By Matt Coyne – Waves Connects
Matt is an event host, podcaster and content creator with over 20 years of experience in the events industry. A regular contributor to the industry, he has a passion for creating content that captures imaginations and drives event success.
When you’re planning an event, there are a lot of things to think about. Driving ticket sales, booking exhibitors and sponsors, engaging with speakers… the list for an event planner could go on and on…
But there is something that could save you time and is often overlooked. Content creation and how you can use one of your most valuable event assets (your speakers), can sometimes take a backseat when you have so many other tasks to deliver as part of your event marketing strategy.
If you want to know how you can get the most out of your speakers from your event, save time and money on your marketing budget… read on.
Using speakers to create search optimised content
What sort of content could you create to boost your event marketing strategy to promote your event?
In this article, we look at a number of ways you can grow your content strategy when marketing your next event to attendees but also to promote what you do for sponsors and exhibitors through your speakers, your thought leaders.
Thought Leadership
Speakers content should be a fundamental part of your event marketing strategy. Not just sharing head shots and short bios, no no no, but using these thought leaders to create multiple content opportunities to help you market your event and engage with attendees and perhaps even drive those early bird ticket sales.
Your event speakers are talking about topics hot in your industry right now.
Event attendees often endure registration for your event because they want learn from your speakers, your thought leaders, and you can use that information to create engagement and ultimately conversion to attend your event.
Your speaker is an extension of your brand
When you’re marketing your event, it’s important that you utilise all available assets to build into your successful marketing strategy. Your speakers are a fundamental part of that strategy and their content is a key asset in driving awareness, engagement and conversion for your event and in this digital world we live. Creating multiple content assets can mean a big win for your business.
Your speaker’s content can help you to
- Support your thought leadership position
- Create engaging, informative videos or podcasts
- Boost your organic search ranking
- Increase registrations or ticket sales
- Generate post-event leads, engagement and interest.
We will dive into the importance of search optimisation in your event marketing strategy in a future blog, but we offer some advice on how speakers content can boost your search engine optimisation.
How to use speakers content pre-event to boost organic search
Your event speakers content, perhaps without you knowingly using it, is optimised for search. They are talking about or presenting on hot topics affecting your industry today. This content they could be creating for you is relevant, authoritative content that informs a reader, demonstrates expertise in your field and if converted correctly, provides the right level of depth for your events target audience.
So what do you do?
It’s actually pretty simple. Start with your speakers contract.
Ensure you include a section in your speakers contract that allows you to include a video or audio interview. You’ll also want to include options regarding future use of this content for example, as you potentially turn it into blogs, articles, email and social media content.
Record your speaker
Record an interview with your speaker talking about their session, what event attendees can expect to learn from their session and build a picture with your authoritative speaker on the subject they’re discussing about the state of your industry. This isn’t a presentation the same as they may share on stage, this is an informative discussion about their given subject and what people may learn at your next event.
With this audio or video content, you can create a series of videos or even an event podcast to include in your marketing plan as well as have something to show your sponsors or partners to help them understand more about your event and the content that their brand will be associated with. You will also be creating a wave of opportunity for your event brand to generate additional digital revenues.
A fundamental part of your event marketing plan, this content boosts organic search opportunities and positions your brand and event as an authority in the industry.
Convert to Written Content
Once you have edited and are happy with your recording, you should transcribe the content.
This not only helps with making your content more accessible, for example, those hard of hearing could follow the subtitle text, but it will also form the basis of your next piece of content in your event marketing strategy- an article or blog post to be hosted on your event website.
There are lots of tools that will allow you to easily transcribe your video or audio recordings and whilst accuracy has improved dramatically over the last few years, you will need to add the personal touch when reviewing the transcription and ensuring any correct edits are made.
Create an article from your speaker
To help bolster your digital marketing efforts, you can now write an article based on your video or audio content and the transcription. This should be edited for length, include imagery and be designed to be as shareable as possible across social media platforms as well as being optimised for search, which by the very nature of your speaker, it will already begin to be.
Share your sound bites on social media
Through this content you have created to attract potential attendees and deliver an audience for your future events, you will find a plethora of sound bites or video clips that you can utilise across social media.
These could be short quotes (sound bites) excerpts with a link back to the full article, video or podcast on your site or even just a link to the audio file hosted on your site that attendees can listen to.
Both of these will help with boosting organic search opportunities for your event brand as well as help position you and your event as an authority in the industry.
With some tools (such as Clipr.ai) you can easily search the transcription and find those relevant clips to easily share on social media.
Emails that convert
We have achieved incredibly high (over 50%!) open rates and click through rates (over 7%) through email marketing that delivers relevant, targeted content, so paying attention to that short summary paragraph to grab attention has never been more important in your event marketing strategy today than ever before.
As we’ve already outlined, you speakers first recording with you is optimised for your audience today and through not overselling them on the benefits and what they can expect, you increase the likelihood of getting that all important ‘yes’ when it comes to attendance today and at future events.
Analyse your content and improve it
Whether you have created a landing page, press release or have sent the article to your database through email marketing, you should constantly monitor and measure the effectiveness of the content to know what’s worked and what can be improved next time.
Just because you hit publish two months ago on an article, it doesn’t mean you can’t improve it or enhance it to be more relevant to today’s topics and see if that delivers greater engagement for your audience.
Marketing for Events
The key with content marketing is not to be afraid to experiment with different types of content creation, as well as understanding your audience so that you can package up your content in a variety of ways that will engage with them.
With a little effort and some simple planning, you can use your event speakers’ content to flesh out your event marketing strategy, saving on resources and time as well as helping to boost your brand’s organic search authority.
If you want your event to be a success, you need to make sure that people know about it and are interested in attending. That’s where content event marketing comes in.
Generating revenue from content
Do you want to know how to monetise this content you’re producing? Then check out our guide on ways to make money from your event content. Click here
Do you need a hand making waves in your industry? Get in touch with the Waves Connects team today. Email us.
Responses