Author: Franz Malten Buemann

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Will data science take over the marketing management and strategy part in product decisions? I like market research a lot especially when it comes to making strategic and tactical decisions about product design and features; do you think data science will replace this aspect of marketing management? I want to be an academic or scholar in the field therefore I’ll be doing a PhD in Marketing. Does a PhD program in Marketing generally include learning R python, MATLAB or machine learning. The reason as to why I am asking this question is because if market research becomes automated in the future will my PhD still hold it’s relevance.
Thanks and I hope you all have a good day! Minhaj.
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When I used to work at a marketing agency, I would read expert industry blogs, such as HubSpot, Marketing Brew, and Backlinko (to name a few).
One of my main questions every day was, “How do these brands do it? How do they constantly come up with brilliant blog ideas?”
Now, obviously, I work at HubSpot and I know what a blog strategy looks like at a big company with a recognizable brand.
By taking the time to do solid research and idea brainstorming, you can come up with blog topics that drive thousands of readers, like me, in — while boosting traffic, authority, and credibility.
Today, I want to pull the curtain back for you. We’ll discuss how the HubSpot blog continuously comes up with high-performing blog ideas.

How the HubSpot Blog Comes Up With Ideas
Before we get started, it’s important to know that when the HubSpot team comes up with blog ideas, several teams are involved (SEO, blog, and lead generation). Because of this, we divide our brainstorming process into two parts: trend research and SEO topic research. We then combine these efforts in our Insights Report on a quarterly basis (which you can download a copy of below).
Featured Resource: Search Insights Report Template

