Meghan Markle, Ludacris, Will.i.am, Robert Downey Junior… just some of the A-listers spotted at this year’s tech events. While many of us don’t have the budget to bring that kind of celebrity sparkle to our event attendance, there’s still plenty of value in repurposing content generated at events to engage your audiences. And this doesn’t just apply to blockbuster events like CES or MWC. More intimate gatherings or webinars also provide sources for strong content creation to reinforce your message, establish thought leadership, and reach a wider audience to generate more leads.
Here are our tips on how to make the most of your event content.
1. Write related thought leadership content
If you’re presenting a talk, you can rework the content into a thought leadership article, assuming your talk is not simply a sales pitch about your company or product. If you are participating in a panel, you can summarize the highlights into an article and add your take to turn it into an opinion piece.
If you’re able to find a news hook, that is ideal. For instance, we worked with one of our clients on talks and blogs about the state of multicloud. The CEO flagged to us that two of the Big Three cloud vendors embraced a multicloud approach but AWS had banned the term. We worked with the CEO to write an article wondering whether Andy Jassy would change direction on stage at Re:Invent. VentureBeat published the article leading up to the AWS conference and the editor liked the original topic so much that she asked the CEO to write a follow up article on the day of Jassy’s speech, analyzing what he chose to say and what he decided to omit. For tips on how to write strong thought leadership content, see here.
2. Create a highlight video 🎥▶️
Capture the essence of your experience on video, from the journey there with your team to chats with customers and speakers. Showcase the personality of your brand and give viewers a flavor of the event.
Ideally, a professional video crew would produce a sizzle reel. Si14 Global Communications' video production team advises making the reel short and snappy and making sure it conveys the excitement of the event. Align on messaging in advance and keep your target audience in mind when deciding on tone and style of everything from the shoot, edit, and accompanying music. And while the crew is on site, leverage the opportunity to interview customers and partners who are attending the event for use in thought leadership and customer testimonial videos.
If you don’t have the budget to create a professionally polished video, there are apps available to help you create videos in a speedy manner.
3. Write a wrap-up blog post and/or newsletter 📝
A recap blog post is an ideal way to highlight key takeaways and highlights from your event, showcase the value of your attendance and thank anyone who helped make it happen and / or make it special.
You can summarize what themes were prevalent among event keynote speakers and bring color to the content by including snippets of conversations with fellow attendees who visited your company booth. You could also ask anyone mentioned in the article to socialize it.
4. Record a Webinar or Podcast 🎙️
Turn the audio from any sessions you hosted into podcasts. You can also approach speakers, panelists or interesting contacts you met to participate in follow-up discussions or interviews to delve deeper into specific topics after the show.
Podcasts can run anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour, or longer depending on their nature. Webinars should run for at least 30 mins with some time allowed at the end for questions.
As mentioned above…if you bring a video crew for a sizzle reel, you’ll have a crew in hand to collect elements for a webinar or podcast.
5. Turn presentations into snackable slideshow posts
If you or any of your executives gave talks at the event, sharing some of the slides in a single carousel post across your social channels should gain a high engagement rate. You could also use this format to share photos of the event. There are plenty of tools out there to assist with this.
Remember to Plan Ahead 📅
Events take huge amounts of time, resources, and budgets, so reusing the content to provide your audience with ongoing insights and value is extremely worthwhile. Approach events strategically and work out your objectives well in advance.
Put some thought into how you plan to repurpose content. What formats will you use? What topics do you anticipate will resonate most with your audience? Work with your team to map out the content you’d like to create. Devise a content distribution strategy to generate the greatest value possible from your content and events will continue bearing fruit for weeks to come.
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