Why do they do it?

Because they think they know how.

They are ‘tech savvy’.

They have a video camera or an iPhone and believe the ‘gurus’ that by putting up something, it’s better than nothing.

WRONG.

Putting up crappy video means your viewers will never turn into callers.

Putting up video that is technically incorrect or has problems means that your viewer will believe that your legal ability is directly correlated to your technical ability.

The correlation has no basis in fact, but your viewer doesn’t know that. In fact, your viewer doesn’t care. Once you’ve made an impression on them, they don’t want to hear more. “Click…next video from the next lawyer…”

It’s true.

Your viewer wants to see a technically proficient video with no glaring problems or distractions. They want your great content. If you fail to give them what they want, they will go elsewhere. Guaranteed.

What can you do to insure that your video is technically good? Make sure you know how to create great quality video. Then you can focus on the message.

How do you create great video?

Simple.

Learn from a colleague who has done it before you. Learn from someone who is willing to teach you. To educate you. Learn from a lawyer who has used video to successfully market his solo practice using online video.

How?

Simple.

Participate in my brand-new online video tutorial program called “Everything I know about video marketing for lawyers at $25,000 off!”

You’ll learn everything that I do, from start to finish. I take you from how to create your content to what equipment to use. I show you where I gets ideas for videos and much more. By joining my brand-new  introductory video tutorial program, you get to follow me, copy me and model my content as your own to create great video to market your law firm online.

Click here to get onto the pre-launch list for my new program designed for the do-it-yourself lawyer who is eager to create video on your own to market your law firm.

No…I’m just an actor who plays a trial lawyer on TV.

No…I’m just impersonating a trial attorney to gain your trust.

No…I have nothing better to do than pretend to be a trial lawyer and I’m asking you to put your trust in me.

What kind of question is that?

It’s ridiculous.

It questions the foundation of what you do as a professional. It’s offensive. It’s objectionable. It’s outrageous. It’s preposterous.

Yet, your consumer, who is searching for a trial lawyer who can solve their legal problem asks just that question.

Why do they ask that question?

Because they don’t really know the answer.

They don’t know that you’ll take offense to the question.

They don’t know what “real” trial lawyers do.

Why not?

Because nobody has ever taught them. The only info they got about real trial lawyers is from watching TV and going to the movies. Maybe they’ve read about trial lawyers in the papers. But that’s it.

So what can you do to change a viewers perception about what real trial lawyers do?

You know what I’m going to say…

You know that I’m going to tell you to create a video about what YOU do as a trial attorney.

Why would I tell you that?

Simple.

I want you to educate and teach your online viewer about what you do and how you do it.

By doing that, you will establish yourself as the expert. It’s that simple.

So go ahead. Create that video. Then send me the link and I’ll be happy to embed your educational video on this blog. Yes, I will. Show your viewers that you’re a real lawyer and how you can help solve their legal problem. I will reward you by putting your video on my blog for all to see.

Special to the Lawyers Video Studio

Johnny B. Goode, Reporter

In my last post, I was listening to Dave talk about the days leading up to his video shoot.

Today, we’re going to explore the day when Dave shot more than 50 videos.

“So Dave, your video shoot day has arrived, tell me what happened,” I inquired.

“The guy showed up at 7:30 a.m. Right on time. He looks exactly like he does on his videos. He sounds exactly like he does in his videos and on the phone. He’s about 5″10″, thin, short cropped hair, glasses and he’s brought with him a lot of video equipment. His cameraman immediately gets to work setting up the light stands and lights. They both take a walk through the entire office pointing out different locations in which to shoot.”

“Our video guide/coach/motivator is really pumped up. His energy level is contagious. I’m kind of nervous. Then he starts going through my content with me while his cameraman is busy setting the equipment up. He’s asking me to start. Ok, I thought, here I go…”

“How did that go?” I asked.

“Terrible. Even though I wasn’t yet on camera, just being in front of him was somewhat intimidating. I mean, here’s a guy who has done over 600 videos and he’s the expert. I’m starting to talk and already fumbling my words.”

“What did he do to help you?”

“First thing he did was made me feel good about myself. He calmed me down immediately. Ironically, I knew my content, but as soon as he showed up with his cameraman and the equipment and now I had an audience, that threw me off track.”