Let’s dive into both those processes below.
How the HubSpot Blog Generates Trend-Responsive Blog Post Ideas
Blog topics that relate to trends, research, or thought leadership yield bursts in non-organic traffic that can help you gain visitors while you’re waiting for SEO-driven posts to rank. Because they often include data, quotes, or other exclusive information, these posts can also earrn backlinks, which indirectly boost your search authority.
However, finding trendy non-organic post topics isn’t always straightforward and often requires brainstorming.
Pamela Bump, HubSpot’s Audience Growth Manager, leads the charge with our team’s brainstorming efforts while also managing the blog’s non-organic content strategy.
She says, “While our SEO team uses specialized tools to identify blog posts that will pull in organic traffic, I leverage a number of trend research tactics to identify post ideas that will pull in non-organic traffic from sources like email, social media, and referrals.”
Below is the process she asks bloggers to use during our virtual idea brainstorms.
1. Focus on your blog categories.
Before you get started, it’s important to have some sort of road map in mind. Choose the most important clusters, or blog categories, that you want to focus on for the quarter and develop ideas around them.
Immediately, just knowing the clusters you want to focus on could spark a few ideas for thought-leadership or data-driven research posts.
Each quarter, the HubSpot acquisition team chooses seven to ten clusters for each blog property — for us, that’s marketing, sales, service, and website. Usually the clusters relate to things like business goals or industry trends.
Additionally, we include other categories besides those clusters, such as Audience Growth, Lead Acquisition, and User Acquisition to help us brainstorm topics that are related to our lead generation goals.
2. Review the content you’ve already written to inspire new topics.
Now that you’ve done a quick brainstorm of some new ideas, let’s see what’s already been written in each cluster that you’re focusing on.
To do this, search your site for the cluster. We do site searches at HubSpot, but just typing in “site:blog.hubspot.com/service customer experience” in Google. With this formatting, you can change the link and change the keyword to be whatever you’re looking for. Then, Google will find posts on that keyword on that site specifically.
When you’re coming up with blog ideas, searching the site to see if the topic has been covered is very important. The reason you’ll want to do this is that you can find high-performing posts that give you inspiration for new angles or you can find posts that you want to update with more quotes, data, or new research. Additionally, this will help you avoid keyword cannibalization.
Caroline Forsey, the HubSpot Marketing Blog property manager, says. “Think of different angles for popular topics you’ve already covered. For instance, let’s say you have plenty of content regarding LinkedIn — but you have none from a thought leader in the space. Perhaps you could conduct an interview with a LinkedIn employee for a thought leadership angle, like ‘Top X Tips from a LinkedIn Marketer’.”
3. See what the competition is doing.
While you never want to copy your competitors, it’s important to see what topics they’re writing about. This will help you fill in gaps that your competitors are missing and perhaps improve on blog topics they’re discussing.
This also lets you know what’s going on in your industry. What’s the latest news and should you be writing about it?
Additionally, you can browse social media for this reason as well. Social media can let you know the pain points of your audience and check-in with what’s going on with your target audience.
Staying up on industry news is one of the best ways to brainstorm blog ideas.
Forsey adds, “When new features become available for a social media platform or tool, there’s often plenty of opportunities to explore new angles there, as well — recently, LinkedIn released its own version of Stories, so perhaps you brainstorm a topic like ‘X Best LinkedIn Stories We’ve Seen’, or ‘LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook Stories: Which is Best?’”
4. Have a checklist of blog topic idea criteria.
Once you’ve created some blog ideas, you should check and make sure each blog post topic is aligned with your overall blog criteria. If you don’t have blog criteria yet, maybe it’s time to set some standards around what each blog topic should cover.
For example, at HubSpot, all our blog posts need to provide value to your blog audience, align with a cluster or lead-gen goal, provide non-organic opportunities, be either trend-responsive or evergreen, and have some keyword opportunities.
5. Stay organized.
You should track your blog ideas in an organized fashion. At HubSpot, we use an idea generation spreadsheet where writers and editors can brainstorm ideas for quarterly clusters, or just write down ongoing ideas.
Ultimately, this process helps keep us organized when it comes to generating consistent blog post ideas.
Jay Fuchs, a blog writer at HubSpot, describes his process. He says, “I try to find topics that reconcile engaging subject matter with practicality when coming up with research or trend-based blog topics. That means finding buzzy, intriguing subject matter that lends itself to an article with a compelling title, interesting supporting materials, and — perhaps most importantly — actionable advice.”
Fuchs explains, “That could mean a piece about something like avoiding common pricing mistakes or sales strategies that will become prominent in the near future. One way or another, you need to pick topics that hook and help — ones that command your reader’s attention and let you make the most of it with insight that they’ll be able to apply, going forward.”
Now that you know the HubSpot process when it comes to generating non-organic blog ideas, let’s dive into the SEO side.
Brainstorming SEO-Optimized Ideas
While Bump and the blog writers brainstorm non-organic ideas, our SEO team is hard at work creating blog topics that have an organic goal in mind. This is their process:
1. Look at your company’s products, goals, and customer base.
To start, HubSpot’s SEO team will review our products, goals, and customer base.
Amanda Kopen, an SEO Strategist at HubSpot, says, “When coming up with blog post ideas, first you need to look at your company’s products, goals, and customer base. At HubSpot, we brainstorm blog posts as they relate to our different products (marketing, sales, service, etc.). Then, we narrow it down to topics where we have expertise but are potential pain points for our customers (social media marketing).”
During this phase, our SEO team is reviewing our personas, prioritizing blog clusters (decided by SEO and lead-gen teams), and brainstorming what would be helpful to our audience.
Additionally, the SEO team will identify large topics, underperforming topics, and old but high-performing topics.
2. Conduct keyword research and run a content gap analysis.
After the initial brainstorm, it’s time to do your keyword research and content gap analysis.
Kopen explains, “Once we have a potential pain point in mind, we use SEO best practices — like conducting keyword research and running content gap analyses — to see exactly what people want to learn about (how often should I post on LinkedIn), and we start writing from there.”
During this part of the process, our SEO team will gather domains with similar audiences and conduct a content gap analysis (find out what these sites are ranking for that HubSpot isn’t).
We’ll also look at related searches on Google to see what people are searching for. Then, we’ll identify opportunities where we can update old blog posts or recycle the URL (so we don’t lose the SEO juice, but have updated content for that topic).
3. See if there are any linking opportunities.
Finally, the SEO team will also communicate with HubSpot’s product and academy teams to see if there are linking opportunities such as any courses or products of ours we should be linking to.
Creating Traffic-Generating Ideas
And that’s how the HubSpot blog comes up with high-performing blog post ideas consistently. To learn more about our process, you can learn how SEO works for the HubSpot Blog with our Insights Report course on HubSpot Academy.

