8 Crafty Ways to Repurpose Event Content

If you’re like most marketers, you put a lot of time and effort into creating your online events. That’s why, even if you wind up getting a lot of engagement, putting your event out there can often feel frustrating. All that work still amounted to a mere flash in the pan, and now you’ve got to start over from scratch.

Or do you? Nope, not at all! You might not realize it, but your library of past events is a goldmine of untapped potential. With a little creativity, all your past webinars or events can be repurposed into different mediums, channels, and formats, continuing to provide value long after your original attendees have logged off. Want to learn how to pull it off? Just keep reading.

Some key benefits of repurposing event content

You may think that it’s only original content that’s king — but this might not be quite true. Some marketers, like those responding to a 2019 survey by Databox, say that repurposed content often yields better results than the original did. Below are four key reasons why.

Cost reduction

Firstly, repurposing your event content is a great way to maximize your ROI. Every time you rework prior event content to accommodate a new platform or medium, you’re saving yourself the time and money it would cost to create something brand new. Since, as a marketer, you’ve doubtlessly got your hands full at all times, that’s great news for your stress levels — and your bottom line.

Increased conversions

There’s tons of evidence to show that adding a video to a landing page, email, or miscellaneous channel will usually help increase its conversions. For example, one study by Imavex found that adding video to landing pages increased conversions by over 130 percent! Your mileage will probably vary, of course, but the fact remains that video is a great way to influence customer decisions. Why? Well, we can think of a few common-sense reasons: videos are generally fun to watch, they tend to convey messages quickly and colorfully, and they don’t require any reading or scrolling on the part of the viewer. It’s a “plug-and-play” format that can quickly convince visitors to join an email list, register for an event, or make a purchase.

Accelerated content production

Today's digital marketplace is quite crowded, and it’s no secret that content marketing is the best way to cut through the noise. That's why pretty much every brand is pumping out Tweets, infographics, and viral videos as fast as it possibly can. For big firms with an internal marketing team, this might not present much of a problem, but for smaller, more agile players, keeping up can be quite the challenge, particularly as you try to meet the needs of your clients.

To sum up, repurposing content is a great way to accelerate your content production without sacrificing quality. Repurposing allows you to easily produce a steady stream of blogs, social posts, slideshows, and miscellaneous media, without breaking a sweat or getting left in the (digital) dust.

Continued event promotion

You don’t have to hide the fact that you’re repurposing past event content. There’s actually a very good reason to be loud about it: promotion! Every time you share a video or piece of educational content derived from a past webinar, you’re subtly reminding your audience of the great stuff you and your team have produced in the past, and will likely continue to produce in the future. In other words, your content is pulling double duty: it’s gaining leads, traffic, and engagement today, and increasing registrations for events you host in the future.

8 ways to repurpose your event content on other channels

Now that you’ve learned all the awesome benefits of repurposing your event content, here are some ways to pull it off.

1. Turn your event into a blog post

Even though, as we said, video is great for boosting conversions, written blog posts still tend to receive a hefty share of traffic, too. (One of our hypotheses as to why: It’s way easier to secretly read a blog at your work desk than it is to watch a webinar).

Transforming a video event into a blog post takes a little legwork, but is overall pretty easy. First, download a recording of the event. Next, transcribe the audio. And lastly, use the resulting transcript to build a blog-style draft, complete with intro and conclusion sections. Make sure to embed the source video in the final post, so that any interested parties can give it their time and traffic.

2. Embed video clips into landing pages

As we noted above, landing pages that contain videos tend to convert better than those that are limited to text and images. To reiterate, this is usually because videos are fun to watch, require no great effort on the part of the viewer, and can summarize your most compelling points in a quick, easy-to-digest format. The easier your product or service is to understand, the faster your visitors click that “sign up” button.

Another reason why videos tend to boost conversion rates is that they attract an audience that is highly poised to buy. Viewers watching a “How-To” video or educational seminar almost always have a problem which they need to solve, preferably within the next 24 hours. They’re hungry for information and eager to learn what you have to share. Even better, they're highly positioned to purchase any item or service that will further alleviate the issue.

One great example of a company that uses video to leverage prime buyer intent is The Home Depot. The company has cultivated a rich library of "How To" videos about plumbing, drywall repair, picture hanging, and pretty much anything else you can think of that relates to home repair. Of course, after the video piques customers’ interest, the supplies they need are just a click away.

