcement, you know, Invincible is coming back for seasons two and three and one of the first replies was just Source question mark. They didn’t look at our, this was before Elon, you know, changed verification, they didn’t see our check mark and go you’re official. They thought we were like a fan account or something.

So I just replied, um, us. And that got a huge amount of engagement. But what was really special was about six months later, a fan screencapped that interaction and posted it on his timeline and said, you know, this still makes me laugh. And that fan’s post got more engagement than the season announcement post, which did a lot of work for us.

Like um is not even a word, like it’s barely two words. So uh I I wouldn’t discount those interactions and if your your your management or you know, your clients are telling you, you know, we want a higher post Cadence, tell them the, the gold is in the replies.

Yeah, gold is in the community and that’s, that’s something to remember. I love that. All right, well, hey, thank you again for being here with us. We appreciate you.