“He then took me through the first few videos I was planning to do. After each one, he made suggestions to make it even better. He suggested I change my titles. He pointed out how to improve my presentation. This was all done on the fly as I was going through the initial videos.”

“What happened then?” I asked.

“Once that was done, the camera guy was busy making adjustments on the camera and doing a few tests to make sure everything was working well. Then our coach made me feel great. Lots of encouragement. The energy level was high. My confidence level was high.”

“My first video almost went off without a hitch. Until I stumbled half-way through. That shook my confidence momentarily. He got me back on track and I finished up the video in about 2 minutes. With each video after that, I felt more confident and self-assured.”

“How did you feel by mid-morning?”

“My partners were watching me from the beginning. They wanted to see how I’d do. Remember, now I had an audience. It’s weird having an audience watching and listening at first, but then I got so into talking about my content I totally forgot about everyone watching. I was in the zone. By mid-morning I had a groove. I figured out how to present my content, my intro, the substance, my close and my call to action that it actually felt comfortable.”

“How many videos did you get done that day?” I asked.

“I did 20. My partners did 18 and 22. That’s a total of 60. I couldn’t believe we did that many.”

“How did you feel by the end of the day?” I wanted to know.

“We actually felt really good. Tired but good. Pleased with ourselves for having accomplished our goal. Really pleased that we had signed up for his total online video program. There’s no way we ever could have done this ourselves. There was no way we would have motivated ourselves to get this done if he hadn’t been part of the process and pushed us, motivated us and shown up on the day of our shoot to help us.”

“By the way…who is this guy you’ve been referring to? Let’s give him a proper name,” I said.

“What, you don’t know him? He’s all over the internet. He dominates his online marketing in the most competitive place in the country. If you search for lawyer video marketing online, you will find his content, articles, blog posts, videos and more. He’s Gerry Oginski. A lawyer, just like me.”

“Thanks Dave. Join me next time when we talk to Alex, the Do-It-Yourself Attorney in my continuing series of A Tale of Two Lawyers.”

Special to the Lawyers Video Studio

Johnny B. Goode, Reporter

“That mastermind call with him was so helpful and informative. The ideas he gave us started us thinking about the different ways we could use this content. In the middle of the call, I was furiously writing down an entire list of things to talk about in my videos.

Then he said something that made me smile. He said we could use this content not just for our videos but for all the other marketing we do as well.”

“Why did it make you smile?” I asked.

“Because I had never thought about using content from one form of marketing and then use it in another. I smiled because it was so simple and obvious and being a thick-headed attorney focusing on the practice of law, never even thought about that concept.”

“Can you give me a concrete example, without giving away any secrets?” I wanted to know.

“Sure. Let’s say my topic was about who gets custody in a divorce case here in Denver. I could create my content for my video. Then I can use similar content in a blog post. Then I can re-purpose that content and turn it into a full-length article. Then I can chop up that content and use it on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. So with one idea, I will now have multiple sources of content all leading back into my main website.”

“What else did you learn on this mastermind call?”

“I learned how to introduce myself. I had no idea there was a reason behind the method. This guy made it look so easy and smooth in his videos. He explained the psychology behind his methods. He taught us what worked and importantly, what didn’t. You know, I have to tell you that learning about what doesn’t work is often more important than knowing what does.”

“Do you think you received good value from your investment with this mastermind call?”

“Definitely. My partners and I learned things we never knew before. That learning experience was worth the entire investment. But this was just the beginning. We knew that this lawyer was going to be flying out to our office and spend the entire day with us shooting our videos. If we got stuck, he’d be there to help us. If we couldn’t come up with a topic, he would suggest one.”

“Did you think you’d be able to do all 50 videos in one day?” I asked.

“We didn’t know. Since the three of us would be splitting the number of videos we did, it wasn’t that big of a challenge. The biggest issue for us was finding the time to practice our content before the video shoot. In the weeks leading up to the shoot, the attorney required that we send him our outlines to make sure we were creating our content. He told us during our mastermind call that if we did not prepare our content and did not practice, he would cancel our video shoot.”

“He said that if we didn’t send the outlines and practice he would cancel the shoot and we’d be responsible for all of his travel expenses and three days of shutting down his law office to travel here and shoot video with us. This was not an idle threat. We knew that since we were making a significant investment we didn’t want to waste his time or ours. This actually motivated us to create those outlines and practice.”

Find out what Dave meant when he said he’d practice…in my next post.