As a marketer, you definitely have a lot of work to do (and not enough time to get it done). You might also feel occasionally struck by writer’s block when it comes to creating fresh, unique content.
Given these challenges, you’re always searching for ways to make your job easier while continuing to produce high-quality content on a regular schedule. Fortunately, content repurposing is here to take some of the weight off your shoulders.
At first glance, content repurposing may seem like a way to cheat the system, but it’s not. You’re reworking your existing, high-quality content and presenting it in a different form on new channels. In this post, we’ll cover the basics of content repurposing, outline the benefits it can bring to your business, and discuss specific strategies to repurpose content you’ve already created. We’ll also talk about how to create new content with future repurposing in mind.

As I mentioned above, content repurposing might feel like a cop-out if you’re unfamiliar with the strategy. You don’t want your audiences to feel like your content is repetitive, or that you don’t care about creating unique content on every channel. You also may think that content repurposing means taking something that someone else has created and reworking it to fit your brand message. Content repurposing is neither of these things. You’re not being repetitive, you’re using content you and your teams have purposely created, giving it new life, and ensuring that all segments of your audience can gain value from what you have to offer.
For more clarity, let’s briefly go over what content repurposing is and what it isn’t.

Content repurposing is…
Content repurposing isn’t…

Sharing an old blog post that you’ve updated with new, relevant data and thought leadership quotes.
Sharing an old blog post on your Twitter profile without updating content for relevancy and simply changing the description. (This could certainly be seen as lazy.)

Taking heavy-hitting key statistics from an Ebook and creating an infographic to post on Twitter.
Taking a news article from another site and editing it to fit your brand or business image. (Technically this could be repurposing, but it’s mostly stealing.)

Creating video clips of podcast recording sessions to post on Instagram to generate hype and excitement for an upcoming episode.
Posting a campaign on different social media channels. (This isn’t repurposing, it’s cross-channel marketing.)

 
Why should I repurpose content?
When repurposing old content, or creating new content with repurposing in mind, you’re saving yourself time. You already have the data to point you towards high-performing pieces of content to reshape and redistribute, or you’re already in the process of creating a blog post that you know will do well as a podcast episode, quote snippet on your Instagram account, or part of an Ebook collection.
Repurposing content can also potentially give you an SEO boost. When you have multiple pieces of content centered around similar targeted keywords, search engine crawlers will generally recognize you as a source of authority. You’re not just creating content for the sake of it — you’re putting out valuable resources, in multiple different forms, that provide value to your users.
Additionally, repurposing content helps you scale, both in terms of content amount and audience reach. Simply creating a blog post gives you a presence, but creating a blog post that can be turned into an email newsletter or a how-to YouTube video gives you three different types of content in one, and a presence on three separate platforms with three separate and diverse audience groups.
The HubSpot Academy’s free content repurposing mini-course discusses the benefits of content repurposing in more depth if you’re interested in learning more.
Given the benefits that it can bring to your marketing efforts, let’s go over various ways to repurpose your content.
How to Repurpose Content
As mentioned above, repurposing content means taking one asset and reusing it somewhere else. If your goal is to repurpose existing content for different channels, start by taking a look at your metrics. Take note of what has performed well, and brainstorm ways to continue to provide value to your different target audiences with the same content in different forms.
If you feel as though there’s no possible way to repurpose the content you have or will have, there probably is a solution. We’ll go over some options below.

