With more than 540,000 followers on Twitter and 362,000 on Instagram, the Colorado Rockies are the third most popular team in the Denver professional sports market.
But who are the faces behind the handles and how have they become one of the most likable teams in the social media game?
“Everybody is trying to be different. Everybody is trying to be creative. So how can you stand out? How can you set yourself apart from all the noise and all the other voices out there?” says Rockies Director of Digital Media & Publications, Julian Valentin, who has been with the club since 2011.
“I think communication, people skills, all that stuff is important but having the right people around you, the right support, the right buy-in, is all incredibly important,” adds Valentin. “And we’re really, really lucky to have that here.”
Valentin says he gets too much credit for the Rockies success on social media, and points to a well-rounded and diverse team of photographers and social media guru’s as the true reason behind their popularity, including the clever minds of Nicole Morris and Tony Nittoli, who are in charge of running the club’s Twitter and Instagram handles.
“We just try to keep the voice of the account so to speak and that voice is fun-loving,” says Nittoli, the Rockies In-Game Social Media Coordinator. “It’s about having a good time and putting out positivity.”
Morris says that the best thing about their work group is their ability to hash out ideas as a team.
“We bounce everything off of each other. We’re always communicating and texting each other and asking, “What do you think about this?” It’s not like taking over someone else’s ideas but it’s always making it better.”
“You have the stuff and sometimes you just sit on it. Sometimes you never use it,” adds Nittoli. “Then other times you can just dump it out there and everybody will eat it up.”
While the goal is to promote positive vibes, they understand the internet can be a negative place full of “trolls”.
“It’s part of the job and I think we have the luxury of we don’t have to recognize them. We don’t have to give them a platform to become a bigger troll.”
But sometimes you have to put the trolls in their place, like when several individuals took to social media to criticize Rockies broadcaster Jenny Cavnar as she made history as one of the first women to ever call play-by-play for a Major League Baseball Game.
Nittoli read one Twitter user’s dreadful comments outloud:
“This is terrible. Please do something to help them. A huge distraction to the game.”
After deliberating as a team, they decided that “Tom” needed to be put in his place, responding with this cheeky tweet:
The Rockies response picked up more than 77 comments, 455 retweets and 3.8 million likes.
“We’re not going to put up with this,” said Morris. “We’re going to have our broadcasters back. We’re breaking barriers all together. It’s not just Jenny doing it alone. It’s @Rockies has her back.”
When they aren’t clapping back at the ugliness of certain users, the Rockies are brainstorming informative and out-of-the-box ideas.
“Tony photoshopped tacos into Charlie Blackmon’s beard and we just thought it was the funniest thing ever,” said Morris with a laugh.
“Hopefully people don’t think we are as weird as they think we are,” a chuckling-Nittoli added. “We’re normal people. We just have crazy minds.”
