Stay Afloat, Stay Relevant, Stay Online
Most Snellville & Gwinnett County small to medium-sized businesses are in a strange limbo of uncertainty right now as COVID-19 forces closures and a reduction of hours in some places. With an ever-increasing demand for services to continue, it’s becoming apparent that the new business model will be “online or sink”. Luckily, you’re in the know from the beginning, and we’ve got all of the tips and tricks that you’ll need to make this transition as smooth and effective as possible.
The very first thing you’ll need to consider is your business website’s capacity to impress and draw in sales (whether your product is a service or a physical item, it doesn’t matter). Since you’ll be repurposing and/or creating new content for your website to house, don’t skip this all-important, customer-facing step.
Webinars: Treasure-Troves of Content
If you’ve ever watched or curated a webinar, you know just how much time goes into planning and creating all of the different components. From slides to speaker’s notes, the content is essentially pouring out of the website’s code – just in a much less accessible way. Unfortunately, even though webinars are useful tools for those who have the time to sit still and consume them, these content chests aren’t right for everyone (especially not the SEO crawlers).
Content that was recorded live like audio or slideshows simply cannot be cataloged effectively to do your website justice. This is why it is so important to share the content in many usable forms. During this downtime brought about by the novel coronavirus, it is in the interest of your small business to get to work curating content from content – your beloved webinars.
Why Webinars?
First and foremost, we should address the simple fact that you should be doing webinars if you aren’t already. Is your small business based around education? Create content for people to watch at home and learn more about each topic. Do you sell products that need to be touched and held? Create live demonstrations and discussions about each product’s features. Think like your customers and create content that answers the questions they will inevitably have before purchasing.
If you aren’t creating live or recorded content during this time of online SMBs, you’re missing out on a lion share of the 2020 consumer market, it’s that simple.
Transcripts
While incredibly time-consuming and perhaps everyone’s least favorite job, transcribing a webinar’s audio into text is probably the single best thing you can spend time on to increase your website’s crawl-ability. If you have a webinar hosted on a page with no text that describes, in detail, what the webinar is about, you’ve essentially missed out on a whole page of SEO content. If you cannot find anyone in your business to complete this job with you, consider reaching out to a freelancer or friend that has some spare time.
Podcasts
Another way to repurpose your webinar content is to format it in a way that customers can purely listen to the audio file for the information. You may need to rework the recorded content such that there is less reliance on visual cues; dedicate someone to this task based on the transcription that you derive in that stage of webinar conversion. You can run through the text transcription and trim any superfluous content before recording a podcast version.
Blog Posts
Some of the greatest SEO content comes from blog posts – they are short, sweet, visually appealing (think infographics and slide excerpts), and to the point. An effective blog post should be less than 1000 words, so if your webinar overflows with actionable information, consider making a blog series for your customers. You can let the transcript do a lot of the heavy lifting for your blog post(s), especially if your webinar included a Q&A segment. Don’t forget to heavily use hyperlinks within your series so that web-crawlers can link all of your content together as a unified piece.
Q&A Leverage
As mentioned previously, question and answer segments can bring a lot of great perspective and curiosity to your webinar content. Often, customers will wonder the same things that the audience asks during the presentation. It would be silly to leave out this valuable information, especially since the webinar presenter already went through the trouble of answering each question. You could publish this content on your website’s Q&A page or even send the information out in a newsletter.
Infographics
As social media becomes increasingly graphics-based (think Pinterest, Instagram, and even Facebook), it’s imperative that your content matches the changing face of social interaction. Unfortunately, it’s extremely unlikely that someone will choose to read a 750-word article rather than looking at an infographic that sums up the article into one, eye-catching photo. Our attention spans, as a society, have decreased significantly as more presses for our time. During the process of repurposing your webinar content, create one or several infographics that sum up the information in a concise manner. Speak with a graphic designer if you need to – it will be money well-spent.
Teaser Clips
While on the topic of social media, it should also be noted that consumers readily look for reviews and documentation about products on video content sites like YouTube and Facebook. Consider cutting portions from your webinar and creating a shorter “snippet” that can be shared to social media outside of your website. Always include redirects to your full webinar site, and keep SEO in mind as you upload your snippet – use relevant tags and search terms that will bring in the type of viewer you have in mind.
Think Outside the Box
Quite frankly, you’ll be the only one to notice if something was missing or could have been improved upon for your small business webinars. Rather than spend the time creating new or updated versions of the webinar, add text content linking back to the webinars that add information to your existing site. Use phrases like “updated” or “for more information” to let your viewers know that there is more to learn! As you create backlinks on your site, it helps create a network of connected content that your users can flow through as they explore your product.
Above all, do something with your webinar content. It’s so tempting to let this information sit on your site collecting dust after the live portion is completed – due mainly to the amount of work it requires to elevate the content. However, mother nature has thrown us an incredible curveball that we have to either swing into… or let slide by. The greatest use of your time right now will undoubtedly be the curation and expansion of your site’s webinar content. It’s time to get to work!
