How to Repurpose Webinar Content for Social and Web

repurpose_webinar_content

The amount of effort that goes into most webinars is too significant to ignore. Content repurposing can help you get the most out of every webinar and make sure as much value is extracted as possible. If your speakers aren’t internally sourced, you have to spend time writing or calling prospective speakers and creating a schedule that matches theirs. As if that’s not enough work already, you have to spend enough time marketing the event to your target audience.

After putting so much energy and time into organizing a successful webinar, it might not be the best idea to simply let them get buried under heaps of content on your website, especially when there’s still so much value to be gained by repurposing them. So, read on to learn how to repurpose webinar content for social and web.

What is content repurposing?

What is content repurposing?Content repurposing is the process of repackaging and reusing existing content in other channels.

How can webinar content be repurposed?

Webinar content can be repurposed by cutting the webinar into shorter clips and posting them on social channels, extracting a series of quotes from the webinar, creating blog posts and other forms of content with information from the webinar, and more.

What are some of the benefits of content repurposing?

Content repurposing has several pros generally that far outweigh the cons. It helps cater to the varied needs of an audience, increases distribution channels and offers the potential for a wider audience reach, and requires less effort to maintain consistency across company channels.

What is Content Repurposing?

Content repurposing is the process of repackaging and reusing existing content in other channels. Some refer to it as content recycling and, in a way, it is.

The concept has been around for several years now. At first, it appeared subtly in marketing strategies with B2B and B2C marketers doing it without attaching a word to it. This was often the case when brands shot ads for TV and compressed all of it into a single graphic design for papers.

Later on, it became much less subtle with prominent marketers on LinkedIn, along with other popular blogs and newsletters, talking about it consistently and emphasizing its benefits as a critical content marketing strategy.

In theory, it seems fairly easy to do. However, its execution can be tricky and can require a bit of effort, especially if you’re planning a long-term, sustainable content strategy. Nevertheless, the benefits are clear, whether you’re repurposing webinar content for social and web or chopping your un-gated ebook up into several infographics for your social media channels.

Why Content Repurposing is Important to Your Marketing Efforts

Content repurposing itself has several pros generally that far outweigh the cons. However, since we’re covering how to repurpose webinar content, we’ll focus on that specific application. Here are a few key reasons content repurposing would be useful to you:

1. People Learn Differently

While this might seem obvious, it’s pretty easy to miss when it’s difficult to find the time to manually repackage every piece of content that you produce. However, it’s important to remind yourself that people really do learn differently.

Some are more inclined towards text than videos as they can finish a block of text in far less time than it will take them to watch a video of a person reading the same thing. On the other hand, some are more inclined towards visuals because seeing lengthy texts and informative videos can be overwhelming/intimidating.

Since your content marketing efforts are aimed at educating as large an audience as you possibly can, repurposing content benefits you because it helps to cater to the varied needs of every member of that large audience.

A person with a hearing loss, for example, would be incredibly grateful to you for converting a webinar, where they have to struggle to follow the conversation, into a nice set of infographics on your page.

2. Content Repurposing = Increased Distribution Channels = Potentially Wider Audience Reach

If you’re not repurposing your webinar content, you’re drastically reducing the number of places you can be seen. 

To understand this, keep in mind that different platforms require different types of content. While they might support other forms of content outside their primary content type, they all have a primary format style.. 

For example, Instagram heavily favors images and short videos. Up until the 20th of June, 2018, when Instagram launched IGTV, it was pretty much impossible to upload a video longer than a minute on Instagram at once. Even now, you can’t upload a video longer than 15 minutes if you’re not uploading from the website. Even if you did manage to keep your webinar under an hour, uploading it all on your IGTV as is might not be the best idea because attention spans among users aren’t quite as long as you might imagine.

U.S. consumers report an increase in the inability to concentrate when reading long articles or watching long video content, which includes videos of 10 minutes or longer. Nearly half (49%) of U.S. respondents strongly agreed (23%) or agreed (26%) with this sentiment. This is up from 42% strongly agreeing (18%) or agreeing (24%) with this statement in 2020. More than one-quarter of men (29%) expressed this sentiment, compared to 20% of women; in 2020 24% of men reported this, versus 14% of women.

TheSoul Publishing Research Report, January 2022

Alternatively, Twitter favors really short text and groups of related thoughts. LinkedIn, on the other hand, favors lengthier text-based posts and doesn’t always need an image like Instagram does. Plus, the audience there is believed to be more sophisticated.

When you repurpose your webinar content into images, brief-texts and mid-length summaries, depending on each platform’s needs, you’ll have content that suits different channels. With various content pieces for different platforms, you’ll be able to reach a potentially larger target audience.

