What are the “Best Practices” for Law Firm Marketing Videos?
At this point, there are no generally accepted “best practices.” If you take a random sample of YouTube channels published by lawyers, you will see a wide variety of approaches, including:
image videos – lavishly produced (i.e., expensive) and designed to show the lawyer as a caring human as well as a fierce advocate
minimally produced videos – shaky footage often recorded using a smart phone, and often with the lawyer talking while driving in a car.
off camera gaze videos – these seem to be a favorite of phone book companies who now offer video production – 60 to 90 second videos of a lawyer looking off camera and explaining how he “fights for your rights”
lawyer at his desk videos with bad sound – in these videos, a lawyer sits behind his desk and talks for too long about a complex legal topic but you can’t hear him anyway because he is not using an external microphone
TV commercial upload – this is where a lawyer will upload his 30 second TV commercials to YouTube.
Computer voice animations – this is where someone (probably a lead broker) creates a cartoon video promoting personal injury or bankruptcy using a computer generated text to speech audio track.
As you continue your survey of YouTube you will also run across dead channels in which the last video released was from 5 years ago and you will see semi-dead channels with 5 or 6 videos total from the past year or two.
You probably would not be surprised to learn that we are not a fan of any of these approaches because they don’t work to make your phone ring. Instead our experience shows that 3 to 10 minute educational videos generate engagement, interaction and appreciation from both potential clients and from your professional network.