Turn 1 Webinar Into 9 Marketing Pieces in Less Than 14 Days… Without Killing Yourself
Even if you have no time to create content…
Note: This article was first published on the Marketing Profs blog. See the original article here.
I recently started drinking Athletic Greens – a nutritional formula that has 75 different superfoods, vitamins, minerals, and probiotics. You simply take one scoop of it every morning, dissolve it in a glass of water, shake it up, and drink.
As they say on the website, it’s “your daily dose of nutritional insurance”. If I can’t get enough vitamins and minerals from my meals, Athletic Greens is there to pick up the slack. And it saves me time every day.
Repurposing is like insurance too
Call it “marketing insurance” if you want. It’s there to pick up the slack on those days or weeks where you just don’t have the time to create marketing collateral.
Just so we’re on the same page here, repurposing is taking a piece of marketing content and turning into something else. It’s like taking an article you published in a trade magazine and turning into a series of blog posts for your company website. Simple, right?
Why do it?
Two reasons. First, it saves you LOTS of time because you won’t always be scrambling to create content from scratch. And second, repurposing content helps you promote that piece of content further. It gives your content more mileage because you’re using different forms to get it in front of more people.
Sure, you’ll still have to create fresh content every now and then
But repurposing will give you a breather. Instead of taking 3-4 weeks (or longer) to create a new blog post series, you can take a white paper or article you’ve already written… and turn THAT into a series of blog posts in a matter of hours. And you‘ll be able to promote a piece of marketing collateral further and get it in front of more people.
Webinars are terrific for repurposing
A webinar typically has a LOT of content – plenty of slides showing customer results, product details, industry problems, and educational “how to” info. And you’ve got a product expert talking through these slides as well. There’s usually enough material in a webinar to give you a few months of repurposed content.
But let’s get specific…
You can turn a webinar into a white paper, a blog post series, a SlideShare presentation, a press release, social media posts, an article for a trade magazine, an email newsletter, trade show handouts, and a speech. And those were just the ones I could list off the top of my head.
So let’s talk about how you actually do it.
Start by uploading the slides to SlideShare
Uploading slides to SlideShare is the fastest way to get your webinar in front of a wider audience. And considering how easy it is to do, it should be the first step you take.
Next, transcribe the audio
Your product expert will be talking through the slides and giving webinar attendees lots of info. Well… why not take this audio and have it transcribed to text. There are transcription services or apps that will transcribe audio for you in 24-48 hours, depending on length. I’ve used Rev.com myself and would definitely recommend them.
Once the audio is transcribed, you now need to polish it.
Transcriptions are rarely perfect. So you’ll need to go through it and polish up the text. But this shouldn’t take long – a day at the most. You’re looking to make sure the text flows, words are spelled correctly, and that everything makes sense.
The transcription and slides now form the basis for every piece of additional collateral you create. For example, the text can be formatted into a speech and the slides can be used as presentation handouts at a tradeshow event. You’ve already got the slides, so this doesn’t take much time. For the speech, it might take 3-4 days of back and forth to agree on the main talking points.
Now… take this even further by creating a white paper
A webinar typically starts out by highlighting a common problem in the industry. It then goes onto show how a product solves this problem. White papers do the same thing when they’re used at the top of the funnel. They take a problem-solution format which educates the reader about the problem… and then shows them how to solve it.
It’s objective and educational in nature, so make sure there aren’t any sales pitches in there. And don’t mention the product or your company until the end. You can take the text you have from the transcription and use most of it for the white paper. Since you’re not creating anything from scratch, this should take about 1 week at the most.
Next, take the white paper and convert into a series of 4 blog posts
A problem-solution white paper usually follows a specific format. First you introduce the topic. Then you identify a common industry problem. After this, you outline what has been done before to solve this problem (and why this has failed). Finally, you introduce a new and better solution to the problem.
OK. So now you take each of these four sections from the white paper and turn them into a separate blog post. You should only need a few hours to do this!
These blog posts can also be formatted as an email newsletter
Send each blog post as a separate email newsletter, which will help you get it in front of a wider audience. It’s always good to do this because some people on your list won’t read your company blog. And of course, the blog will reach people who are not on your list.
The same white paper or blog posts can be used for a magazine article.
Or… you could just publish the white paper itself. Some magazines or journals might not accept articles that have been published elsewhere. But some do. The article would have the exact same format as the white paper, only it’s usually a bit shorter.
Finally, write a press release and social media posts
Most of the content for the press release can be taken directly from the original audio transcription. And don’t forget to use social media. Take small snippets of information from the transcription and post them on LinkedIn and Twitter, including a link to download the full webinar or white paper.
And there you have it… 9 types of content in less than two weeks!
Make sure you have a repurposing plan for every webinar
Outline how you’re going to turn that webinar into other pieces of content. Or even better, start doing this with webinars you’ve already created. The first two things to do are upload the slides to SlideShare and transcribe the audio into text, which form the foundation for everything else.
This is a terrific way to get more mileage from these webinars and get them in front of more people. And just like my Athletic Greens morning shake, your “insurance” will be there to give you a breather from time to time.