Live events have been the staple of the B2B community for decades. It’s a way to bring audiences together with meaningful content and create a community. But now that fewer, if any, in-person events are happening, most brands are shifting to virtual (though still live) events. Roughly 73% of planners have pivoted to virtual, with great success — 43% of registrants attend live, while 13% catch the content on-demand.
Content from events is super valuable for marketers and the audiences they want to reach — and people love being around other people, especially if they can learn a thing or two while doing it. In fact, 80% of people attend virtual events for educational purposes (followed by networking).
So you spend days, weeks, or even months planning and executing live events. With all the hard work you put in, sometimes you can forget about what to actually do with the content that’s created during the event. You have to ask yourself, “How can I wring out this content and really amplify it and maximize it?”
Let’s take a look at some of the ways you can use your events to create more content to engage, entertain, and educate your audience.
Repurpose Live Events into Video Podcasts
Delivering high-value content to your audience via live events helps to position your brand as a thought leader. But why stop with a one-time experience? Your live events may pull thousands of attendees and hundreds of on-demand viewers. But you can expand on this by repurposing your live events into a video series.
In doing so, you can target an entirely new sector of people who may not have heard of you and your events. You can publish these videos to various channels, including YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook, as well as take the content, write a blog about it, and embed the video there.
That embed will help drive traffic to your website, and hopefully once there, people will spend time checking out your other content — blogs, other videos, podcasts, etc.
Also, it’s helpful for the watching audience if you break up your videos into a series. We suggest doing this based on the various sessions from your live event. For example, if you have five panels discussing business development, marketing, sales tactics, social media, and SaaS tools, then you can create a separate video for each topic. Number each video, so viewers know it’s a part of a series and can check out the others. You can also link to the other episodes in the description section of each video.
The goal is to find ways to educate your audience, especially now that more people are looking to evolve the way they work, live, and play.
“I think what you’re getting at is the continuing education part. This is something that, especially right now when we’re all stuck at home, for the most part, that people want to want to learn more. And want to educate themselves. So I mean, it’s another way to do that. And actually, we had to pivot our first user conference that was scheduled for July, and we planned to do it in-person. And we planned to do live broadcast from Agility, from our user conference. And obviously, that plan is changed, and we ended up doing that as a digital or a webinar-style event.
“So instead, we ended up taking clips from some of the best sessions and creating a podcast episode from that. And so it was another way to share some of those learnings and that thought leadership with another audience. So it was a way for us to repackage that educational content and get it in front of not only our customers, but anyone from the community that might be listening to the podcast or potential prospects,” shared Carolyn Chapin, Director of Marketing at LogicGate, in her episode in Season 5 of The Casted Podcast.
Create Written Content Using Event Sessions
Another way you can wring out the content from your event sessions is to record them, get the transcripts, and then create other written content.
Using the same example as above, you can create a series of blogs around each of the topics discussed in your event sessions. In the first blog post, you can write about the ideas and solutions presented in the first panel. And then follow up with an additional four articles discussing the key points in the subsequent sessions. Then to spread traffic to each of the posts, you can interlink them all together. You can also spice up the content with audiograms or video clips from the sessions.
Blog posts are just one format you can use to repurpose event sessions. For instance, you can create an eBook that goes over one or all of the event’s key takeaways. Or you can offer an actionable checklist or guide for readers to implement those key takeaways. Gate it, collect emails from your target audience, and voila, you have yet another written format you can use to generate traffic and conversions.
Or create segmented email campaigns based on your audience’s interests — maybe a course that offers the steps to achieve a specific goal. You can also create items like slide decks or infographics with points from each session, and post these items on social media.
Turn Popular Sessions into Follow-up Webinars
We all know that there are certain sessions that draw the biggest audiences. Make sure you take the time to gather feedback from your audience, either during the event or after, and find out which sessions resonated and provided the most value. You can also scour social media to see what attendees said about the event, or about certain sessions, so that you can maximize your feedback loop.
From there, you can turn your most valuable and popular sessions into follow-up webinars. You can continue the conversations that were started and entice people to come back again to view these webinars.
Design Content Around Questions and Comments
As we discussed above, feedback from your audience is important. We mentioned gathering feedback from attendees during the event, so let’s dive into that a little bit deeper.
You can use polls, surveys, online chats, popup forms, and social media to all gather information from your attendees. For instance, you can have a quick poll come up at the end of each session, or have a longer survey at the end of each day. Make sure that you come up with a targeted list of questions to ask to engage viewers and learn their thoughts, so that you can get the most useful feedback.
Online chats can also be a goldmine for feedback. Not only does it allow attendees to engage with one another, but because it’s in a less formal setting, you can get some really honest feedback. You’ll be able go through the conversations to see if there’s anything worth turning into content. For instance, if people are chiming in about tactics they used to get results, then you can create a webinar talking about the different methods. Follow up with the attendees to see if you can get actual numbers or outcomes you can share in the upcoming webinar.
Or you can opt for a Q&A-style webinar where you collect questions from chatrooms and social media and answer them.
Get Creative with Your Content Creation
As a B2B marketer, your job is to create convenient, accessible, and consumable content. While live events help build communities, you don’t want to forget about the folks who prefer other formats. This is what makes content repurposing a critical part of your marketing strategy.
Whatever extra content you create around your live events, be sure it’s fun, exciting, and relevant. This way, you get more people talking about and sharing all the content you develop.