 
How To Repurpose Blog Content
If you run a blog, you likely have a significant amount of high-quality blog posts. While it may not seem like there is a way to convert your text-heavy pieces into different formats, there are certainly ways to do so.
1. Create a YouTube video.
How-to posts are great to convert in to visual guides on YouTube, especially with graphics-heavy pieces. Suppose you’re a business that coaches salespeople on mastering a sales call. You can write a script to include in a blog post, but it could also be converted into a YouTube video where an actual salesperson runs through the script.
2. Create a SlideShare.
This is one of the easier ways to repurpose your blog content, as you’re simply converting it into presentation form. Identify a piece of high-performing content, and reproduce it into a SlideShare. SlideShares are beneficial because they’re easily shareable, and it introduces audiences to your words in a different, palatable way. Plus, presentations allow you to incorporate other graphic elements that aren’t always present in long-form blog posts.
Copyblogger, a content marketing company, went this route with one of their high-performing blog posts, as shown in the image below.

3. Create an infographic. 
Have a blog post full of statistics or data? Consider creating an infographic.
Consumers appreciate visuals, so creating a summary of the most hard-hitting statistics from your posts is a new, engaging way to give meaning to your content. You can place these infographics within the blog post, but they can also be repurposed and posted on social media (which we’ll cover below).
4. Create an ebook.
Creating an ebook is a great option for long-form blog content that provides educational value to your audience. In your blog post, you can touch on specific key elements of your subject and offer the ebook as a more in-depth discussion of the content you’ve created. Search Engine Journal, a well-known SEO resource, went this route with their blog post series about Content Marketing. They have ten free-to-access articles about the subject but offer a more in-depth ebook guide.

5. Extract thought leadership quotes.
Do you often recruit industry experts or thought leaders to contribute to your pieces? If you do, you recruit these people because you know they have valuable insight (and your audience will think so as well). Take heavy-hitting quotes from articles and post them on your social media accounts, create infographics, or use them as snippets in email newsletters. Here’s an example from the HubSpot Academy Instagram account.

 

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by HubSpot Academy (@hubspotacademy)

 
6. Create a podcast episode. 
In the same vein as extracting quotes from thought leadership or industry leader posts, consider creating podcasts out of these high-performing posts. You can use the copy as a script, invite thought leaders back for more in-depth discussions of the insight they’ve given for the posts, or simply discuss the blog post in its original form.
So, there are various ways to repurpose your text-heavy blog posts to give them new life and expose their content to different audiences. We’ve briefly mentioned it above, but we’ll cover more examples of repurposing content for social media below.

 
Repurposing Content for Social Media
Social media sites can accommodate many different content types, many of which can be repurposed from your existing content. Let’s go over six options below.
1. Use old images as post backgrounds.
Have high-quality visuals that you’ve only used once? Try using  them as post backgrounds. As long as you’re following the Instagram size requirements, you can use these images as the background for quotes you extract from blog posts or simply post the images on their own to draw audience attention to a past project.
2. Post snippets of existing video content.
Do you have YouTube videos or any type of business-related video content? Post snippets on social media.
Most platforms allow you to post video content, so if you edit it down to fit within their video-length requirements, you can easily repurpose a video for each of the platforms you have a presence on. If you’re hesitant to go this route, or new to video overall, consider the following stats from Wyzol: 86% of video marketers say that video has a high return on investment (ROI), and 85% of businesses already use video as a marketing tool.
3. Post user-generated content.
User-generated content can be anything from reviews on your product pages to one-off tweets from a satisfied customer. Although it may seem like these only provide value in their original channel, they can be repurposed for social media. Here’s an example from beauty brand Black Girl Sunscreen where they’ve used customer reviews in an Instagram video for a new product launch.

