About the Client

McNally Smith College of Music is a contemporary music school located in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Formerly known as Musictech College, McNally Smith was being overshadowed by its previous brand and was having a difficult time differentiating itself from the large, well-known music colleges in the US. McNally Smith is known for having a world-class faculty with prominent members of the music industry including musicians, songwriters, and industry executives.

The Challenge

Risdall Marketing Group was initially charged with branding the newly renamed school to both reflect its new direction and communicate its many benefits to students. The problem was McNally Smith College of Music completely lacked awareness among targeted students. For that reason, they never included McNally Smith in online searches and/or conversations surrounding music schools or music colleges.

The Solution

Risdall Online Marketing Group created a social media optimization strategy that engaged prospects while they were talking about music schools or music college alternatives. Risdall along with the existing McNally Smith Social Media strategy, helped create more conversations and engage with those surrounding their industry and brand.

McNally Smith leveraged many online listening tools such as Radian6 to compile all mentions surrounding their industry. Then, McNally effectively engaged in the conversations through Twitter, RSS, Facebook, blogs, YouTube and other media.

The Results

Topic Clouds were used to measure as a benchmark to measure the sentiment surrounding McNally Smith. The Topic Clouds developed at the beginning of the outreach program didn't have any passionate or positive words surrounding McNally Smith or mentions of its location. During the outreach the Topic Clouds morphed and began displaying words indicative of a passionate following as well as mentions of the school's location. Brand mentions in User Generated Content surrounding music college conversations increased from 2.7% to 12.1%

McNally Smith College of Music chose one of the top music schools in the nation as an aspirational competitor. One of their goals was to have a comparable amount of online conversations to this top music school. At the beginning of the campaign, McNally Smith was not being mentioned in any conversations, however, Risdall Marketing Group has helped change that and McNally Smith is now being mentioned alongside their aspirational competitor in online conversations.

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