As you'll soon find out from this book, both Travis and Chris tackle the consequential and inconsequential, in life and in business, with strong opinions and tremendous fervor, with a balance of hilarity and humility, that comes from an insatiable thirst for continued learning and teaching.
After Travis complained about the salary cap on Twitter, he was over it. He sent that one tweet and went on his merry way. It wasn't until the next day at lunch that he looked through his Twitter direct messages. It was only then that he noticed the tweet from the Chiefs. He nearly choked on his delicious Chipotle burrito! Travis thought about it for a few minutes, and then took a screencap of the direct message, as shown in Figure P.2. It said, “Would help if you had your facts straight. Your choice to be a fan. cc get a clue.”
Figure P.2 The Tweet Response with No Digital Sense
The Chiefs had sent this tweet just three minutes after Travis sent his rude, disgruntled tweet. Somebody from the Chiefs' social media team immediately tweeted to Travis, while in an emotional state, from the Chiefs' official Twitter handle, @kcchiefs. Note: the Chiefs switched their official Twitter handle to @chiefs in 2016.
The Chiefs' social media manager didn't seem to have much “digital sense.” That person clearly gave zero f's at that time. It was not a good common sense approach to attack Travis. In fact, Travis wasn't even that angry. He was just sending out a bit of a rant regarding his displeasure with how the Chiefs were being cheap and spending significantly less than the salary cap.
Jay Baer recently published a great book on this subject called Hug Your Haters.2 The Chiefs' social media team should have tried to defuse the situation, not fuel the flame. The first indicator that it would be wise to hug their hater was that at the time, Travis's account had more Twitter followers than the Chiefs'.
(Look for more Digital Bits, free templates, and resource downloads throughout the book.)
After seeing the emotionally charged response to his tweet, Travis did what any social media savvy person would do, who has just had a crummy customer experience; he took the screencap of the Chief's' message and tweeted it out to his followers.
This is where the social s#%t-storm started.
Travis replied to the private, direct message by sending out this tweet: “It's good to know the @kcchiefs social media is ran [sic] by immature teenagers. Fact. Hunt hoards salary cap $$$. #KC” (Figure P.3).
Whoever responded to Travis's tweet from the Chiefs' Twitter handle lacked both common sense and digital sense. He made a hasty assumption that it was appropriate to defend the Chiefs in private via direct message, indicating the absence of a social media governance policy. He lacked or ignored any protocol that would enable him to respond in real-time, proactively, to Travis' public complaint in a way that allowed for a productive dialogue. He also failed to acknowledge that in a world of noise, Travis's initial tweet was far less damaging to the Chiefs' image than was the tweet storm that followed.
Look at the data: the first tweet had 15 retweets; the follow-up had more than 3,200!
The Chiefs' staffer didn't have, or ignored, any protocol that would enable responding in real time to this public fan rant in a way that could allow for a proactive dialogue. They also forgot that in a world of noise, his initial tweet was far less damaging than the tweet storm that followed. They had no social media governance policy in place to make a decision as to whether to respond at all, and it had big consequences.
What did the social media manager have to gain by being rude back to a rude fan? Nothing except the brief satisfaction of telling someone off. You can do that, all day long, on a personal account. However, if you do that on a corporate branded account, get ready for some backlash.
Keep in mind, in the beginning, Travis was just complaining. People bitch about their sports teams ALL. THE. TIME. This was nothing out of the ordinary. Immediately after Travis publicly replied to the Chiefs' tweet, all hell broke loose. He received a bunch of responses (Figure P.4).
“TW, did the Chiefs actually send you that?” – name removed
“Are you serious, bro? The Chiefs said that?” – name removed
Figure P.4 This Is One of the First Recorded Selfies by Travis Wright in 2012
Tweets started flying back and forth asking him questions about the situation. Many of them had the @KCChiefs twitter handle included. Even some local Kansas City sportscasters started asking him, “Hey @teedubya, is this real? Did the Chiefs really tweet that to you?” The response: yes. And then the Chiefs blocked @teedubya on Twitter.
When they blocked Travis, he could no longer see their public tweets, and any private tweets they had between them disappeared. Now that made him angry.
After being blocked from his beloved team on Twitter, Travis decided to teach them a lesson for their lack of digital sense. The first thing that Travis did was go to Reddit.com, and to the NFL subreddit, Reddit.com/r/nfl, and he posted his rant.
@KCChiefs Twitter Account, tells fan (Me) to Get a Clue and stop being a fan. Submitted September 11, 2012 * by teedubya
“The KC Chiefs just blocked me on Twitter @teedubya. Last night, I tweeted that for the 4th year in a row, the Chiefs are at the bottom of salary cap spending and that the owner, Clark Hunt, is hoarding cap dollars. The Chiefs commitment to mediocrity has made me not care much about being a fan…
1. My first tweet to them (see Figure P.2).
2. They responded with this DM (see Figure P.3).
3. I responded that it is good to know that the KC Chiefs have an immature teenager running their social media.
4. Then they blocked my account.
I,