 

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by Black Girl Sunscreen (@blackgirlsunscreen)

Here’s an example from Starface, using their Twitter account to Retweet customer testimonials.

absolutely overflowing w cuteness https://t.co/l1NujsmLyP— starface (@starface)
October 22, 2020

4. Repost social media content from your other profiles.
It may seem rather convoluted, but you can repost content from your social media profiles to your other social media profiles.
This could look like taking a screenshot of a Facebook post to share on LinkedIn, a picture of a YouTube thumbnail to promote a new video on your Instagram Story, or a screenshot of a Tweet for your Instagram page. Here’s an example of the latter from Stacey Abrams, former Congressional Representative and Atlanta-based activist.

 

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by Stacey Abrams (@staceyabrams)

5. Create new infographics.
As mentioned before, creating infographics from your existing content is a valuable repurposing strategy, especially when it comes to data.
While your audience can read about your findings in blog posts or ebooks, data visualizations, and visualizations in general, increase the impact of your words. Your audiences quite literally get a picture of the significance of the information you’re giving them, and images are more likely to be retained. In fact, images are 65% more memorable after a period of three days.
The post below is a data infographic from the HubSpot Instagram account.

 

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by HubSpot (@hubspot)

 
6. Extract quotes from existing content.
I mentioned this earlier on, but the strategy of extracting quotes from top-performing content, especially when they contain insight from industry leaders, is particularly impactful on social media channels like Instagram or Twitter. Extract these quotes, create social media posts, and re-use them on all your favorite social platforms.

 
How To Repurpose Webinars and Videos
Webinars and videos are unique forms of content. They’re an exciting way for your users to connect with what you have to offer, but, unfortunately, they aren’t always accessible to all members of your target audience. Thankfully, there are ways to repurpose them so everyone can benefit from what you have to offer. Below, we’ll go over how to repurpose video content to meet the different needs of your audience.
1. Create text transcripts of your videos.
One of the easiest ways to ensure that your videos and webinars are accessible to everyone is to create transcripts. While you can certainly create captions for your content, creating transcripts creates an additional way for your audience members that use Assistive Technology to enjoy what you have to offer.
2. Turn video transcripts into blog posts.
Another benefit to creating transcripts is that they can also be repurposed as blog posts. If you create a scripted video that follows a logical structure, a transcript likely won’t need much editing before it can become a blog post. For example, Moz, an SEO tool, produces a weekly video series called Whiteboard Friday. Each video is its own piece of content but they also use a transcription tool to turn the videos into blog posts.
3. Create a podcast episode.
Aside from accessibility methods, you can also repurpose webinars and videos into podcasts. Simply extract the audio file, use your preferred tool to clean it up (here’s a guide from Adobe), and post it on your preferred podcasting platform.

 
How To Repurpose Podcasts
Many small-to-medium-sized businesses have just recently begun riding the podcast wave. If you’re new to podcasts, or you simply want a refresher, consider checking out HubSpot’s guide to starting a podcast for your business. The resource will teach you how to build your feed, organize content, and market to your target audience.

Podcasts are unique in that they allow creators to connect with their audience on a personal level, as hosts humanize a brand or business with their own personal experiences and anecdotes, often with lighthearted conversations. Podcasts are also a great way to reach younger audiences, specifically Millennials and Generation Z. Given this, let’s go over a few ways to repurpose your podcasts to reach wider audiences.
1. Record your podcast sessions for social media.
One of the draws to podcasts is that they feel human. Use this to your benefit and consider taking video of your recording sessions. When you have upcoming episodes, you can release video snippets on social media to generate excitement in your audience, or simply post snippets of recent episodes. Queen Business, a podcast created by Black women for Black women, does this and posts their snippets on Instagram. They invite well-known guests to participate in the podcasts, which adds an element of excitement to their listeners and followers.