3. Less Effort Required to Maintain Consistency Across Company Channels

To reach their target audience in all the right places, many companies have an online presence on about two to three social media platforms at least. Some are significantly more broad and have accounts on up to five different social media platforms.

If we were to take a wild guess, your company is probably among the several that’s active on at least two or three social media sites. In that case, it goes without saying that creating fresh content for each of these platforms can be a pretty challenging process.

Many who choose to undertake that task find themselves publishing inconsistently after a while, and losing their audience. 

When you repurpose your webinar content you shield yourself against this. Instead of having to come up with fresh new ideas for every single day on your content calendar, you can lift content from the existing webinar, repackage it and post. You don’t have to worry about originality because the source material – the webinar – has always belonged to your company.

Instead of having to come up with fresh new ideas for every single day on your content calendar,  you can life content from the existing webinar, repackage it and post.

Companies like Apple, Microsoft, and many others consistently publish new, original content to every platform. Apple, for example, has an Apple at Work series on YouTube that you would not find on their Twitter feed or Instagram in any form.

However, these companies are well-funded with huge marketing budgets and a target audience that sees them as a household brand already. If you’re still on your way to that type of brand equity/perception and budget, repurposing would be great for you.

Five Different Ways to Repurpose Webinar Content for Social Media

1. Cut Your Webinar Into Shorter Clips to Post Across Your Company’s Social Channels

Most webinars are at least one hour long. Others, especially those covering in-depth topics, can be much longer. During these webinars, people often tune out. Those who are viewing a recording of the webinar do so in bits and pieces. 

Many people would much rather watch lengthy videos in smaller parts than consume it all at once in one long stretch. This fact is why many course creators split their courses into several short videos as opposed to sharing all available knowledge in one longform video. Even in the world of entertainment, movie producers often opt for (limited) series as opposed to full length features to tell their stories effectively.

While it might be more convenient to simply throw everything at the audience with a link to your YouTube page or even a full video on your IGTV, it might not be what the audience wants. So, instead of that, chop up key parts of your video into smaller bits. 

Here’s a great example by ActiveCampaign posting a recent clip to a webinar on LinkedIn:

If you’re having trouble deciding what parts of the video to use, here’s a quick pointer – look out for parts that have the longest streak of unbroken informative dialogue. If it’s an interview-style webinar, you can begin cutting and clipping at the start of your interviewee’s answer to each question.

If you’re going for a fun, lighthearted post, try looking for parts where your guest and/or host got into a bit of humorous banter. Whatever the case is, ensure that you do not simply cut out parts that your audience would consider fluff.

Platforms this Would Work For

Instagram and Facebook are great places for this idea. Technically, you could do LinkedIn and Twitter too. However, those are often more inclined towards text. That’s not to say that other forms of content won’t work there as well. LinkedIn is increasingly becoming a platform where video content is gaining more traction.

Pro Tip

To gain more traction on your videos, you could consider using influencers for your content distribution once you create content on any of these platforms. However, ensure that you have the budget for it as well as the right selection of influencers to work with. It’s important to evaluate budgets before choosing a content distribution strategy.

In addition, if you’re unsure about your video editing skills, have a professional editor help you get things done. Simply use timestamps across the video to indicate exactly what you want to cut out and when.

2. Extract a Series of Quotes from the Webinar

In a written interview or an email exchange, more often than not the responses are perfectly planned out, with the speaker choosing their words and the amount of information they give out.

In a live webinar, however, things are significantly more spontaneous. Granted, it means that there could be one or two mistakes as well as one too many pauses and “uhms” in between. But, it also means that the webinar guest/speaker could drop a number of priceless nuggets that you can use.

So, a great way to repurpose your webinar content is to simply go through it and extract the most quote-worthy statements from it.

Platforms this Would Work For

This works great for Twitter. If you’ll be using it on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn, among others, you should consider turning it into a graphical representation.

Pro Tip

Ensure that your preferred quote isn’t too long. There’s no official length for quotes, but you should aim for a maximum of one sentence. It’s easier for your audience to recall. Plus, it looks much better as a graphical depiction.

If you’re wondering what’s quote worthy, go through the comment section or, at the very least, take note of what people say during the webinar. More often than not, people will repeat parts of the conversation that resonate with them the most. Whenever you see a part that seems to have the audience’s attention, that’s generally a good place to start.

3. Create a Set of Infographics Based on the Webinar Itself

More often than not, companies organize webinars to educate their target audience on several topics the company has extensive expertise on. A core part of educating people is building on existing knowledge and expanding on it to give the audience a significantly more in-depth understanding of the topic.

