1. Your yellow pages, classified ads, billboards, lawyer directories and TV advertising is bringing you tons and tons of business.

If this is your situation, then you are probably the most savvy lawyer in the Country. I wish you the best of luck. However, if you’re like most attorneys, you are looking for cost-effective and ethical ways to market your law practice. I will tell you from personal experience that creating video is the best return on investment in any advertising media anywhere.

The great benefit of creating an educational video is that you create it once, and it can be watched hundreds and thousands of times all for the same exact price. You can’t do that with any other form of attorney marketing.

2. You don’t know the first thing about making a video and getting it online.

This is a valid concern for many lawyers. That’s why you hire a professional who has experience creating attorney video. Let them do it all for you. This way, you don’t have to worry about the technical aspect of what camera to use, what lighting to use, how to work the wireless microphone, how to calibrate your white balance and sound, how to get that video footage onto your computer, how to edit the raw footage, how to add transitions, how to add graphics, how to add background music, how to compress your video, how to get it into the right format, and then how to upload it to the video sharing sites and how to optimize the video for the search engines.

3. You think online video is just for teenagers.

That’s pre-MTV thinking. Online video is watched by over 100 million viewers a month! Not just YouTube either. Video is key to market yourself. If you don’t get started now, when will you start?

My advice, don’t wait. Take that first step right now.

About Gerry

Gerry is a New York medical malpractice and personal injury trial lawyer in practice for over 20 years. He has produced and created over 170 educational and informative videos to help consumers understand how lawsuits work in the State of New York. Gerry created the Lawyers’ Video Studio to help laywers get onto video. To see how he can help get you onto video call him at 516-487-8207 or by email at lawmed10@yahoo.com- he welcomes your call.

I found this video from Morrison & Wagner while looking for a newly uploaded attorney video. I watched it once. Then twice, then three times. A few days later, I came back to it again after reading the lawyer section of my local Yellow Pages. I couldn’t believe the similarities.

All the Yellow Pages ads say basically the same thing:

“Have you been injured?”
“Free consultation”
“Free parking”
“No fee unless successful”
“Over 60 years combined experience”

To read the full review, click here.

You’ve shot an hour of video. You’re going to create 4-5 usable video clips from that video shoot.
You then shoot another hour of video. Yet you forget to change your clothes. A viewer does not want to see you wearing the same thing in every singe video clip. It gets dull and boring. Don’t believe me? Try watching most attorney’s video clips that were done in sequence.

Change your clothes!

Have a great day.

Gerry

You’ve shot an hour of video. You’re going to create 4-5 usable video clips from that video shoot.
You then shoot another hour of video. Yet you forget to change your clothes. A viewer does not want to see you wearing the same thing in every singe video clip. It gets dull and boring. Don’t believe me? Try watching most attorney’s video clips that were done in sequence.

Change your clothes!

Have a great day.

Gerry

Why do lawyers still insist on creating video in their cars? I just wrote a YouLaw review on this which will go live in 2 weeks which skewers the entire concept of creating video in your moving car.

Here’s a hint: The lawyer should have been pulled over for DWV (a new crime I created called Driving While Videotaping) and wrote about this a few wks ago when an attorney was ordering food at a fast food restaurant while taping a video.

Now, comes another one: Bankruptcy Lawyer on the go. UGHH!

Watch this video, and tell me, if you were a consumer looking for an attorney, would you consider this guy to be your “go-to” expert? Would he be the one you put your trust and faith in to answer all of your legal questions and problems? Let me know, I want feedback.

Gerry

Think video has no place in a lawyers’ marketing message?
Think nobody watches video?
Think potential clients don’t watch videos online?
If you answered “Yes” to any of those questions, you’re wrong.

Watch the video to find out why.

1. Static websites are out.

In case you haven’t noticed, websites that do not interact with a viewer quickly lose the attention of someone searching for an attorney. Unless you can immediately provide a viewer with the information they are looking for, they will go elsewhere.

2. Yellow Pages are out.

If you still haven’t figured it out yet, the Yellow Pages has long been out of favor as Web 2.0 and social networking have consumed the online world. Most people today go online to look for information, and there are fewer and fewer people still using the antique yellow pages to find an attorney.

3. Lawyer directories are long gone.

Five years ago, lawyer directories were used to scam lawyers into giving up their hard earned money so they could sit on a list with 8000 other lawyers. The problem was that no website viewer was able to distinguish one lawyer from any other. You were just another name on a list that proved useless.

4. Static blogs are not interactive.

Most attorney blogs are not interactive. They tend to shout at you instead of educating you. An attorney blog that does not have video fails to utilize the best tool online to interact with a website viewer. Viewers want to be able to interact with you, and really do not want to see pictures of buildings or cityscapes or courthouses.

5. Video allows a viewer to see you.

Photographs are nice, but video is so much better. A viewer can see you. They can watch you talk. They can watch your expression. They can see how you dress. They can see the office you’re in. They can learn a lot about you after watching only a few moments of video.

Think about it this way: when you are purchasing an item online don’t you want to see what it is you’re going to get before you make that purchase? If you’ve never held that product in your hand, aren’t you more inclined to buy the product if you see a video about it or someone talking about the product?