 

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by Queen Business (@thequeenbiz)

 
You can also post full-length sessions on YouTube, or create smaller video snippets of heavy-hitting sections.
2. Pull out quotes for social media.
This has been mentioned multiple times, but pull out relevant quotes for social media, especially if you have invited guests on your show. Quotes from industry experts or celebrities that your audience look up to and view as valuable resources can be posted on different social media platforms, or even within your blog posts.
3. Create transcripts of your podcasts.
Just as you can for your videos and webinars, you can create transcripts of your podcast audio for accessibility purposes and for blog posts. However, it’s important to note that the podcast audio may require more editing than a scripted video or webinar if the conversational tone of your episodes doesn’t mirror your blogging style.
4. Embed your podcasts into your blog posts.
Almost anything can be embedded these days. Not only does it help you share different forms of content, but it’s a great way to provide additional value and context to your users. If you’re a HubSpot CMS user, you can embed podcasts episodes directly into your blog posts. Here’s an example from a HubSpot blog post.

 
Repurpose by Updating Older Content
Let’s face it: things change.
Could some of your older posts use updating? Probably. There may be new developments or advice you can share on a topic you’ve already written about in the past. So, take your old post, make some adjustments and additions, and re-publish it. You shouldn’t have to do a complete overhaul,(although that’s also an option)  just make sure that it appeals to today’s audience.
Another trick is to analyze your content and identify top-performing blog posts. If you notice that a blog article isn’t as up-to-date as it could be but is still generating a ton of traffic, leads, or is ranking highly for a competitive keyword, don’t publish as a new post.
Instead, update the content within the same post so you keep the existing URL and SEO value, and promote the updates you’ve made. Some blogging platforms even allow you to change the publish date, enabling to display it on your blog as a brand new post.
It’s also worth considering updating (or adding new) calls-to-action to articles that are still generating traffic to increase lead generation potential.
You can do the same with Ebooks. Whether you’ve published it last year or five years ago, make some refreshing updates and re-promote it! This will save you the time of creating a blog post or Ebook from scratch while you still obtain the benefits that a new Ebook has to offer.
Should you choose to go this route, consider using UpContent to create email digests and social media posts to share updated, high-performing pieces with your audience (displayed in the gif below).

Leverage Your Existing Content to Drive Further Engagement
All-in-all, as a content creator, you do what you do because you know you can provide value to your audiences. Unfortunately, creating high-quality content doesn’t just happen overnight. It takes time, care, and resources — which can sometimes be a tedious process.
Repurposing your existing content isn’t meant to be an alternative to creating new content, but rather a supplementary strategy. You can continue to create new content while at the same time giving new life to your existing, high-quality pieces and providing your audience with relevant, timeless information.

Whether or not you enjoy public speaking, I’d bet you don’t like hopping on stage without preparing for a speech or keynote address.

Running through slides, practicing in front of a mirror, or pre-writing a script — whatever type of preparation you prefer, it’s key to calming nerves and delivering an engaging, valuable presentation.
The same goes for a webinar. You and your panelists may be at home and behind a screen, but that doesn’t mean webinars are any less important to prepare for (or that they can be any less nerve-wracking).
To help your preparation and quell your nerves, consider writing a webinar script.
Not only will this guarantee your webinar presenters and panelists stay on topic, but it will also ensure you deliver a relevant, actionable webinar that doesn’t waste your audience’s time.

What is a webinar script?
A webinar script is a pre-written dialogue of what you plan to share and teach during your webinar. At a minimum, your webinar script should include an introduction, an agenda of what you and your panelists plan to discuss, the specific points that your panelists will cover, and a closing call-to-action.
Webinar scripts can also include timing details (to ensure your guests don’t veer off course or take time from another presenter), navigational instructions (such as when to share a screen, direct attendees to a certain website, or at what point certain panelists may join or drop off), and certain terms or discussion points to avoid.
Why write a webinar script?
Webinar scripts are valuable because they help keep your webinar valuable. Without proper planning, it’s easy to lose your train of thought due to nervousness, excitement, or perhaps an audience question.
Writing a script for your webinar ahead of time also allows you to decide on the goal of your webinar. Think:

What do you want your audience to learn?
Who do you want to invite to speak that would help teach your audience?
What actions do you want your audience to take during and after your webinar?

