Today brings to the end our trilogy of blogs about webinars.

In the first you learned everything you need to know to run a successful webinar, then last week we explained the 10 costly mistakes you need to avoid.

Now, we’re going to explain eight ways you can repurpose your webinar content after you’ve delivered your session.

Extend your webinar’s shelf-life

You’ve got two choices after you run a webinar:

1. Do nothing and hope attendees make contact with you
2. Follow up effectively and repurpose the content, using it in a variety of alternative ways, to get as much benefit from your session as possible.

I don’t need to tell you which is the right option, do I?

So, here are eight ways you can maximise the return you receive from the time and money you invested in creating your webinar.

#1: Build a video library on your website

As we said in our definitive guide, your webinar should always be run live.

However, it also makes sense to make the recording available so people can watch it in the future. The best way to do that is to create a video library on your website of all previous webinars. Over time, the webinars will build up into a genuinely useful resource on your website, demonstrating your expertise and that you’re one of the good eggs who make their content available for free.

Click here to see how we’ve done this on the Yardstick website.

#2: Add a transcript of each webinar to your website

If you build a library, each webinar recording should have a dedicated page containing a full transcript. By doing this, people who can’t or don’t want to watch the video can still learn from what you said. Plus, the transcript will be unique, long-form, content; two things that Google loves from an SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) perspective.

The transcript is easy to develop.

Simply subscribe to Otter (or a similar tool), run your webinar through it, and then review the output for typos and mistakes. It’s worth investing time to get the transcript right. It’s going to be used for several things as you seek to wring as much value from your webinar as possible.

#3: Turn the transcript into a white paper

Once you have your transcript, the world is your oyster!

When you’re presenting your webinar, you’ll probably speak at a rate of 120-140 words per minute. So if your webinar lasts 40 minutes, that’s between 4,800 and 5,600 words. Too much for your average blog but perfect to turn into a white paper, which once written, edited, proofread and designed can be:

• Added to your website
• Promoted on social media, either organically or as a lead magnet
• Sent to your database (only a small proportion will have booked onto your webinar).

#4: Turn the transcript into shorter blogs

Once you’ve turned the transcript into a white paper, you can then:

• Cut the newly created white paper up into a series of shorter blogs
• Take a deeper dive into one of the sub-topics of the white paper. For example, our definitive guide to webinars is effectively a white paper, with two follow-up blogs (including the one you’re reading right now) going into more detail on specific aspects of the white paper.

#5: Capitalise on the questions your attendees asked

The questions your attendees ask are like gold dust.

Download them from Zoom and then:

• Use the questions as inspiration for future blogs
• Turn the most frequently asked questions into your next webinar
• Use the questions (and, of course, the answers) to create an FAQs page on your website
• Write answers to the questions and use them in social posts (ask our head of social media, Abi Robinson, about turning them into a LinkedIn carousel
• If you’re considering starting a podcast, the questions your attendees ask on the webinar will give you a great place to start (if they want to know the answers, other people will do too).

#6: Cut up the transcript and turn it into social media posts

Once you’ve got an edited and proofread transcript, there are loads you can do with it.

We’ve already explained how to turn it into a whitepaper and/or blogs, now’s the time to cut it down into even shorter sections as a series of posts on social media. This is a great way to keep your audience engaged and informed, and to drive traffic to your website where they can:

• Watch a recording of the webinar
• Read the transcript
• Catch up on the white paper or blogs you’ve created.

#7: Turn the full recording into much shorter videos to use on social media

It isn’t just the transcript you can cut up and use on social media. If you plan it correctly, you can post short clips of the webinar as well.

In the definitive guide, we discuss the benefits of a listicle-style webinar, for example:

• “10 ways business owners can minimise Corporation Tax”
• “The 8 things you need to do to retire successfully”
• “The 12 mistakes people make with their estate planning”.

Running this style of webinar makes it easy to cut the full recording into shorter sections. You can then post it on social media, inviting people to watch a short clip, and then click a link to watch the full recording.

#8: Use the recording in a lead magnet campaign

Here at Yardstick, we’re big believers in making all content free to access on our website. If you want to read a blog, download a template or watch a video you don’t need to pay us, either in cold hard cash or with your data.

We recommend you take the same approach on your website.

However, social media is different.

The value exchange, where people “pay” to access content (guides, white papers, videos etc.) with their name, email address and potentially further information is common practice on Facebook, LinkedIn etc. So consider running ads on the relevant social media channel, offering the recording as the hook, and then following up with each person who downloads it with:

• A phone call
• An email nurturing sequence
• Your newsletter (remember, this should be sent monthly).

And, of course, invites to future webinars.

Our team is here to help

That brings to an end our series helping you set up and run a successful webinar, and then repurpose the content.

The rewards for running high-quality webinars regularly are huge. There’s a lot to do though, so if you want our help, we’re here for you.

• Our client success team can help with everything (in fact the only thing they can’t do is present your webinar)
• Our social media team can help you promote the webinar and then repurpose the content
• Our branding will edit the video for you and chop it up to use on social media
• Our digital team will update your website before and after the event.

If you’d like to learn more, email hi@theyardstickagency.co.uk or call 0115 8965 300.