– Webcasting (Part 6 of 7) –

How to Use Your Webcast Archive

Now that you’ve produced a fantastic webcast, what do you do with the recorded material? The video recording of your event is a fantastic asset that can be used well after the live event, either in its entirety or by repurposing and repackaging with other materials. What is the best way for you to utilize your archived webcasts? We’ll run through some of the best ways we’ve seen archived webcasts used, based on the type of companies and organizations that own them.

Corporation Webcast Archives

If your company is a corporation, you can use your archived webcasts in a number of ways. You can:

• Make webcast recordings available on your website for shareholders to view later.
• Allow your marketing team to integrate the recorded webcasts into press releases or marketing material for initiatives, including sales campaigns or even paid content.
• Make important announcements or best practices available to your entire team as training sessions, for onboarding, or for new product rollouts.

Non Profits & Associations Archives

If you have a non-profit or association, your webcast archive is incredibly powerful for growing your audience, reaching new audiences, increasing fundraising efforts, and allowing people access to your events after the fact. Options include:

• Emailing your audience to let them know that, if they were unable to attend the live event, the material is available on your website right next to the “donate now” button, or even for a nominal fee.
• Editing your main points, individual speaker segments, or big reveals into “bite sized” videos. You can also add marketing messages or calls to action to make these even more impactful.
• Posting the archive on your website for reference to track how your organization has grown and changed over the years.

Webcast Archives for Educational Purposes

Whether you’re with an educational organization or offering training, you can use your archive to help your growing audience learn more about your area of expertise, while also building authority. Your webcast archive can drive profit or be available for free. You can:

• Create educational series based on your archives of live events. You can organize by topic, by speaker, or in a specific order.
• Monetize your webcast archives. You can sell your lecture series as individual packages, create courses–self-paced or delivered via drip campaigns, or even with membership access.
• If you want to make your courses or webcast archives available for free, you can create a badge or certification to help motivate people to finish the course.

How Event Producers Can Use Webcast Archives

As an event producer, you want to demonstrate capabilities to new leads. Your webcast archives (and those of your clients) are a great tool for growing your client base. After obtaining permission from your client, you can:

• Use archived projects in your portfolio to highlight different successes.
• Create case studies that show how your work helped your clients, including specific metrics where possible.
• Post the finished video and case studies to your social media to help promote your client’s project while building your authority.

Webcast Archives for Venues

As a venue, you can net more business by showcasing examples of events you’ve successfully hosted in the past. After all, if you can help prospective clients visualize their event in your space, you’ve already gotten a good chunk of the way down the sales path. Ideas include:

• Posting webcast archives to your social media to demonstrate the types of events you host, whether meetings, conventions, concerts, lectures, plays, etc. You know your capabilities and you might just help your clients think outside the box.
• Linking on your website as Video on Demand, whether you charge for access or make it available free of charge.
• Use as social proof that your venue is a versatile and enjoyable place where people in your community come to experience great content.

So How Exactly Do You Make Your Content Available?

Depending on the level of security or digital rights management needed, there are many ways to make your content available. You’ll want to consider these methods for distributing your webcast archives:

Social Media

Sites like YouTube and Vimeo offer amazing platforms that are free to use and relatively user friendly.

Your Website

If you don’t yet have a website, consider WordPress for its versatile capabilities. We recommend talking to your web designer about hosting video on your organization’s website to get their advice on the best solution based on your needs and goals. Doing so might be as simple as embedding YouTube videos or it might mean enlisting another video hosting solution. (If you or your web designer needs suggestions, we offer consulting services and can help!)

Video on Demand

Video-on-demand solutions such as uscreen or vplayed allow you to sell your video content. This is especially useful to educators, course creators, membership sites, and anyone whose value or business model is directly related to intellectual property shared in the video content.

If you need help figuring out how to get started and what it is that you need, we offer consulting services. Just contact us to get started!

Check out our full suite of Webcasting Services.