How Social Media Works When Your Fans Are Truly Passionate

Hosted By

Daniel Lemin

Convince & Convert

Hannah Tooker

LaneTerralever

Leanna Pham

Convince & Convert

About Social Pros Podcast:

Social Pros is one of the longest-running marketing podcasts in existence (10 YEARS and counting), and was recently recognized as the #1 Audio/Podcast Series by the Content Marketing Awards.

Our purpose? Making sure that we speak to real people doing real work in social media.

Listeners get inside stories and behind-the-scenes secrets about how teams at companies like Google, Reddit, Glossier, Zillow, Lyft, Marvel, and dozens more, staff, operate, and measure their social media programs. With 600+ episodes, the Social Pros Podcast brings the humanity of social media to the forefront, while providing incredibly useful marketing strategies that listeners can immediately implement.

Follow Social Pros on LinkedIn.

Apple Podcast Reviews:

The Social Pros podcast has quickly become a favorite in my feed! I'm consistently impressed by the engaging conversations, insightful content, and actionable ideas. I truly learn something every time I listen!

@Arlie K

This is absolutely an awesome listen for anyone in communications or social media!!

@Will31C

This podcast has become one of my staple weekly podcasts for learning about marketing! Love the conversations that they have and it's always enjoyable and educational!

@Simonstone95

Love the podcast - informative, in depth and spot on for any business size.

@MissTriathlon

Eric Swayne, Senior Director of Fan Engagement at FUNimation, joins the Social Pros Podcast to explain how their social team engages, cultivates, and supports a global fan base.

Fans = Users = Customers

Being the largest importer of anime in North America comes with a huge fan base and a daunting host of responsibilities. Managing over 400 titles, attending 38 annual conventions, sending millions of emails, and engaging with a community that includes 1.5 million subscribers on YouTube all while seeking to expand your fan and media base can seem impossible… especially when your community gains strength and joy from user-driven initiatives that lie outside the realm of your control while still directly impacting your brand.
Amazingly, Eric and his Fan Engagement team navigate these waters with great success. They have found the formula to maintain just the right balance between actively managing their social community and indirectly enriching or supporting fan platforms when appropriate.

In This Episode

Why a responsibility to your customer base means flexibly engaging them wherever they are
How viewing your product from the point of view of your customers can lead to a paradigm shift for your brand
Why passionate fans mean a high BS meter
How license restrictions lead to creative engagement opportunities

Quotes From This Episode

“We are trying to create cultural movements around these brands.” —@eswayne
“Fan engagement is a team that manages all of the touch points for where our brands meet our fans, not just social media.” —@eswayne
“We want to create vehicles for this content wherever fans want to consume it.” —@eswayne
“We try to find the happy middle where our fans celebrate and work with this content and we get to do the same for them.” —@eswayne
“We can make any type of marketing make sense for anime.” —@eswayne
“We are trying to immerse our fans in our brand from all these different touch points at once.” —@eswayne
“Email is one of the most underrated platforms for digital marketers.” —@eswayne

Resources

Eric Swayne on Twitter: @eswayne
FUNimation on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Twitch, Instagram, Periscope, tumblr, Pinterest
Dubble Talk
Sysomos
FUNimation on Valentine’s Day
Geek & Sundry
/r/anime
Michelle Phan Tokyo Ghoul Collaboration
Influence Pros Podcast

The Big Two:

Eric Swayne

What’s your one tip for becoming a social pro?
One of the best things to keep in mind is that this is a business and therefore ahead of anything else, you need a good business and marketing head. The social team should be more than the tweeters… they should be the smartest strategist in the room. Lastly, being a fan or advocate is really powerful and important when you are taking your brand into the channels where the fans are most active.
If you could do a Skype call with any living person, who would it be?
How about instead of one, we go with four living persons that are all prolific YouTubers? First would be Destin Sandlin to discuss his science-explaining channel and its huge community. Next would be Michelle Phan who has transformed the everyday of make-up into a ginormous personal brand. Last, but certainly not least, Rhett & Link who have morphed their friendship into a series of awesome viral videos and a daily TV show.
All of these folks have created something that their community wants to come back to every single day. There are certainly lots of lessons we could learn from them on how we develop our own social communities.

See you next week!