Virtual events are the new big thing in digital branding and promotion. After 2020 made us rethink how brands and customers interact, virtual events became the most effective way to share helpful knowledge and gain customer trust.
By providing the right online experience, organizations can demonstrate leadership in their chosen industry and attract new customers.
However, it’s important to consider how evergreen your event should be to get the best return on investment.
Evergreen content is the kind of information that remains relevant and useful to your audience year after year. It differs from “trending” topics that might be hot right now but lose appeal over time.
Today, we’re going to look at what you can do to create more engaging and exciting evergreen content for your virtual event.
Know Your Audience
The first thing you need to create the right content for a virtual event is the knowledge of your target audience. The better you know your potential attendees, the more you will be able to adapt your content to answer their most pressing questions.
If you haven’t already got one, now’s the time to start building effective user personas for your most common customers.
These personas will detail your customer’s demographics (age, location, even their gender), as well as their likes and dislikes. Use your personas to effectively step into your target customer’s shoes and figure out what they need to know most about your brand.
If you still need a little inspiration, consider looking through previous interactions with your customers for guidance.
Your sales and marketing teams should be able to give you a pretty good idea of the topics and issues that usually arise with your audience. By addressing issues or topics that come up time and time again, you can create content that the audience will come back to often and that will remain fresh and timely no matter how much time has passed.
Pick a Topic
Once you have a selection of topics your audience will be interested in, it’s time to choose the focus of your online event.
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution to choosing the perfect topic here. You just have to figure out what’s important to your target audience.
For instance, if you see that users tend to search for answers on “How to start email marketing” on your website, you know that’s a good starting point.
You can also look at Google Trends for an insight into what people are looking at when they’re browsing for information in your industry. Google Trends will likely show you spikes in interest for particular seasonal topics or current trends. However, to create evergreen content, your best bet is to focus on topics that have a steady search volume year-round.
Another way to improve your chances of making a good decision is to check out what your competitors are talking about.
If you can see that your audience responded particularly well to a specific event hosted by a similar company, there’s a good chance they’ll appreciate the same type of events from you.
Just make sure that anything you create is unique and specific to your brand. Don’t copy/paste what other organizations are doing, or your reputation will suffer.
Do Your Research
It’s always a good idea to host a virtual event about a topic that you already have a good knowledge of. Before you begin creating your content, make sure that you know your subject inside-out.
Extensive research will help you to gather useful information in the form of unique insights, statistics, graphs, and more.
Consider creating some of your own statistics by evaluating your own company and gathering details that no other business has access to.
Remember to research your keywords, too – these are the terms that people are going to be looking for when they’re searching for your event online.
For your experience to be both engaging and evergreen, it also needs to be easy to find.
Choose long-term keywords that are easier to compete for. “Email marketing tips for startups” will be easier to rank for than “email marketing”.
You can use tools online like SEMRush and Ahrefs to check the search volumes and competition levels of each term you want to rank for.
Create Your Own Content
Once you’ve collected all the information you need, it’s time to create immersive content.
Remember, this is your chance to really make your brand stand out.
While you can use quotes and statistics from other companies if you reference them properly, remember to include plenty of your own unique insights too.
It’s also helpful to experiment with different kinds of content in your online event.
For instance, you might have a segment that allows attendees to flip through a slide show at their own speed. At the same time, you can show videos from keynote speakers on your event website.
If you know that some of your audience members would prefer to read about your insights, offer exclusive access to unique guides and downloadable material for attendees.
Remember to check through all of your content before you publish it to ensure that it is 100% accurate and easy to use, and that it speaks your audience’s language.
Also consider how you can repurpose or reformat the content after the event. You can create a series of shorter, bite-sized and concise episodes or transcribe live streams into a series of blog posts and create a hub page on your website.
Creating downloadable presentations, white papers, infographics etc. is also a great way to offer diverse and evergreen content that your audience will want to share after the event.
Remember to Promote Your Event
Finally, after you’ve built the perfect virtual event experience, make sure that you regularly promote it.
This will help to attract new customers and leads. It should also maintain a consistent buzz around your brand so that you can gain more reach.
There are plenty of great ways to promote your event. Create a landing page for customers to visit and collect information about the experience, register their interest, or buy a ticket.
Send announcements about the upcoming event to customers in your email list and share details on social media with a branded hashtag.
Don’t forget to get other companies that are working with you on the event involved, too. Sponsors and speakers can share quotes and links that entice their audiences to find out more. This gives you quick access to new potential leads.
Keep Your Events Evergreen
As the demand for digital content continues to grow, it’s important to ensure you’re squeezing as much value as possible out of your virtual events.
By creating evergreen content, you boost your chances of becoming a go-to thought leader for your customers and a crucial resource for those hoping to learn about your product or industry.
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Joe Peters is a Baltimore-based freelance writer and an ultimate techie. When he is not working his magic as a marketing consultant, this incurable tech junkie devours the news on the latest gadgets and binge-watches his favorite TV shows. Follow him on @bmorepeters
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