We edit live webinars to produce event recordings that can be used for post-webinar marketing and training, and think alot about how to get the most out of these live events. Many of our customers will update specific slides or request that we edit out details like pricing that may change over time. Between judicious editing, recording new narration, and adding a moderator voice-over, we can really extend the life of these recordings.
However, there are a few simple things that would make our life easier, and would help any company that wants to extend the shelf-life of their content:
- Remove PowerPoint template page and date fields. If you do any editing, the page numbers may change and the dates may no longer be accurate. Now I understand that you may want to date the materials, but putting the date just on the title slide or alternatively on the directory page that launches the presentation gives you this information and reduces editing time if it needs to be changed.
- Presenters should not reference slides by number. We will usually edit this out if we are re-arranging content, but this may not be possible depending on who is producing your recording. It is far better to reference a specific slide by title. We also run into situations where the speaker’s slide deck does not include all the slides used in the event, so their slide #1 is not slide #1 in the master deck. This proves confusing both for the live event and the event replay.
- Do your key slides stand on their own?. This can be tougher to implement, but when you start to realize that the event recording is going to reach more people than the live event, it becomes worth your time to consider if your narration and key slides or group of slides can stand on there own. On the web attention span is short, and as editors it makes sense to provide your content in bite-sized chunks. This means we either use our judgment to edit and create the story, or lift key segments from your presentation. If you have made it easy to extract key points, we can both save time and money.
Do you have any tricks for making your web content re-usable? I’d love to hear them!
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