4 Ways to Maximize Conversations After Your Company’s Webinar
Webinars require a large amount of time and planning in order to be executed effectively. From conception to launch, there are a lot of moving parts to address. We invest time and effort into the process because of the massive potential benefits webinars hold.
One big secret many people do not realize regarding the process of a webinar is that it’s not over when it’s over. The end of the broadcast does not mark the end of the effort.
Business owners and marketers who put just as much work into maintaining and maximizing social media conversations after the event enable the webinar to reach its fullest potential.
For a broadcast to create full value, organizers should send out a variety of post-event emails, and keep conversations rolling through effective social media marketing. This is done by developing a framework for the webinar’s content to continue to engage and thrive online.
Help your business maximize its broadcasts and conversations with these 3 tips to generate a dialogue after a webinar ends.
#1: Encourage Engagement During The Event
Considering the amount of work you will likely put into your webinar, you’re going to want to get the most bang for your buck. To make your investment of time, energy, and money worthwhile, you can bolster your webinar’s conversation by inspiring audiences to take the discussion to social media by crafting a relevant hashtag to accompany the webinar.
This can be utilized by asking your audience specific questions and providing answers on social media alongside the hashtag.
A prime example of this comes from HubSpot. During the company’s Science of Social Media webinar, the hashtag #SMSCI was tweeted more than 13,000 times, resulting in well over 19.7 million impressions.
Additionally, engage users who are organically talking about the webinar. This can often show that your organization cares and makes the effort to influence others to join the conversation.
Another tactic you can use is to share or retweet interesting comments made by your audience during the webinar. This can be a means of sparking new debates or discussions.
The longer people talk about your webinar, the greater reach and buzz it will generate, thereby increasing its impact.
#2: Post Your Webinar On Social Media
Depending on the type of software you use, there is a good chance that it took place outside of social media. If this is the case, it’s wise to post your webinar on your various social profiles afterward. This way people can discover and engage with the content indefinitely. If you opt to leverage a portal like YouTube, people could engage with your webinar for years to come.
Since YouTube is owned by Google, these videos often appear in the SERPs and drive tons of organic traffic. This is how some videos generate millions of views years after they were originally posted.
To post the broadcast on social media, however, you will need a webinar platform like ClickMeeting, that enables users to record events. Through this type of service, business owners gain access to a plethora of professional-grade features like branding elements and custom invitations that help to maintain a consistent and experienced look and feel.
Alternatively, you may want to consider restricting access to the content, only providing entry through email signup or a nominal fee. This is likely to generate less talk online, so be careful when opting to hide content behind paywalls.
#3: Repurpose Content From Your Webinar
Repurposing content is one of the most effective ways to stretch the value that webinars provide.
Part of what makes webinars so popular is that they are often jam-packed with valuable information. This enables them to be picked apart easily to create other content offerings that continue to drive conversations around the same ideas.
This is particularly useful if you plan on running your webinar more than once.
You can chop webinars into bite-sized videos that cover specific tips or topics and create a video archive on your website that you drive traffic to. Another option is to post them straight to social media under your company’s “videos” tab, thereby serving the same purpose.
Taking the slides and data from your webinar and crafting them into shareable infographics for your audience can also be beneficial. These can be posted to social media directly or incorporated into various blog posts.
Blogs are great for repurposing your webinar’s content to get people talking, but for greater impact, try turning your webinar into a free eBook. This will not only serve as another way to maintain the dialogue but also as a powerful lead generation tool that could double your webinar’s email-capturing efforts.
#4: Always Follow Up Via Email
Email follow-ups are what will keep your webinar’s proposal top-of-mind for those who attended.
For example, in a case study detailing how one webinar creator generated $12,000 in 24 hours, the production initially flopped and generated no sales. This is because she failed to send out any sort of follow-up communications.
After noticing the error, she sent out the necessary emails, including a time-sensitive offer. This was the exact catalyst that led to her $12,000 in revenue.
This simple case study should make clear how powerful and necessary email follow-ups are for a successful webinar formula.
Webinars are relatively short-term engagements when you compare the outcome to the preparation time. Maximize your webinar experience (and budget) by creating a framework to get your audience talking and keep them engaged.
By maintaining the momentum, you can create a significant amount of buzz attracting new followers, visitors, customers, and other fans that act as ambassadors to amplify your efforts. This can catapult your brand into new levels of success.
