How the Colorado Rockies social media team has succeeded without baseball

In his 10th season working the social media side of the Colorado Rockies business, Julian Valentin has had a unique puzzle to figure out since mid-March. How do you keep baseball fans engaged with the sport they love when there is no clear time frame of when that sport might return?

As the director of brand management and social media for the Colorado Rockies, Valentin has had one constant thought pop into his head each week since baseball went on hiatus.

“Every Sunday night, I sit down at the desk in my home office to prepare for the week ahead and think to myself, ‘Maybe this is the week things slow down a bit and we can enter into a routine.'” Valentin told me in an exclusive chat. “That definitely has not happened yet and it doesn’t seem like it will. Things have been crazy.”

Without games to detail or on-field milestones to mark, @Rockies and Colorado’s other social media accounts have had a unique set of challenges to conquer. Valentin, however, said that he and his team have looked at it as an opportunity rather than a roadblock.

“This time has certainly had some unique challenges,” Valentin said. “I think, having done this for so long, the games can be something you fall back on as easy content because they kind of write themselves. Now, we’re really relying on creative activation and some outside-of-the-box concepts and, for us, that’s right up our alley.

“Even when we have games, we’re always looking for new or different ways to engage our fans and this is no different without those games.”

That engagement of fans has included everything from the massive undertaking that was this year’s Stay at Home Opener broadcast (that took the place of what would have Colorado’s home opener on April 3 against the San Diego Padres) to having Ryan McMahon and Ian Desmond read children’s books as part of a promotion with the Denver Public Library to help keep literacy front of mind with schools out of session.

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And, let’s be clear, these social media activities are not just about engagement and likes on Instagram. Valentin said that the Rockies are doing things to impact their community and keeping the focus on that with no baseball being played.

That Stay at Home Opener? It raised over $500,000 for food banks in Colorado and Wyoming. What could have been a depressing day in Colorado without baseball turned into a chance for Rockies fans to watch some of the best moments in franchise history and also help out their neighbors in need.

“I think, for me right now, the big thing is trying to do work that is impactful and is really going to make a difference, whether it’s communicating key messages to our fans or doing projects like the masks,” Valentin said. “Even providing entertainment is something that we all need right now. Everything that we do has a purpose and we’re trying to make a positive impact within our fan base with everything we do.”

Ah yes, the masks. It’s amazing what kind of interest you can drum up by stating on Twitter you are turning old Rockies gear into masks to help protect people during these historic days.

We’ll talk about the mask project in a whole other story tomorrow, so be on the lookout for that. However, these masks have shown what can happen when a social media account knows its audience and engages them with a timely and authentic post.

Social media 101? Hardly. Moments like these have been built over years.

“We are leaning on instincts and the community that we have built and cultivated over time,” Valentin said. “We are taking what we have built over the years and doing successful work because of it.”

But nothing could have prepared Valentin or baseball for what was to come this season.

With talk that a plan could be presented this week for a restart to the 2020 season, Valentin and his team are keeping a close eye on what is to come, but they’re not taking their eye off the current day and the engagement they have built in these last few weeks as well.

That focus includes things such as the Rockies Mystery Takeover that has been featured on Sunday nights. Valentin calls it a “unique entertainment experience,” where someone or a group with a Colorado connection is teased with clues and then unveiled with a special social media moment, such as when Todd Park Mohr from Colorado’s Big Head Todd and the Monsters recently busted out a live song on the Rockies Twitter feed.

Being unique and staying that way has been a mantra for the Rockies social media accounts for quite some time, pandemic or not, Valentin said.

“We have some baseball working groups as well as people outside of baseball who I talk to and listen to for advice,” Valentin explained. “With that said, I think our voice and the way we approach social is so different than other people. It’s kind of apples and oranges in a lot of ways. I’m always looking at best practices and trying to figure out the best way to do things, but it always has to be in the framework of who we are and how we operate.”

With no baseball, social media has been a challenge to say the least. However, Valentin said that he hopes Rockies fans and the team can look back at these days soon with a sense of pride on what was built despite the quiet on the diamond.

“We have done a lot of listening to people who tell us about how they consume content and we try to enter those conversations in the right way,” he said. “I hope that people have appreciated our efforts.”