Turn Event Content into Profit
How Events Content Can Turn Insights into Income
Content generated at events is like an open gold mine, piled high with exclusive and precious information. Yet, only some seem keen to cash in. Taken the effort, time, and resources invested in organising an event, this attitude remains a mystery. Ignoring the sheer marketing value of repurposed events content (read our stack "From Pulpit to Purpose") is akin to turning your back on cash.
Take speaker presentation videos as one example of conference gold. Whether the conference subject matter is quantum physics or motivating carnivorous creatures to become vegans, most conference organisers stick a video of each presentation on a library gallery with little consideration or curation.
Why consideration? Firstly to establish if the content conveyed in the presentation has monetary value. If the information shared on that stage in front of a finite number of people is exclusive and precious, the video is of value to professionals in this specific field. It should only be available in a closed ecosystem where you control access. Or in geek speak, a walled garden.
How you monetise from your walled garden is up to you and purely dependent on your needs, whether this is selling access through actions intent on data generation, sharing prompts, or straightforward cash (read "subscriptions and/or memberships").
Why curation? Not all content is created equal. Some speakers don't have a trove of profound and exclusive insights to share. This, however, does not mean their insight is not valuable. Knowledgeable editors will find the nuggets. And if—no matter how mediocre—the content contributes to an emerging theme highlighted by other presenters, a skillful edit of several speakers around that theme creates value.
I would stick the unedited individual contributions in this lower category in the unwalled area of my platform. This will promote easy sharing and linking to your event brand. However, once you have invested in the editing and knowledge that content fixers bring to the curation, you should not share that content freely.
In the B2B environment, conference videos and other content iterations have enormous value. I've recently checked on the platform of an annual event I regularly attend. It has generated 571 videos of live speaker contributions in the past decade. (I imagine there could have been well over 700 without the Covid pandemic).
All these videos are available to anyone wanting to research the content matter and emerging themes over an entire decade. Do the event organisers not realise they own a treasure trove? I, along with others in this line of interest, would be willing to pay for access to these videos. And if the videos were properly curated and not strewn about the back end of a website, I would pay considerably more.