RIDigi Branding Project 2023
Meeting with William Collis from RIDigi
During our 11th quarter at New England Institute of Technology we were enrolled within two classes that worked en tandem with one another; Social Media Marketing and Project Management. The classes of students prior to us had all taken these classes although were assigned a different client each year. For our semester we were assigned to expanding upon the brand RIDigi. RIDigi is the Rhode Island Digital Games Institute which is looking to unite both local legislation and the gaming industry within the state. There goal is to create and support more gaming employment opportunities in RI. Our specific goal was to increase brand awareness and grow the social media community for RIDigi. After meeting with the CEO, William Collis, he described to us in detail exactly what he was looking for in regards to a measurable and attainable number of followers within the community. Collis’ big three social media channels that he strongly felt would assist the recognition of the brand were: Twitter, Discord and LinkedIn… with Discord being the primary focus. The idea was to obtain around 150 community members on the Discord page. With this amount of followers, Collis predicted that they would be more than capable to generate content and discussion on their own within the community.
The 38 Studios Problem
After our meeting with William Collis, myself and my three classmates banded together to dissect and touch upon some of the key notes that were made during the meeting. Collis was concerned that this mission would be a heavy lift considering the fallout from the disaster that was 38 Studios within Rhode Island. If you are not familiar, 38 Studios was a video game pet project of MLB player Curt Schilling. The company filed for bankruptcy after falling in over $150 million. The four of us felt Collis was too quick to assume that Twitter, LinkedIn and Discord were the three best options for the brand. From there we looked into utilizing other platforms as well such YouTube, Instagram and Facebook. We then devised a presentation and plan as a group to present to William Collis again and suggest our ideas moving forward. We suggested that the other social media channels should be considered for growing RIDigi although it was thought that Discord, Twitter and LinkedIn should remain the focus for our project. From everything gathered from the second meeting, our class felt we were heading in a clear direction for this project.
Designing Content to Promote RIDigi
After our second meeting and presentation to Collis, we collaborated with one another in order to create content for the social media channels to gather awareness and followers. Alyson created a universal content calendar that can be generated for future use by the company after our project ends. The content calendar on Canva created a flexible schedule and postings for a week by week basis. From there Nate and Erik created sample content to post on all three social media channels. My role within the group was elected to create a giveaway poster on the social media channels and within college campuses. The idea involved all four of us pitching in $5 to purchase a digital currency card for whichever gaming system the winner chooses. This semester seemed rather heavy from the start, and with the tools, information and resources we were given we gained a small boost in follower base for RIDigi. Unfortunately we did not exceed the goal William Collis set forth for us, although it was an amazing real world experience that can be translated over into our careers.
Go and check out RIDigi on Twitter! You can find William Collis on his website and LinkedIn!