Special to the Lawyers Video Studio

Johnny B. Goode, Reporter

Picking up from where we last left off, Dave, the Done-For-You lawyer was explaining the best marketing strategy call he had ever had.

“While on this call, I quickly realized that there is no way I’m going to spend my time and energy to learn a new trade. I don’t want to be a video expert. I want to practice law. I don’t want to waste my time buying a video camera and figuring out the hundreds of steps necessary to put together a really good video that someone will watch. It’s just not my thing.”

“Why don’t you just use your iPhone to shoot video?” I asked.

“Are you kidding? Hold it in my hand, freestyle? Shoot a video in a room without lights? Not use the proper microphone to get good audio? Sorry, that’s just not going to work for me. I mean, we’re lawyers! We’re professionals. We have an image to keep. Do you think my clients want to see me using my iPhone to tell them about their divorce proceedings and custody battle while I’m sitting in a noisy Starbucks? I don’t.”

“My kids use their iPhone to take ridiculous video of their friends. That’s not the impression I want to make with video. I need something professional with great production value.

“What happened next?” I gently asked.

“I asked this fellow attorney what we need to talk about in our videos. He laughed. He said we know exactly what to talk about. In fact, he said we talk about it every day to every new client and existing client. I asked him how do we package it together in a way that’s concise, interesting, compelling and makes a viewer want to watch and then call us?”

“What did he say to that?” I asked.

“He said that’s exactly what he teaches lawyers in his Video Marketing program. He shows us what to talk about; what our clients need to know. He tells us how to create a great introduction and video close. He explains what we should wear and why we need a call to action. He helps us how to talk. Can you believe it? One lawyer helping another lawyer teach us how to talk on camera? Sounds ridiculous, right? Well, when I heard him explain it, there was nothing ridiculous about it.”

“In fact, when he described the process of teaching us all these things, I immediately realized he knew a ton of stuff that we didn’t. So get this…here’s this successful trial lawyer in New York who has used video to market his solo law firm. He’s now on the phone with me teaching me things I had no idea about. He’s honestly trying to help me and my partners learn to market ourselves better than we ever had before.”

“He’s still not trying to sell you anything?” I asked incredulously.

“Nothing. He’s helping us. This strategy call alone is worth thousands of dollars, and the best part is, it didn’t cost me a dime. I’m learning all this information. This guy has opened my eyes to marketing opportunities we just had not seen. I didn’t even realize it, but my partners and I were looking at each other. Each of us came to the obvious realization that we needed his help.”

Find out what happened next in my continuing series of “A Tale of Two Lawyers.”

Special to the Lawyers Video Studio

Johnny B. Goode, Reporter

Continuing this series, I last left off in Part 2…

“Is that it?” I asked.

“No. My partners and I joined a live webinar that this New York trial lawyer gave online. It was fascinating. He went beyond his lecture at the legal marketing seminar. The interesting thing about this guy is that he wasn’t selling anything at all. He was simply teaching us how and why video marketing works. He was explaining how he was using it and how he was helping other lawyers in every practice area use video to stand out from the crowd.”

“At the end of his webinar he asked if anyone would be interested in learning even more. My partners and I were really interested in learning more. We knew that our clients were going online and that video was the wave of the future. But heck, we just didn’t want to become videographers or video editing geeks; we just wanted to practice law.”

“What did you do next?”

“We scheduled a call with this guy. My partners and I wanted to learn more.”

“What did you expect to happen on that call?”

“To be honest, I expected this to be a sales pitch. I don’t like sales pitches and was not in the mood to be sold anything. I just wanted more information.”

“What happened on the call?”

“What happened was that call turned into the best marketing strategy call we’ve ever had. It wasn’t a sales pitch at all. Here was a concerned lawyer who had done all this great marketing and was trying to help us identify what we were and were not doing. He asked us really probing questions about why we weren’t doing a newsletter; why we didn’t have more FAQ’s. Why weren’t we using social media. The more we talked about what we weren’t doing, the more I realized how many opportunities we were missing.”

“I really started to appreciate the insight this lawyer had. He had the greatest respect for our time and every question and comment he made tried to maximize our efforts to do what we do best, which is practice law.”

“Didn’t this guy try to sell you anything?” I asked.

“Nope.”

“Didn’t you want to learn what he was selling and if it could help your law firm?”

