Content Strategy & Copywriting: Live Event to Interactive Virtual Summit
Introduction
For several years, one of our business units hosted an annual day-long, in-person summit to share the latest knowledge in their industry. In 2020, the pandemic stopped all travel and the live event could not take place as planned. Our strategic communications team had two months to put together a virtual event – the first we had ever done. We needed a strong content strategy to keep attendees engaged.
I was assigned to the team as the content specialist, working alongside the business strategist, product marketer, and event planning specialist.
Since no travel was allowed, we had zero budget.
The Opportunity
We looked at this as an opportunity to create a really engaging event – we called it an “enhanced webinar.” As the content specialist, I facilitated the brainstorming sessions and plotted out the content strategy for the event.
The two-hour event included:
- polls
- pre-recorded video Q&A sessions
- worksheets
- live presentations with PowerPoints
I studied the subject matter experts’ (SME) biographies and presentation decks, and used them to develop the copywriting:
- registration landing page content
- emails
- poll questions and responses
- two multipage notetaking worksheets
- SME FAQ documents, one for each presentation
- video scripts
The Results
- 305 people registered
- 93 attended live
- 47 watched on-demand
- The Go-To Webinar attention score was 71, compared to our benchmark of 56.
- 37 people answered poll questions
- 5 attendees clicked Contact Me Now
- Our nimble team received recognition and kudos in regional and enterprise communications.
