Last night I received a memorable voicemail from a woman who wanted to speak to me. Something about a catheter being left inside of her when she had her surgery. She left her name, phone number and best time to call her.
So what’s the big deal? Not what she said in her voice mail, but what she didn’t say. Importantly, it’s what I heard in between what she was saying that was amazing.
Dave Kaminski of Web Video University does an excellent job of reviewing the Canon t2i DLSR camera. Here’s my question:
You’re an attorney who wants to create video. You want a camera that will last for years. You want the latest technology. You don’t want to spend a fortune. The choices of video cameras are overwhelming. SD or HD? Hard disc or tape-based? Pocket Flip camera or Kodak Zi8? $500 camcorder or a prosumer model costing $1,500?
I want to introduce you to two really smart attorneys who are implementing the ideas and methods that I teach and turning them into action.
The first attorney is Steve Gacovino, from Gacovino and Lake Associates in Sayville New York. He and his partner Ed Lake handle mass tort litigation, product liability cases and personal-injury in New York.
PRODUCTION
This is it. The video shoot. A team of people come in and take over your office. They’re setting up lighting, setting up their video camera, plugging in electrical devices, setting up sound equipment and microphones. If they’re really good, it will take them about 20-30 minutes to set up their equipment. It takes me 10-15 minutes when I do my video shoots.
Then there is the calibration of lighting and sound checks to make sure everything works properly. You must do a white balance calibration in order for the camera to know what is really white. The camera then adjusts all other colors accordingly. If you do not set your white balance, I guarantee your video will come out dark and the results will be poor.
Do you?
You know how to press “Record” on your flip camera, right? You know not to shoot in low-level light, right? You know not to use your on-board microphone, right? You know how to set your white balance, even on your little handy video camera like your Kodak Zi8, right?
Excellent. Then why aren’t you creating video to market your law practice? If you are, why aren’t those viewers calling your office? What are they waiting for, a personal invitation? Are your viewers really expecting you to reach through the computer screen and physically pull them into your office? Get real.
I opened up my e-mail today and noticed an interesting headline in my Google alerts. The headline read “When Black Ice Strikes, Who’s to Blame?”
I was even more curious because it had my name and website listed under the headline. I knew that I didn’t write a blog post with that name or a video with that title. I was intrigued.
The website URL was the New York Times online blog. I clicked on the link which took me to the New York Times online site. The blog post was all about black ice and how dangerous it is in New York City. Further into the article the writer mentioned a video I made titled “Slip and fall on snow and ice-who is at fault?” and some of the comments I made in my video.
“What did you say?”
“You sound like you’re in a tunnel.”
“You sound like you’re in the toilet.”
“You sound tinny.”
“Your audio seems like it was made with a child’s toy microphone.”
In this video I give a “State of Affairs” commentary about online attorney marketing from 2009. In the next series of Fireside chats you’ll see more commentary about how attorneys need to engage their viewers more and leave behind the old ways of ‘marketing’ themselves with traditional forms of advertising.
You can do it for Google search. You can also do it for video as well. The question is: Should you?
Lawyers who use pay-per-click are literally paying rent to be on the right-side of Google search results, or at the top of the page with the yellow background. Many of these firms are nowhere to be found in the organic search results. What does that mean? If you stop paying rent, nobody will find your website.
I used to use a dry cleaner near my home that I would have to drive to in order to get my clothes dry cleaned. They were a big operation. Very impersonal. The front desk staff changed often and nobody ever knew who I was despite the fact I had been using them for more than 10 years. Well, this dry cleaner went out of business, and I needed to look elsewhere for my dry cleaner needs.