“Sure I did. But a funny thing happened. We were so involved in discussing our current marketing efforts and getting tips and strategies while on the call that we almost forgot about the video program we called to learn about.”

“After about 45 minutes I finally asked if we could learn about his Total Online Video Success Marketing program. He laughed and also said he’d forgotten that’s why we called him. You see, before getting on the call with him, he sent us a lot of reading material that explained his program in detail. The only thing missing from those informative emails was the investment.”

“So, what happened next?” I asked.

To learn what happened next, join me in my next installment of this special report. Till next time!

Who's calling please?

Try this experiment.

Set up your video camera on your receptionist who answers your phone. Don’t tell her. Let the video record about an hour. Play it back in the evening while you’re decompressing after a long day. Pay attention to how the phone is answered, what is said and importantly how it’s said.

The person who answers your phone is the face of your law firm. Literally. That person (or persons) is the front line of who you are. If you have not properly trained this receptionist and are simply leaving it to chance that you will get a great encounter, you’re missing a key understanding of what they do.

A receptionist is more than just a live answering machine. A receptionist develops relationships with your clients. She (or he) greets them when they walk into the office. A savvy receptionist will get to know all the deliverymen, UPS, Fedex, etc.

When a potential client calls your office, you need to make them feel special. You need to make them feel like their case is the only one in the world for you. You need to give them a great initial phone experience.

Tell me if this conversation, which happened to me today, gives you that wow feeling:

Scene: [Gerry calling doctor's office]

Action: Waiting 30 seconds for someone to pick up. Finally, a harried sounding elderly woman answers and says curtly, “Hello. Please hold on…” [I am put on hold for 6 minutes. No music, no time announced to wait. Nothing. I hang up, knowing I have better things to do.]

Action: [Redialing doctor's office 30 minutes later]

Same woman answers after 45 seconds of phone ringing and simply says “Can you hold?”

“No I can’t. I was waiting 6 minutes before and nobody picked up,” I reply.

“Is this an emergency?” she asks in a frustrated tone as if I’m bothering her.

“No,” I reply.

“Well, I’ll connect you to the assistant’s voicemail,” she says.

“No. The doctor specifically told me to call back and leave this message for him.”

[Hmph she mutters.] “Ok,” sounding dejected that she actually has to write a message and hand it to someone. “What’s the message?”

I tell her the message, which took no more than 10 seconds to relay to her and she simply said “Fine,” and hung up.

Does that conversation make you feel all warm and fuzzy?

Not me. I thought I was imagining it. So, I asked my 9 year old who was in the car with me and heard everything on speakerphone, what he thought.

He said “She should be fired or re-trained.” I agreed.

I wonder…do you think I should tell my doctor about this interaction and how it’s affecting his business?

Imagine if I were a new patient. The receptionist’s actions reflect 100% upon the doctor. Is this the impression you want to give your new potential clients?

Listen in to your receptionist and make sure they’re not making the same mistakes I just told you about.

I have said it before. You need to engage your viewers in a conversation. Looking at YouTube’s new analytics tool, one of the ways YouTube judges how relevant your videos are, are by the number and quality of comments on your videos.

That means that a lot of companies that promise to get people’s videos ranked highly are going to be very unhappy when they realize the quality of their comments are insufficient to help their client’s videos rank higher.

You can tell almost instantly when somebody leaves a robotic spammy comment. Typically, it says something like “Great content. Just love it. Keep up the great work.”

That comment offers no useful information and doesn’t engage the creator of that video or promote any real substantive conversation. There are people who actually pay others to generate comments like those for a few pennies apiece. Make sure you stay away from offers like those.

People who are genuinely interested in the content you’re talking about will ask you real questions with real problems. If you engage your viewer by responding in a thoughtful and educational manner you will, organically, improve the relevancy of your video content.

Of course, neither YouTube nor Google share their algorithms with the general public, and they change it often. However with the new tools YouTube just made available, you get to see a full analytics suite for your entire video channel.

Don’t just glance at the number of comments you receive. Instead, you should actually take a few moments to read those comments or have someone assigned every few days to read and respond.

If your good friend sent you an e-mail asking you a question, you wouldn’t ignore them would you? If a potential consumer is sitting at your desk and asked you a question, you’re not going to get up and walk away without answering, right?

Stop ignoring people, pay attention to what they have to say and then respond.

