We all agree, it takes a lot to deliver an amazing event: Finding speakers, planning workshops & creating content that inspires and educates.
But too often the speakers present, the spoken words vanish into the air, the audience applause, everyone leaves and the content gets forgotten.
Content Shelf-Life & Monetisation
Your conference content has a limited shelf life and is at risk of vanishing in less than a week. People will simply forget about it.
Also, what about those attendees who want to attend, but are prevented from travelling due to economic or political reasons?
You need to extend your reach of your audience and your content.
But let me guess, you are worried that this will reduce the attendance for your in-person event?
Do not fear.
First, people value the live event experience as it provides additional benefits: think destinations, venues & networking opportunities.
Second, people who want to attend in person, having the content available online won’t stop them.
In fact, event professionals say, the extra effort to increase the lifespan of content also increases attendee engagement and encourages non-attendees to engage as well. It can even increase physical attendance at subsequent events, because people see what they’re missing out on.
Last, remote content allows you to generate additional revenues, and here’s how:
Tip #1: Broadcast popular sessions and keynote speakers
Live streaming provides a great opportunity to engage with your hard to reach members and is an opportunity to add value to your membership as well as retain and recruit new members.
Be aware:
- First, understand WHY you want to live stream
- Second, have a strategy in place for access control, pricing & hosting
- Last, involve your remote audience. Don’t just call them a ‘virtual’ audience. They expect the same ‘treatment’ as your on-site attendees.
Tip #2: Record your presentations & breakouts
After your conference, make the session recordings available on-demand as quickly as possible.
Many platforms (like Path LMS) provide bookmarking features so that users can start right where they left off, note taking, and mobile-friendly presentations.
Be aware:
- Don’t just upload it to YouTube or Vimeo. Instead, create your own branded content library with paywalls & eCommerce functionality.
- Start promotion early, then ramp us as content goes officially ‘live’
Tip #3: Create bite-sized snippets
Interviews with attendees, sponsors, partners and exhibitors are a great way for you to create new marketing assets and generate interest for upcoming events.
Although, it takes a lot of time to create those assets in the first place, once you break them into smaller bits you can repurpose them across many channels without diminishing its value.
Tip #4: Create a new virtual experience
You can also create an entirely new virtual event (e.g. webinar) with the keynote speaker and additional Q&A to drive engagement.Webinar technology has come a long way and the experience of a virtual presentation is getting better every day.
Try to get your speakers to sign off on participating in a virtual event when they agree to be a speaker at your conference. This way it’s less hassle for both, your speaker and yourself.
Conclusion:
- Content distribution is nothing new, but it’s important that you do it right.
- Be aware of content shelf-life, so make the content available post-event and optionally add embedded learning elements to it.
- Expanding your content & audience through live-streaming and recorded sessions won’t hurt your in-person event attendance.
- In fact, you can use it to increase revenues, relevance, retention and member recruitment
Blue Sky eLearn provides a full range of learning technologies, including a proprietary learning management system & a complete set of virtual event services. Blue Sky helps organizations capture educational content from live or virtual settings, then facilitates the management & delivery of content to a global audience through its learning platform.
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