In most webinars, you will notice speakers describing outcomes and details from their own (extensive) research into the subject matter or they might be quoting the research of another expert or organization.

A great way for you to repurpose your webinar content for social is to turn those key statements and findings into infographics. While you might be tempted to think of infographics as a means of sharing only statistics and other things that involve a lot of numbers, that might not always be the case. Piktochart has a great guide on how to create an effective infographic.

A great way for you to repurpose your webinar content for social is to turn those key statements and findings into infographics.

You can use an infographic to describe a process or a concept as well. For example, it’s common knowledge in marketing that the buyer’s journey can be split into a number of stages. It involves no actual statistics but it’s still excellent material for an infographic. Look out for these bits of information and use them.

Platforms this Would Work For

It’s not hard to guess that this would be great for Instagram since the platform is image-based. You can turn it into a carousel if you have too much information to squeeze into one page. It could also work for LinkedIn and Twitter. Just keep in mind that Twitter doesn’t support carousels. The best you’ll get is a multi-image post with four images max before you have to turn the post to a thread.

Pro Tip

While making your infographics for LinkedIn and Twitter, remember that both of these platforms are less passive than Instagram. So, as opposed to simply posting the images in a carousel, try to spark a conversation with the infographic or, at the very least, ensure that your caption provides a reasonable amount of context.

Secondly, to save yourself the trouble of having to design infographics from scratch, simply look at the slides your speaker used during the webinar – if they used any. Usually, there’ll be a few pages you can take out for social content.

Finally, if your speaker mentions a particularly notable finding, do some extra research to find out the original source and context. That way, you don’t inadvertently misattribute the data or misquote another expert in the field. It is important to be able to give credit to the right source.

4. Turn the Webinar into a YouTube Channel

Since most webinars are at least an hour long, they’re chock full of information. Because of this, they’re great for a YouTube channel because people on the platform are often specifically searching for entertainment or education. In fact, some use it as a learning resource, bookmarking videos to watch later. Here are a few solid reasons it’s a great idea beyond all the other benefits of repurposing your webinar.

First of all, it’s great for lead generation. YouTube is hands down the biggest video sharing platform in the world and the second largest search engine as well. To put that in perspective, every time you upload content on Google and your SEO rankings get you thousands of readers who then go down the funnel to become leads, that’s Google as a search engine aiding your lead generation efforts.

In the same vein, YouTube helps you generate new leads by popping your video up in front of eager searchers. However, unlike Google, it goes a step further. It suggests videos to people who have watched similar content. This could very well work in your favor.

When your audience watches something from your competitors and they’re dissatisfied, if your video pops up in the suggestions, they can watch it and become aware of your company and ultimately become a lead. So, you’ll be getting traffic from Google as well as the second best thing – YouTube.

Monday.com does a great job segmenting a category of their videos on Youtube as webinars like the one shown here.

YouTube is also significantly cheaper than private video hosting platforms like Wistia. In addition to these two benefits are the fact that you have nearly unlimited video bandwidth as well as an almost non-existent learning curve.

Platforms this Would Work For

It goes without saying that this is specifically for YouTube and nowhere else. However, if you’d like to make your content marketing even more user-focused, embed the YouTube videos in a separate resource page on your website. That way, your audience doesn’t have to go through the extra step of going to your YouTube page separately when they’re already on your website. It’s a small action but it adds a fair bit of convenience for your audience.

Pro Tip

If you are going to be using this strategy, you need to do two things. For starters, you should ensure that you know as much as possible about YouTube video optimization. Secondly, keep your videos as high quality as possible. If your webinar is entirely remote, you can provide a few quick tips beforehand to help them produce the highest video quality possible.

5. Use Audience Questions to Start Conversations

If you’re hosting a live webinar with an audience on Zoom or other platforms, there’s a good chance that your audience is asking questions in the comment section. In most webinars, the questions would be answered before the end of the event. In other cases, some members of your audience might be left hanging as there isn’t enough time.

Either way, their questions still make for great conversations on social media. Answering questions asynchronously means that you’re unrestrained by time. Character limits can also be worked around by breaking your answer down to multiple posts.

Platforms this Would Work For

LinkedIn and Twitter are great platforms for you to drive conversations using your audience’s questions. Instagram wouldn’t work very well for obvious reasons. If you have access to relevant communities on Slack, Discord, and LinkedIn, those would also be great places to begin a conversation.

