Social Media

Iceni talks social media to… Rob Turner

Rob Turner

Writer/Producer at Reynard City.

What does your role within Reynard City as a Writer/Producer involve? We have a great team of artists and artistic talent- my job involves writing scripts, overseeing what they do and promoting it. As a quick summary Reynard City is a comic about three superhero foxes that come to Earth to stop an evil robot fox. It’s like a 90’s cartoon like Ninja Turtles but with an odd sense of humour like Adventure Time (for example AK Girl’s weakness is she inflates on contact with caramel). As a writer I also do various forms of freelance article work for a wide range of clients.

Can you give us a brief run down on how you use social media to interact with potential clients and the general public? Social media has been excellent on a number of levels- these include being able to message our team to get the comic put together, letting people know when issues are out, approaching sponsors and finding out about upcoming events etc. Our aim is to get people looking at the comic- while it’s great to get passionate comic fans on board I also try and get people giving it a go who may not necessarily be regular comic readers.

How do you use social media as a tool for your existing clients? We have an advertising package (www.reynardcity.com/advertise) with this specifically in mind. Equally for our readers it is equally important to let them know when new issues are out, events we are attending and so forth.

Which social media platforms do you use and why? i.e Hootsuite, TweetDeck, etc? Twitter is great for messaging (we even have our characters tweeting @therealakgirl and @wondervixen in case you’re curious!) while Facebook is best for organization. Linkedin is another professional one I use and Deviantart is useful for promoting artwork, art contests and scouting artistic talent.

There are quite a few networking hours on Twitter, which is your favourite and why? #NorwichHour is great fun because it comes with the Future Radio show, #NorfolkHour is the most well established and given us some great contacts while #GeekHour and #Webcomic Chat are the two main ones we use that are comic specific.

What is your favourite social media campaign you have managed? We managed to get two successful Kickstarter campaigns funded on the back of social media promotions. It was a lot of work but our team did well and it really inspired me to see people wanting to support our project.

Which social media experts and/or influencers do you follow? Hub Fizz have been great in helping me promote the copy writing side of my work and Karen is very insightful. The networking group Norwich Kitty have helped me develop my self confidence. I also take a great deal from professional Youtubers like Nostalgia Critic, Black Nerd Comedy and Screen Junkies as well as comic writers and artists.

What kind of skills/qualities do you think you need to possess to be a Writer/Producer? With writing you need to be flexible- when it comes to working for a client it is about reading between the lines and giving them want they want. With your own work it is important to be true to what you want- a lot of people will have ideas and there’s nothing wrong with listening to feedback. However you need to have a story that you feel passionate about and you can see where it is going- sometimes people make the mistake of initially throwing themselves into something without thinking what they want at the end of it . In terms of the producer side of it there is always the difficult balance between supporting your team, getting the work out there and paying the bills!

What are your competitors doing on social media? I hesitate to use the term “competitors” to describe other webcomic artists/producers. I’m impressed with titles like Cyanide and Happiness that often get shared around on Facebook but that’s mainly because they are strip comics and are more based around gags with a punchline whereas Reynard City is more about an over-arcing story. Writers like Gail Simone are inspirational because they interact with fans and I admire her in particular because she’s not afraid to give an opinion but equally can mess around and have fun.

And finally, what one piece of advice can you give to someone starting out into the world of social media? Treat social media like you would face to face networking- get to know people, talk about your interests and be genuine without being too “honest”. If you stick with it results will happen, you just need to be patient and keep pushing!