By answering these questions before your webinar (and before you write the script), you can tailor your webinar script and angle its speakers and content to stay focused on these deliverables. You can also share your webinar script with your speakers so they have an idea of the presentation flow.
Let’s say I was teaching a webinar on content marketing. There are so many topics and stories I could share — from freelance writing to building a strategy to SEO- vs. non-SEO-driven content.
If I sat down to write my webinar content ahead of time, I’d be forced to face how vast (and ambiguous) just “content marketing” is as a topic. Writing the script would require me to hone the purpose and goal of my webinar, which would then inspire my guest panel and subsequent CTA.
Webinar scripts keep your webinar focused, confident, and audience-centric. Finally, webinar scripts can inspire much of your webinar marketing, saving you significant work for writing up emails, social media copy, and promotional blog posts.
How to Write a Webinar Script
In this section, we’ll talk about what to consider when writing your script. I’ll also touch on when you should certainly use a script, and when a webinar script may be more limiting than liberating.
First, open a blank Google Doc or pull out a fresh notebook. Jot down why you want to run a webinar, what some main points or takeaways you want to feature, and any other ideas you may have. You may see a flow begin to form — what points you’ll open with, how to support your takeaways with panelists or research, and where they may be some gaps you can fill with further brainstorming. Consider this your webinar script “outline.”
(I encourage you to do this in a Google Doc versus slide deck as a slide deck will force you to parse up and order your ideas before you’re ready, which can interfere with the brainstorming process.)
Once you have a script outline, you’re ready to start fleshing out the script. Yes, I mean writing verbatim what you plan to say and what points you want to cover—your webinar talk track. If you’ll have panelists on your webinar, encourage them to do the same as it pertains to their sections.
While you can’t script the Q&A section, writing your webinar content ahead of time also allows you to understand what you plan to cover from start to finish. Therefore, if an audience member asks a question about a topic you know you or a guest speaker will be covering later on, you can ask them to wait versus derailing the presentation.
Now, let’s unpack the important components of a webinar script.
1. Webinar Introduction
The webinar introduction sets the stage (albeit digital) for your whole presentation. The introduction script should include a brief introduction of yourself and your business, explain why you’re equipped to teach, and touch on the webinar agenda — including what speakers your audience can expect to see.
Be sure you thank your audience in the introduction, too. If you plan to ask for audience engagement through polls or the webinar chat feature, make note of that for your attendees and briefly explain how they can participate if they so choose.
2. Webinar Agenda
You might’ve touched on the webinar agenda in your introduction, but this section is your chance to explain more of what your audience members will see and learn. You can break up your webinar into sections (e.g., What, Why, How, etc.) or, if you have guest speakers, outline what your speakers will be discussing.
This is also where you can mention how long each section and/or presentation will take, as well as how much time will be left at the end for questions. As I mentioned before, the goal of your webinar script is to keep your presentation on track and avoid wasting your audience’s time — a webinar agenda will do just that.
3. Webinar Goal and Purpose
Next, feature a section that discusses the “why” of your webinar. Perhaps you have a single, punchy sentence that will grab the attention of your audience. Or, you may choose to feature a bulleted list of ways your audience will benefit from the webinar.
However you choose to present your webinar goal or purpose, be sure to script supporting content to discuss during the section or slide. Don’t forget to mention what your audience can expect after the webinar, too, be it a CTA or bonus for attending.
4. Webinar Educational Content
For your webinar, you may be bringing in panelists, or you may be presenting the webinar alone
If the former applies to your webinar, ask your panelists to script their sections ahead of time and send them over for your review. (You can also provide one of the recommended templates below or share your script as an example.)
If the latter applies, this section is the crux of your webinar script. It contains the valuable, educational information that your audience likely signed up to see. According to how you organized your presentation in the agenda section, develop the talk track for each section — down to the transitions. If you plan to include imagery, engage your audience, or share your screen to demonstrate a concept, make note of these actions in your script.
Don’t forget to incorporate stories and examples in your webinar lessons, as these will help your audience relate your concepts and takeaways to real-life scenarios. If you don’t want your anecdotes to feel too scripted or forced, perhaps make a note where you will tell that story (instead of writing it out word-for-word). This is an example of where a script can limit you.
Tip: If you’ve written blog content about your webinar topic, consider pulling in some of that content and reworking it to fit your lessons and main takeaways.
5. Webinar Conclusion and Q&A
The conclusion to your webinar is crucial; it helps anchor your lessons for your audience and recaps important takeaways. You can also script an engagement activity, such as a short concept quiz or brief feedback session when your attendees can share something new they learned.
This section serves as the TL;DR, so the script should be short and concise, too. After you’ve recapped your presentation, open the floor for questions.
6. Webinar Next Steps and Close
After you and/or your speakers have shared your webinar content and answered any questions, it’s time to wrap up. First, script your closing comments — thanking the audience and sharing any important contact or follow up information.
Then, share the next steps. What would you like your audience to do now that they’ve attended your webinar? Close the webinar presentation with a strong call-to-action and concise instructions on how your audience can follow suit.
Congratulations! You just wrote a webinar script. Now, I have a few final tips for you:

