By Gerry Oginski, Esq.
HOW TO DISTINGUISH YOURSELF WITH VIDEO
In my opinion, online video is the only way to distinguish yourself from all of your competitors. A video tells a viewer who you are; what you are; how you speak; how confident you are; what you look like; what you sound like, and whether you know enough to convince a potential client to call and ask you questions.
Ask any website company what they think of online videos for lawyers and I guarantee they will tell you that it is the hottest tool to connect viewers with you. Website companies are now scrambling to get lawyers onto video. Why? Because it is the best way to distinguish yourself from every other lawyer.
Why else? These website companies see big money in creating video for lawyers. But there’s a big catch that you need to know about before getting sucked into that cycle that the yellow pages reps use to generate nice commissions. “Just do one video…that’s all you need. Really. It’s not that expensive. People will love you…”
Well, here we go again…it’s the same merry-go-round with the company reps. The next year, they’ll call and tell you that you need another video. You plead with the rep that this video barely brought in any emails or calls. “Why should I spend even more money, when this one video did nothing for me?” you ask aggressively.
The website rep says carefully, “Believe me…do another video; get better visibility; it gets your name out there…” Yes, it gets your video out there into the netherworld of the internet goo…never to be found again, except maybe for your cousin or best friend who feels bad that you have only 6 views of your video. (You did not want to tell him that of those six video plays, you viewed your own video four times.)
WHAT’S THE SOLUTION?
Before I tell you the solution, I have to explain the problem with many website companies that are going to ask for your advertising dollars. Right now, there are a handful of website design companies that have created video teams to put lawyers on video. I will confess and tell you that many of these companies, who I will name later, have excellent products. The videos they create are top notch, very professional looking and sounding, and any lawyer would be proud to have a video from these companies.
What’s the problem then?
The main problem is the length of time and cost to create these videos. The other problem is that what you get for your money is usually very few video clips. Yes, these companies create a beautiful video player you can put on your website. Yes, the quality of the videos are beautiful. Yes, the attorneys are well rehearsed, and appear natural in the videos. So? What’s the problem?
To understand the problem, I need to explain how video is created, produced and uploaded. Then, you’ll see the problem and the solution.
VIDEO PRE-PRODUCTION
This phase involves strategy with the lawyer to determine what they want to talk about and how to best get their points across. Before any videotaping is done, you need to put pen to paper and identify at least five key points you want to get across to your viewer. You need to think about information that a potential client wants to know. Not what you want to tell them. That’s a significant difference. Most website video producers fail to recognize this key point. Many attorney videos discuss how long the attorney has been in practice; how many different areas of law they practice; where they went to school; blah, blah, blah. In my opinion, this is just filler for the website company to bill you for useless video time. Really. A potential client does not really care about this- for the most part.
What a potential client wants to know while searching for an attorney online is whether YOU CAN HELP SOLVE THEIR PROBLEM. That’s it. If you can explain to them that you can solve their problem, you’re half-way there to getting them to call you, instead of your major competitor.
You should also ask yourself what questions do new clients typically ask you when they first come into your office for a consultation? You know you have ‘stock’ answers that you give to every potential client when they ask the same question. Guess what? Those frequently asked questions and the answers to those questions will form the basis for creating your first “set” of videos.
I say “set” of videos, because once you do one video shoot, you will want to do multiple video shoots, since you begin to realize that you have so much more information to put in a video and to put online. More on this later.
Once you have identified your topics and your FAQ’s that you want to explain, you need to watch a few videos of other lawyers to see how you might want to do your video. For example, there is an interview style, where you are looking away from the camera, as if someone is interviewing you while you answer. Another format is to look directly at the camera, as if you are talking one-on-one to the viewer.
I’ve had the opportunity to view hundreds of lawyer videos while researching online video, and I currently write a feature for Technolawyer Blog, where I review lawyer videos called “YouLaw” which comes out every two weeks. To see a recent review, go to http://blog.technolawyer.com/2008/10/youlaw-law-offi.html. To see them all, sign up for free at www.Technolawyer.com.
To find different attorney videos, go to http://www.YouTube.com and type in “Medical Malpractice lawyers,” or “Criminal defense lawyers,” or “Real estate lawyers,” or whatever your specialty is. Take a few minutes to become a movie critic and look carefully not just at the style, but also at the substance. Stay away from the 30 second video clips that are nothing more than commercials. They’re useless.
Think like a potential client. Pretend you’re looking for a lawyer in your specialty and have lots of questions but do not know which attorney is best for you, or which attorney can answer your questions. When you start thinking like a potential client, you’ll soon start to realize what is wrong with 99% of all lawyer videos currently online.
This completes the pre-production stage.
Join me for the next installment of this article when we look at PRODUCTION and POST-PRODUCTION of Attorney videos.
About Gerry:
Gerry Oginski is a New York medical malpractice, wrongful death and personal injury trial lawyer practicing law in the State of New York. He’s been in practice since 1988 and has currently created and uploaded over 120 educational video tips on medical malpractice and injury law for consumers to view.
Gerry is a prolific writer and in addition to publishing informative articles online, he is an “Expert Author” at www.Ezinearticles.com, and writes a regular column called YouLaw, devoted entirely to evaluating lawyer videos.
Potential clients call Gerry after watching his videos, not only to thank him for providing the information, but asking for more.
Gerry is available to help you create your educational online videos and can be reached at 516-487-8207, or lawmed10[at]yahoo.com.