Pro Tip

When you’re trying to start a conversation on any of the social channels, make sure that you commit to getting through a conversation and providing real value. Starting a conversation and giving half-hearted responses wouldn’t be fair to your audience and could be counterproductive.

Three Different Ways to Repurpose Webinar Content for Web

1. Turn it Into a Blog Post

Webinars can easily generate several blog posts, depending on the diversity of the webinar topic. To create one or more blog posts out of your webinar, there are a few ways you can go about it.

For starters, you could transcribe the entire webinar. This might not be the best method because it can be incredibly time consuming, especially if your speakers have technical challenges. 

Despite the challenges of transcribing video content like webinars, you can still kill two birds with one stone. By transcribing a webinar to turn it into a blog post, you’re also creating a transcription/subtitle file for the video itself. This would be incredibly useful to whoever wants to watch the video later. Besides, transcription helps the audience get an unfiltered version of what they’d have gotten if they attended the webinar.

Apart from transcribing word for word, you can pick up the most important points in the webinar and turn it into an article. This is as straightforward as you can imagine. We should mention, however, that you should do proper research while turning your webinar into a blog post. Back up your speaker’s claims with facts. Verify their own facts and be sure that everything written is as accurate as possible.

Finally, you can have your speaker create a guest post out of what they’ve spoken about in the webinar.

Pro Tip

If you’d like to encourage your speakers to provide an accompanying guest post, one way to increase your potential for success is not to make it seem like a chore to them. Instead, make it seem like yet another opportunity for them to give the same valuable information that they have already provided. If possible, tell them before the webinar itself. That way, they can even make the guest post beforehand and use it as their speaking guide during the webinar.

2. Make an eBook Out of Your Webinar

If your webinar is really long, one or two blog posts might not be nearly enough for your purposes. So, instead of going with a short-form article, go for a form of content distribution that allows for a lot more information at once.

This comes with two major benefits. For starters, your audience would be grateful for the opportunity to download all that information and read at their convenience. Secondly, ebooks are an excellent lead magnet.

Pro Tip

If you’re creating an ebook, you’ll need to use a lot of images and make the book as visually appealing as possible. Our advice is to write the content first and then send it to a designer to punctuate the book with images and illustrations where necessary.

3. Turn Audience Questions into FAQs

If you’ve already decided on using audience questions to repurpose your webinar content for social, you can go a step further and use it for web as well. 

The difference is that instead of trying to drive a conversation, you’ll be providing concise answers to a question. You could do this as a separate pillar page for those who are nearing the end of the funnel. That way, it would appear on your front page alongside every other pillar page. Alternatively, you could make it into a blog post.

Pro Tip

Be sure to pick out only questions that would be useful to a general audience. If a person asks a question about their specific problem that doesn’t apply to anyone else, what they need is advice, not an answer to an FAQ. In that case, it could simply end on your webinar as opposed to getting to your FAQ page because only a small fraction of your audience has the same issue.

Useful Tools to Help Out in the Process

Repurposing webinar content for social and web might be designed to help ease the challenges of creating fresh content. Nevertheless, it does come with its own fair amount of effort. Below, we’ll recommend a few tools that should help you out in the process.

1. For AI-Assisted Repurposing of Text-Based Content: Automata

Automata is an AI-assisted tool that helps marketers repurpose YouTube videos as well as any type of written text into other forms of content. For the purpose of this conversation, if you have your webinar hosted on YouTube, you could simply paste a link to the video. Automata’s AI engine would transcribe, extract, and analyze text from the video. Then, in no time at all, it would create a new set of assets for you to use in your social media posts, emails, etc.

Automata's AI content repurposing platform

2. For Manual Designs of Visual Content: Canva

Of course, there are significantly more complex and sophisticated graphics design software. This is the simplest to use for marketers who may not have design experience. It comes with thousands of templates that you can customize to suit your needs.

Canva is a great resource for non-designers

3. For Video Editing

From Filmora to Invideo to Adobe Premiere Pro, and everything else in between, there are several options on the market that you can select from. If you’re an amateur that’s not looking for anything more than cutting videos, anything on your App Store/Play Store should do. If you’re interested in doing a bit more heavy lifting, Adobe Premiere Pro isn’t a bad idea.

Key Takeaway

There are many ways for you to repurpose your webinar content. This guide is extensive and gives a lot of useful tips, but the most important part of repurposing your webinar content for social and web is your creativity. 

Finally, make sure that you select only the best webinar content to repurpose. Not all webinars are created equal. Pick only the best in terms of video and content quality to repurpose. Some people might come across your brand for the very first time in the repurposed content. Don’t let their first impression of you be less professional and informative than the original content.