A puzzled marketer asked this question recently in an active content marketing forum on LinkedIn:
“How do you share content from live presentations in your blog in a way that will get noticed?”
Shelly Koenig of Conversion Sciences explained that her company has used Storify to collect all of social posts, pictures, videos and more from a live presentation. Then they embedded that into a blog post. The trouble is, a post like that “barely gets traffic,” she wrote.
Storify can be right for some articles, especially those that involve a timeline of events. But using it to curate the experience of a live event in a single blog post takes a lot of time. If your goal is traffic, ditch it.
Then, instead of condensing everything into one post on your website, distribute everything with a lot of posts not on your website. Here’s how:
Divide and Conquer
Have you ever told a story that was exciting/hilarious/noteworthy to you, but the person who heard it didn’t understand what was so great about it? In the United States, we call that “You had to be there.”
The same is true of most live events. There is simply no way that a single piece of content captures the full experience — not for a rock concert, not for a wedding, and certainly not for a conference presentation.
Instead of stuffing everything into a single article, split it up.
This is true whether you’re the speaker or an audience member. Both people can use the content of a single 30- or 60-minute live presentation to drive traffic online — and the first key is volume.
Create Volume
Think about the last time you watched someone speak in front of a large group. Chances are, you were doing most or all of these things (and I bet you can think of more):
- Watching
- Listening
- Reading
- Taking notes
- Taking photos
Now associate a marketing asset with each of those activities:
- Watching —> Video
- Listening —> Audio
- Reading —> Slides
- Taking notes —> Article
- Taking photos —> Photos
Now associate as many online channels as possible for each of those marketing assets (these are suggestions; customize for your country and target audience):
- Watching —> Video —> YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, Metacafe, Vine
- Listening —> Audio —> SoundCloud, Mixcloud, Audioboo, Archive.org
- Reading —> Slides —> SlideShare, LinkedIn
- Taking notes —> Article —> American Express OPEN Forum, Medium, Squidoo, Quora, your website or blog
- Taking photos —> Photos —> Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Snapchat
If you publish to each channel, you have just divided one live presentation 21 ways.
This barely scratches the surface. Some of these channels support multiple marketing assets; you can publish photos and videos to Instagram, for example. You could also one kind of asset into another, especially with a designer’s help. Turn all your slides into a whitepaper. Turn a single slide with data into an infographic.
You don’t have to duplicate content across channels, either. Again, think volume. We tend to see videos of a live presentation posted in full. Why? It’s fairly quick to split the same video into 5 different, short segments for different video sites. The same goes for audio files. Have three main points or follow-up ideas to write about? Don’t put them in a single 1,200-word article; write each thought in 400 words and make them different articles.
Get creative to get even more volume.
Include Links
Creating volume creates more traffic to your website in two ways.
First, for the 20 channels that aren’t your website, make sure to include a link to your website. You can do that in the article or the description. You’ll get direct referral traffic from these links.
Second, you have reached 21 different audiences, each with the kind of asset they like most (audio, photos, etc.). The chances that a piece of your content will get popular within a channel or get shared across channels immediately go up. The more shares, the more potential quality links. The more quality links, the higher potential search engine visibility. The higher the search engine visibility, the more search referral traffic you’ll get.
Plan Ahead for Efficiency
It takes time and effort to post unique content from one live presentation on multiple channels. It doesn’t have to take a lot of time and effort, though, especially if you plan ahead.
Make a checklist of the assets you want to publish. Include the channels where you want to publish them. Then list the things you’ll need to do to make that happen efficiently. Be as specific as possible.
- Video and/or audio: Bring along your recorder, then find someone the day of the event who’s willing to record for you. Tell them you’ll give them credit. Bonus: they’re likely to share the recording(s) on their channels, too.
- Slides: Ask the speaker where the slides will be posted. If you are the speaker, post your slides publicly in advance of your presentation, then tell everyone where to find them.
- Notes: Use a separate document for each main point. Be sure to write down the speaker’s key point, then a sentence or two about what you think of it. That will help you publish different articles to multiple channels much more quickly.
- Photos: Plan ahead how many photos you would like to publish, where, and what kind. Be specific and creative: Pinterest, Best Dressed Speaker, 5 photos (full-length front, close-in side, accessory, shoes, bag). And don’t just take pictures of the speaker(s), take pictures of the audience members in groups of two or three. Do this before the session, when people are comfortable. Jot down their names. After the session, you could get photos of speaker as he or she is chatting with people.
One live presentation condensed into one blog post has a limited life span that attracts limited traffic. One live presentation divided into as many assets across as many channels as possible — realistically possible, anyway — can live a long time and attract a lot of traffic.
Presentation photo: Jackie Hole. Axe in wood photo: brittgow via Compfight cc