6. Video allows the viewer to hear you.

There is no substitute for allowing a viewer to hear you. Podcasts are great, but most people are not going to download your audio podcast if they don’t know you. By combining both audio and video you create the best of both worlds. Video gives the viewer a preview of how you sound and what they will hear if they pick up the phone to call you or make an appointment to come in and see you.

7. Video allows a viewer to see how confident you are.

If you are knowledgeable, you will come across as confident. A video will portray you as being an expert in your field. A viewer is much more likely to call someone that they perceive as an expert compared to someone who has very little experience handling their particular legal problem. Video is the best way to achieve this before a viewer ever comes into your office.

8. Video allows a viewer to begin to trust you before they ever pick up the phone to call you.

How do you develop trust with someone you have never met before? With video. By explaining to a viewer who you are, what you do and how you can help solve their problem, you come across as the “go to person” for a website viewer.

9. Video allows you to begin a conversation that allows the viewer to raise their hand and ask for more information.

The goal of creating an attorney video is not to sell your legal services. Instead, it is to educate a potential client and engage them in a line of thought that will compel them to pick up the phone and call you. 99.9% of attorneys fail to recognize this important point.

Think back to the last time you went to a car showroom to buy a car. Did the salesman try and sell you a car, or did the salesman try to educate you about the car he was selling?

If you come across as a salesman, no one will pick up the phone to call you. Educate a viewer, and you are much more likely to get that telephone call than your competitor.

10. Video is interactive.

A video is the next best thing to being there. Admittedly, it is a one way interaction. Short of having a two way video conversation, video allows you to interact with your viewer in their private space and during their private time. Create a video one time, and have it watched by thousands.

CONCLUSION

Lawyers who fail to take advantage of creating attorney video lose the opportunity to be ranked highly in the video search engines, and lose the opportunity for potential clients who are searching for lawyers online to find you. Don’t get lost in all the social networking hype about what lawyers must do in order to properly market themselves in today’s economy. Instead, focus on the information you can provide to potential consumers using the best tool currently available: Video.

To star in your own videos, and learn how to distinguish yourself from all other attorneys, call me. I have a turn-key system that will get you onto video in the most cost-effective way possible.

Don’t just take my word for it, read what other attorneys have to say about my video work:

Fairfax Virginia Personal Injury Lawyer Ben Glass, says

“Gerry Oginski is the master of online video. If you have not seen his videos, you should. He’s done more videos than any lawyer out there. The big edge that Gerry has over his competition is that his videos allow consumers to get to ‘know’ him before they even pick up the phone. His use of video on his website and his video blog is amazing.”

Susan Cartier Liebel, creator of Solo Practice University says “Gerry has the aptitude and technical savvy to create compelling, engaging and highly professional videos to get potential clients to pick up the phone. Educational marketing through video is the future. Gerry is your teacher.”

New Jersey Attorney Victor J. Medina, host of the Macs In the Law Office Podcast says “Gerry is the best-known resource for video for lawyers on the Internet.”   

I get requests every day to follow someone I have never heard of on Twitter. I then scroll down to see how many followers they have and how many people they are following. Many of these people have followers ranging from 5000 all the way up to 75,000 followers.

Here’s my question: these people don’t know me, and I certainly don’t know them. When I tweet about attorney video, I am 100% certain that they will never read my Tweet.

The race to accumulate as many followers as possible and compete with the next person to see who can have the most followers, solely to claim the “prize” of saying you have the most followers in any particular field serves absolutely no purpose from an attorney marketing standpoint.

I strongly believe that if you are going to develop a regular following, you need to offer quality content and not seek to compete on quantity. The number of people following you has no bearing on your success.

Want to be popular? Go ahead and click that “follow” button. Just remember most of those people don’t want to know what you have to say nor do they care what you have to say. Focus instead on quality.

In this video you will learn four reasons why it is so important for attorneys to create educational and informative videos. Creating educational video is the key to getting a website viewer to cool you instead of your competitor. Having a static website is no longer sufficient to distinguish you from all of your competitors. A video allows you to distinguish yourself.

Creating attorney video allows the viewer to get to know you before they ever walk into your office. It allows the viewer to hear you, see you and begin to trust you before they even pick up the phone to call.

Watch the video to find out why you should be on video today.

(Production comment: I was taping this in the lobby of our hotel in Naples Florida. That’s why my voice is somewhat muted and I’m not loud and boisterous. I didn’t want to attract too much attention while taping. Also, you’ll notice other sounds in the background from the Lobby. So, why tape in the hotel lobby? Because it’s different; because I had some time to myself to create a video.)

I see people creating attorney “videos” with nothing more than a slide show with accompanying audio. Many times these glorified slide shows don’t even show a picture of the attorney who is talking. Instead, they show photos of crashed cars, people in wheelchairs, the outside of a hospital, an ambulance or a police car.

If you really want to create a bond with your website viewer, you’ll skip the slide show and create a real, honest-to-goodness video of yourself. Using a real camcorder.

A viewer does not want to see non-descript photos, with some voice in the background. They want to see the lawyer, they want to hear the lawyer, and they want to feel confident that you know what you’re talking about. A slide-show animation with your voice in the background just doesn’t cut it.

Your best bet? Use the web to your advantage. Use the video; use the audio; and give your viewer what they want to see and hear. Doing that will far surpass any slide show.