How We Created 112 Pieces of Original Content With 16 Speakers in 12 Hours
By: Todd Clouser
It's been over a week since Goldenhour and the amount of content collected during the conference is just now starting to sink in.
So how were we able to get sooo much content in a single day? I want to dive into the how and the why for you today.
WHY?
This may seem obvious. But I've seen way too much conference content to pass up the opportunity to tell you about our "why".
Content teams have been sleeping on conferences and events. I'm guilty of this. And until I was included deeply in the planning of Goldenhour, my opinion on events was always kinda, "meh."
I've attended countless conferences and trade shows as a content marketer. My experience was event content was always dead in the water two weeks after it was over and FOMO had faded.
But we can all agree, there's something about in person content that is just so much more engaging than its remotely-recorded counterpart. It gives you the opportunity to read body language, have deeper conversations, and best of all, in the case of events, involve the audience.
We set lofty goals for content and when it was all said and done we recorded over 150 pieces of content in a day. Today, I want to talk about how we created content with speakers (112 pieces to be exact).
Oh, and not like “let’s chop up this keynote into 10 clips and call it 10 pieces of content," but 150 pieces of thought out, individual episodes for different series that will be coming out over the next several weeks.
But the question became, "How do we create all this content at an event that doesn't feel like B2B event content?"
Which leads us right into our HOW.
Keynotes/Panels (7), and Workshops (9):
Content from the stage is what everyone focuses on when building out the event content playbook. And let's be honest, it would be irresponsible to not take advantage of those talks.
But the experience for the 300 people in the room is only half the battle. The challenge is to figure out how to provide a similar, unique experience to the thousands that will see it online afterwards. When you sit down to watch something online, especially long-form, the expectations are high. So how do you deliver on those expectations?
Think about your favorite Netflix comedy special or even a Ted Talk. Now imagine if it was just a single wide angle shot in the back of the room.
In order to make conference sessions feel like they were created with the digital viewer in mind, we had to think about the filming and editing of it going in.
Fun Fact: We had one camera person for every 20 people at the conference and that's why.
Keynotes and sessions are the easy win though. Film them beautifully, cut out and fluff, and get a first-class editor.
But that's only 16 of the 112 pieces of content we created with our speakers. So how do we squeeze as much unique content out of this stacked group while we have them?
It started with The Broadcast Desk (16):
Not everyone can justify traveling to New York for a day for a conference, we get that. And as mentioned before, we also get that when you're watching online, your expectation is different.
We could've just broadcasted the full 45-minute talks online, but it's not engaging. The online viewer won't sit at their desk and watch that.
So the question became:
How do we take those long-form sessions, distill them into something an online viewer would consume, and spread that content far and wide?
Step 1: Choose a format we know works for a digital audience
We wanted to get away from the Zoom-like online events that had become the norm post-pandemic. They're not engaging and everyone is tired of them. The answer was simple in theory (and very difficult to execute in practice, but more more on that some other time).
ESPN has mastered the recap format, so why reinvent the wheel? We built a Gameday-esque broadcast studio on the 20th floor of the conference hotel with the Manhattan skyline as our backdrop. The goal was to replicate the feeling you get in person for the online audience. No pre-recorded videos, no Zoomed-in speakers.
To speak at the desk you had to be in person.
Step 2: Distill down the information for a digital audience
We took a two-step approach to this.
First, we chose a combination of big names and session topics from the speaker list. We hired a dedicated editor to pull specific parts from their stage discussion that we wanted to go deeper on for the online viewer.
Then we prepared a series of 3-5 questions to go as deep as we could in a shorter-form, panel-style discussion. This allowed the online audience to get context into what happened in the room quickly with an experience they expect, all in real time. We did this for 10 of the 16 slots we had during the four hour stream.
For the other 6 slots we took a different approach. We knew there were some topics that we couldn't get to in a single-day event. But we could represent those topics in this shorter-form broadcast. So we reached out to SMEs and influencers to come join us specifically to speak on topics that were underrepresented on the stage, but we knew there was an appetite for. Things like:
- How to get executive buy in for owned media
- How to use edutainment in your content strategy
- and more
Step 3: Distribute the content far and wide
Over the course of the four-hour broadcast we had 16 speakers take the desk as subject matter experts.
But what I haven't mentioned yet are the host and co-hosts. There were four people at the desk at any given time for a four-hour LinkedIn Live.
First, we knew we needed a constant, recognizable face to lead the broadcast. We reached out to the legendary Brianna Doe to host the full four-hour event and luckily, she agreed.
We decided to swap in co-hosts for the other two slots for two main reasons:
- New co-hosts brought new energy, ideas, and life to the broadcast. It's reminiscent to the Grammy's when they pair two artists you typically never think of working together for a one-time performance.
- The goal is reach and new eyeballs. By not only swapping in the speakers, but also the people asking the questions, we took advantage of eight people's audience (instead of two).
One co-host seat rotated between Devin Reed, Will Aitken, Morgan Ingram, and Leslie Douglas (through a partnership with Better Media) and the other seat rotated through members of the AudiencePlus team.
But the unlock to all of this wasn't just empowering these people to promote that they'd be speaking at Goldenhour and pushing people to our registration page for the online event.
We made sure everyone had the ability to stream their part of the event to their own personal LinkedIn feeds. This gave us true access to their audience in real time.
So now our speakers had spoken on stage and done a live broadcast. But we we're done with them quite yet.
When looking at the names on the speaker list, we realized it was unlikely that we'd have access to these people for the foreseeable future. So how do we squeeze out as much value for the audience as possible?
The team came up with a new short-form series called Clipped (70).
That's right...70! We recorded 70 episodes of a new show in 10 minutes as each speaker got un-mic'd from the broadcast desk.
Now, you may have noticed, but we got one heck of a room to record the live event. It was a 2-story villa at the top of the William Vale. What you saw on the broadcast was the outdoor patio of that villa, but we also had access to a beautiful set to record video in the living quarters. And that's what we did.
We setup another camera operator in the living area so when any speaker was done at the desk, they had to stop and answer 5 questions before they left.
The questions were a mix of tactical tips, learning from failures, and inspiration on why you need to change your content strategy and they are enough to power our rented channels for months.
So that's how we used 16 speakers to create 112 pieces of unique, original content in 12 hours.
...And this is only how we utilized speakers.
We had a similar mindset to how we approached sponsors and the audience, which is an additional 40 pieces of content.
I'll break that down in a future article, but until then you can see the sessions from the broadcast desk now and the rest will be available soon.
Stay B2B my friends,
Todd
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