KANSAS CITY, Mo. — For seven days volunteers at the KC Social Media Command Center scoured the web for tweets, pictures and messages. What they found is a treasure trove of material from All-Star fans experiencing Kansas City. They say pictures tell a thousand words, but it’s possible pictures posted online will leave an imprint forever.
“A picture says a thousand words, and I think that’s incredibly true. It really shows people how beautiful the city is,” said Joe Cox Director of Social Media for Barkley and the head of the KC Social Media Command Center. “More so than 140 characters of a tweet.”
And that sharing of messages and pictures is good news for Kansas City. With more than 23,000 posts in the last seven days going up with the hashtag #KC, more than 44 million people across the world can experience the city second hand.
“The imagery connects with people emotionally way more,” said Cox.
Cox and his team are now analyzing all the data collected using Spiral 16, a local Kansas City company’s software. He says preliminary reports show 65 percent of people had only good things to say. People like Bob Fesco who says Major League Baseball will be saying this will be the best in 20 years. Of the more than 35,000 tweets reviewed, only four percent of people were unhappy with some aspect of Kansas City. People like Pete Gaines, who quipped about the lack of things to do around Kauffman Stadium.
“A lot of the times people were having a negative experience. And that’s very natural because when a lot of things are going on, the city is not going to be all perfect,” said Cox. “But a lot of people were having these experiences, that’s when we wanted to be the person that jumped in and got the right answers in the right place at the right time.”
The rest remained neutral with posts like describing security lines at the airport and what people were repeatedly being told to take out of their carry-ons: BBQ sauce.
The Command Center Volunteers will now spend even more countless hours compiling stats and information that will help make the next event in Kansas City even smoother.
