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What Should You Talk About When Recording Law Firm Marketing Videos?

By Jonathan Ginsberg on April 8, 2020 0

As you prepare for a video recording session, you may find yourself with writer’s block. What exactly should you talk about in your educational marketing videos?

If you survey lawyers’ channel on YouTube you will find dozens of FAQ style videos, where the lawyer is attempting to explain what statutes or case law say about a specific issue. These FAQ style videos are useful to a point but they should not make up the majority of the topics you discuss on video.

Instead, I have discovered that the most popular videos on my law firm’s channels are what I call “insight videos.” In an insight video you explain the “how” and the why. Leave the “what” to your FAQ videos. I generally recommend that FAQ style videos should make up no more than 25% to 30% of your catalog of videos. The rest should reflect your insight, experiences and observations. [Read more…] about What Should You Talk About When Recording Law Firm Marketing Videos?

Why Legal Video Marketing is About More than Sharing Information

By Jonathan Ginsberg on April 7, 2020 0

As lawyers, most of us are very analytical people. In law school moot court, our professors taught us to see both sides of an issue regardless of our personal biases and to passionately argue for the plaintiff at 1pm and the defendant at 1:30. Law school courses were and are designed to help us identify the “black letter” law in case law reports written by judges in different jurisdictions, in different eras.

In our law practices, most of us have focused on one or two practice areas and we have become very skilled in guiding clients down a specific path. Time is quite literally money so we are very bottom line people.

This analytical way of thinking, unfortunately, is not very effective when preparing and recording educational videos. When you survey law firm YouTube channels, you will inevitably see videos displaying an uncomfortable looking lawyer in a tight collar spouting complex legal jargon in lengthy lecture style videos.

I have even seen videos where the lawyer is standing in front of a white board with a pointer as if he was presenting to a CLE or law school class. In another video I saw recently, the presenting lawyer urged his viewers to grab a pen and paper to take notes.

Needless to say, your videos will not be effective if you treat them like lectures that you might give at a CLE presentation.

Don’t be a Lecturer of the Law

Your potential clients are not lawyers or law students and legal jargon will confuse them unless you clearly and patiently explain an important term of art.

I don’t think you need to go so far as to assume that your online audience is made up of people with an 8th grade education but you have to make your presentations understandable and practical. Speak slowly and give examples. Pretend that you are explaining your topic to your spouse’s best friend or to a non-lawyer at a cocktail party.

Further, your videos need to do more than serve as a forum for you to reveal information. In an effective video you are presenting yourself as a sincere, generous, caring and knowledgeable advocate – in that order. [Read more…] about Why Legal Video Marketing is About More than Sharing Information

Should You be Concerned that Your Video Marketing Gives Too Much Away?

By Jonathan Ginsberg on April 7, 2020 0

If you have looked at my Social Security disability YouTube channel, you will see that I have posted over 300 videos offering my insight about how I approach specific types of cases, tips on winning a case early, the forms I use to obtain support from treating physicians and many other videos containing practical advice about how to win a case.

Frequently when colleagues and attorneys looking for advice about video marketing ask me if I am concerned that I might be giving too much away. After all, if I am revealing specifics about how I win cases, what would stop a potential client from using my information to represent himself at a hearing, and am I not educating my competitors?

While I understand these concerns, I believe that the benefit of offering detailed and actionable information far outweighs the downside of possibly losing cases to pro se claimants or even competitors. Here’s why: [Read more…] about Should You be Concerned that Your Video Marketing Gives Too Much Away?

How do I Optimize my Videos?

By Jonathan Ginsberg on April 6, 2020 0

If you expect to have success using video to market your law firm, you have to do more than upload a few videos to YouTube.

Ideally, your video creation process should be part of a well thought out process so that in a short period of time your viewers will know, like and trust you. Each video should serve to position you as the authority in your practice area and location. You want your prospective clients to subscribe to your channel, consume all of your videos, and engage with your via comments. At that point, when they call or email, you are a known and trusted adviser.

This process of adding written descriptions to your video and adding “tags” that will help search engines find your video and associate it with the search phrases potential clients enter into their browsers is called “optimization.” As far as artificial intelligence has come, we video marketers must make our videos findable. [Read more…] about How do I Optimize my Videos?

Should You Make Major Changes to Your Law Practice In Response to the Coronavirus Crisis?

By Jonathan Ginsberg on April 5, 2020 0

The COVID-19 coronavirus crisis of 2020 is a unique event in American history. Literally, our economy went from full steam ahead and close to full employment to about 80% shutdown within less than a month.

In this article, we’ll discuss what you should do about your law firm marketing both in the short term and in the six to twelve month period to come. Continuing business as usual will waste your valuable marketing dollars and not get you the results you need.

What is the Outlook for the Next Twelve to Eighteen Months?

Currently – as of early April, 2020 – governors is most states have issued “shelter in place” orders and entire industries have been shut down. Transportation, hospitality, retail, personal service, food service and many others are either closed or operating with skeleton staffs.

We are being told that anti-viral medications and vaccines are being tested but whether we will be able to reopen the economy in six weeks or eighteen months is unknown. Therefore you should plan for the worst, i.e., an eighteen month slowdown but be prepared to ramp up your marketing sooner if conditions so allow.

Like other businesses, this crisis will negatively impact attorneys, certainly in the short term. If you handle accident injury work, your business will slow down because fewer people are driving. If you handle domestic relations, your potential clients are not likely to have the money to pay legal fees. Many types of litigation are stayed and because the courts are closed, there will be no jury trials. [Read more…] about Should You Make Major Changes to Your Law Practice In Response to the Coronavirus Crisis?