Being part of online social media means that you must be social. For many of you this will be difficult. For many of you, you will not want to engage. That’s okay. However, just remember being on social networks means that you need to engage and learn about others. Through laws of reciprocity, people will naturally want to know about you.

Once you begin helping others, with no expectation of a reciprocal payback, you will soon recognize what it truly means to give of yourself. You also recognize that you can help transform others by providing useful information to people who need your services.

What type of comments do people leave on your videos?

Gerry Oginski, Esq. "I created 15 videos this week and uploaded 5."

“I love these videos. They’re so informative and great to watch. I love this insight. Keep it coming, I appreciate it.” From a viewer on YouTube. Have you received comments like that?

You already know that the search engines reward websites for fresh new content.

You also know that by uploading fresh new video content your website gets rewarded in the search engines as well. Knowing that information, there is no excuse not to be uploading fresh new video content on a regular basis.

I know all the excuses.

“I’m too busy practicing law to create video.”

“I get most of my business from referrals, and don’t need to create video.”

“I know I need it, but I simply don’t have the time, knowledge or equipment to create video.”

“I have a handful of videos already online, why do I need more?”

“My competitors have totally dominated the online market. There’s no way I could ever compete with them.”

All of these excuses have some validity. The more I speak to lawyers across the country about video marketing, the more I realize that there are only two kinds of lawyers. There are lawyers who like to make excuses and there are lawyers who implement what they learn in order to market their practice.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the group of lawyers who like to make excuses are the ones who  blame the economy for their troubles, for their clientele and everybody but themselves. Those lawyers fail to hold themselves accountable for their actions. They fail to recognize their responsibility to their law firms and to their families by investing in themselves in order to market their law firm.

The lawyers who implement are the ones who take action after learning about different tips and strategies on how to improve their marketing. Those are the lawyers who recognize that the practice of law is not what it used to be. Lawyers no longer have to rely on the “old boys network” to generate cases. We also do not have to rely on the typical forms of ‘me-too’ advertising.

While referrals will always be the best form of generating new cases, video marketing should be one of the key tools you should be implementing in order to generate interest and calls to your office. By now, you should know the key reasons.

Viewers get to see you, hear you and begin to trust you before they ever come into your office when you use video to market your law firm.

It is no longer sufficient to create a handful of videos and rest on your laurels. YouTube has proven that businesses, entrepreneurs and start-ups benefit greatly from continuous fresh new content on their video channel.

You can no longer be content with having five or ten videos on YouTube. You need to develop a following, get people interested in your content and use YouTube as a social community to engage your viewers with useful content that you have to offer. Failing to do this will cause you to lose great opportunities that your competitors will eagerly take advantage of.

Remember, there are two ways to create video. The first is to do it all on your own. The second is to hire an experienced video marketing company to help you do it.

HELP FOR THE DO-IT-YOURSELF ATTORNEY

If you would like help learning how to do this all on your own, I encourage you to look for next month’s release of our brand-new introductory program designed specifically for the do-it-yourself attorney. Click here to sign up for the pre-release info and special offer: It’s called “Secrets of Lawyer Video Marketing in the Age of YouTube…at $25,000 Off!”

HELP FOR THE ATTORNEY WHO WANTS A DONE-FOR-YOU VIDEO PROGRAM

For those lawyers who are looking for an experienced video marketing program to help motivate you and eliminate all the effort associated with doing this all on your own, then you need look no further. What you need to do is to pick up the phone and call my production manager Kathleen to set up a phone conference with me, at 1-800-320-4314 or by e-mail at Kathleen@lawyersvideostudio.com. We welcome your call.

This Tiger is Interested in Food; Sigfried & Roy's Secret Garden at Mirage Hotel, Las Vegas

The answer is simple.

First you have ask questions.

Second, you have to listen to the answers.

Third, you have to ask more questions.

Fourth, you have to have empathy. If you have no empathy, nobody will want to tell you their problems.

Fifth, you must not be judgmental. We all know people (some friends) who are very judgmental about what you do and do not do. There are well-meaning parents, friends and relatives who do not hesitate to tell you what they think of your action or inaction.

Sixth, you have to have knowledge about how to help. You have to have experience helping someone with their problem.

Seventh, you have to be sincere.

Follow those 7 principles and you’ll get plenty of people interested in what you have to say.

Advanced tip: Figure out how to use those 7 principles in a video and you’ll have really good content that your viewers will want to listen to.