3.Share it on social media

Social media is an amazing place to share repurposed content, either in the form of edited video, text, or images. The options are almost endless, but off the top of our heads, you could:

• Post a short video compilation of highlights, funny “bloopers”, or “backstage” preparation leading up to the event
• Turn funny or important moments into a gif or meme
• Share your best pictures from the event on Instagram

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even TikTok can all be part of your social strategy. If you’re in a niche market, you might even consider sharing on spaces like Tumblr, Pinterest, and Reddit.

4. Create on-demand videos

If you’ve already got a few online events under your belt, you don’t need us to tell you the sad truth of hosting live webinars, which is that drumming up live attendance is hard. No matter how many creative and brilliant marketing strategies you employ, the fact of the matter is that at the end of the day, people have jobs and kids and miscellaneous priorities, and your webinar is not one of them.

That’s okay, though — you can give your event registrants the content they signed up for and reap all the other benefits we’ve talked about by creating a quick on-demand video of past events using an online video editor. Just download a recording of the webinar; edit together a highlight reel of all the best moments; and share it via your email list, social channels, and website. As we mentioned earlier, this has double functions: it creates a quick, easily-consumable summary for guests about what they missed, while subliminally teasing the next event you put together.

5. Turn it into an ebook

Once you’ve held a few webinars on the same general topic, you’ll eventually wind up with enough info to fill a book — or at least an ebook. Ebooks are a great way for any brand or company to add value, as people tend to consult and reference them long after they’ve been written. For instance, take a look at all the studies and statistics we’ve mentioned on this page! All of these content creators are still gaining backlinks from work they did months or years ago.

When composing your ebook, you can go about it the traditional way, by simply including all the notes, facts, and figures that have been covered in your webinars. Or, you can do something a little different, and make an interview-style ebook, i.e. something like “A 15-year industry veteran shares the top marketing mistakes B2B brands make.” Non-expert advice is pretty easy to come by on the internet, but expert advice is a much more valuable draw.

6. Create an educational web series

Since most webinars are educational by nature, another great idea is to repurpose them for training or learning purposes. You don’t have to stick strictly to your webinars for this; for example, you could compile resources like interviews, Q&A sessions, blog posts, and video events into a series of short online courses.

One good tip for creating an educational series is to look at what might be lacking in the current marketplace. If you can provide information on a niche subject that few other people have touched, your content will become that much more valuable. One great example of a B2B web series is Tribetactic’s Build-a-video series, which walks viewers through planning, producing, and distributing videos.

or SlideShare

We can’t talk about educational content without mentioning LinkedIn and its presentation hosting platform, SlideShare. Since both LinkedIn and SlideShare are hubs for business-minded individuals eager to grow their knowledge bases, you can drive a lot of interest and engagement by posting repurposed content there.

7. Turn it into a podcast

Ever wanted to make a podcast, but didn’t have the time? Well, now’s your chance to join the pod revolution. To repurpose your video event as a podcast, all you have to do is download the audio (a feature offered by most webinar software tools), use a sound editor to add an intro and outro, and export it as an MP3 file. Once you’ve got your podcast saved and ready to go, you can upload it anywhere podcasts are played, as well as on your own social media channels and website.

The only thing to keep in mind is that your listeners won’t be able to see any visual elements that you shared or discussed in your event. You can either solve this problem by recording and inserting a clip of you describing the visual, or cut out all mentions of it entirely.

One B2B podcast we love is The Animalz Content Marketing podcast, which provides listeners with solid, actionable guidance on building a robust content strategy. Even though that topic has been covered extensively, Animalz offers insight that’s surprisingly fresh and unique.

8. Create (or enhance) an email newsletter

You can turn your event content into a newsletter in much the same way you would turn it into a blog post; by transcribing the audio, editing it, and adding an intro and sign-off. Once again, our best piece of advice for this is to transcribe the audio by hand to ensure accuracy.

Another option is to repurpose the event as an on-demand video, which you can then embed into an email newsletter. Doing this tends to be super useful; in fact, some studies have found that simply including the word ‘video’ in the email subject line can boost open rates by 19%. (Remember, in the world of digital marketing, a 14% open rate is considered average, and a 33% open rate would be considered incredible). Whether you go with video or written content, a newsletter is a great way to get more mileage out of your events.

Summing up

We hope that this post has helped get your gears turning about even more creative ways to repurpose event content. As you can see, repurposing event content can be a huge time saver, and bring your readers tons of added value on top of what they already received the first time around. You might even find it effective to plan a repurposing strategy before hosting an event. Now, that’s thinking three steps ahead!