Write your script as you talk, in a conversational tone and with everyday language. It helps to write the script with full sentences so you don’t get lost in a sea of bullet points or fragmented sentences.
Practice your script from top to bottom, verbatim. Time yourself to see if the script is too long. Ask your presenters to do the same with their scripts.
Only when you’ve read your script aloud a few times through should you begin to design your webinar slides. Don’t copy and paste your script to your slides; use the script to inspire important bullets and talking points.

Above, I encouraged you to start with a blank Doc or notebook as a starting point for your webinar script. If you need some help organizing your thoughts and ideas, consider using the following webinar script template as a starting point.
Webinar Script Template
This template serves as an example webinar script — not one to copy and plug the appropriate details. Even if you use this as a starting point, I encourage you to personalize the content to match your presentation, speakers, and audience.
Hello, everyone! Welcome, and thank you for dialing in for our webinar today. My name is [name] and I’m the [role] at [company]. At [company], we help [audience] like you [unique value proposition / product or service mention]. Today, we’ll be discussing [topic] and featuring [speaker], [speaker], and [speaker].
You can expect each speaker to have the floor for about 10 minutes, and we’ll conduct a short Q&A at the end of each session. If you have any questions during the webinar, please type them into the chat window — we’ll address them during the Q&A.
By the end of our time today, we hope you feel more comfortable and confident about [topic]. We’re very passionate about [topic] and have many exciting stories and learnings to share here today. Our goal is to [goal].
We’ll start with [speaker], who will be speaking on [topic]. [speaker] is [details and bio for credibility].
[Insert speaker’s webinar script here when I receive it.]
Thank you, [speaker]! Who has questions for her?
[I read questions from the chat window for the speaker to answer.]
Those are all of our questions. [speaker], anything else you want to touch on before we move onto our next guest?
[All speakers present and take questions.]
Well, that’s all we’ve got for you here today. Thank you for joining [company] to discuss [topic]. We appreciate you signing in and hope you learned [goal].
Before we sign off, I’d love to tell you about [main announcement or call-to-action]. Feel free to reach out to me via email if you’re interested or want to know more. We’ll see you next time!
How much you prepare for your webinar has a direct impact on its quality and benefit to your audience.
Writing a webinar script ahead of time helps you get aligned and focused on your topic, inform your guests of the purpose and flow of your webinar, and practice, practice, practice until you’re confident in your presentation. Use this guide to help you get started writing your next webinar script.