Framing Your Video Shot, Negev Desert, Israel

I am creating an introductory program to help you, guide you and teach you everything I do to create educational video to market your law firm. My new intro program is a step-by-step guide showing you exactly what I do. Hey, if I can do it as a solo NY Medical Malpractice attorney, so can you.

I walk you through exactly what I do from how I develop ideas for my videos to actually setting up my equipment and what equipment I use. I teach you different ideas about how to  create compelling content. Remember, it’s not the equipment that matters. It’s your content.

This program will be have different video modules including the pre-production phase, which is THE MOST IMPORTANT part of any video. That’s where I develop all of my ideas.  After that, you will learn all about the production phase, which is the actual video shoot. In this module I take you through the details of what I do, how many videos I shoot in one sitting and why.

The next video module jumps right into post production which is also known as the editing phase. I walk you through exactly what I do and how I edit my videos. You’ll follow me as I edit a video and show you the myriad of steps needed to complete one video. Once you’ve edited your video, you then enter the publishing phase which includes optimizing, creating keywords tags and uploading to various video sharing sites.

WHY

I created this brand-new introductory program because lawyers wanted to learn how to do this themselves. There are some very eager do-it-yourself attorneys who did not want to invest in a trusted video marketing program to have someone do it all for them. This program is for the do-it-yourself attorney who wants to learn how to do all this on their own.

This video training course literally shows you what I do so that you can model your efforts on what I do to create new video.

WHO IS THIS FOR?

If you are an attorney who takes action and implements what you learn, and you want to learn how to do this yourself, then this video training program is perfect for you. If however you tend not to implement and simply absorb and learn, then my best recommendation is that this program is not for you.

This video training is designed for the attorney who is willing to go out and implement what you will learn from my training. The only other way to learn this information is if you were to follow me around and sit by my side from start to finish. Since that is not going to happen, this is the perfect opportunity for me to show you exactly what I do.

When you choose to invest in my brand-new introductory program, you have an obligation. You owe it to yourself, your family and your law firm to take action. If you are going to invest the time, resources and energy to learn how to create video on your own, like I do, then your obligation is to immediately begin to implement and model what you have learned in your own practice.

If you fail to take action, then you are doing yourself a disservice. This program is only for people who are willing to take action and put those ideas into motion. So counselor, are you a little closer to the attorney who is eager and willing to take action or are you a little closer to the attorney who looks for a solution, finds the answer and then takes no action?

WHEN WILL IT BE AVAILABLE?

Look here in the the Lawyers Video Studio for pre-release announcements.

I have over 600 videos on YouTube. Good videos with educational content.

Last night, I couldn’t access the website at all. Nothing. Nada. It’s as if it wasn’t even online.

Scary thought.

I tried my iPhone, same result. Tried another computer. Same result. Tried Google. That website was working without a problem. Tried accessing YouTube videos from Facebook. That worked.

When I tried clicking through from Facebook directly to YouTube…nothing worked.

DANGER

Imagine what would happen if your great educational videos were all on YouTube. You then took the embed codes from YouTube and scattered them all over your website. Viewers loved your videos on your website.

Imagine that you only put your videos on YouTube and that’s where they were all hosted.

Then imagine that YouTube suddenly went down. No explanation, no rhyme or reason. You just couldn’t access the website. You had no info about why there was no access or service. Your website has blank rectangles where your wonderful videos once resided.

What do you do?

To be quite honest…you’d be screwed.

That’s exactly why you need to host your videos privately when you post them to your website.

I love YouTube. It’s a great website. However, it’s a free video sharing site.

I cannot explain why I cannot access YouTube tonight. I have no idea how long this will continue. Regardless, I have no real worries since the videos on my website are hosted privately. Make sure your videos are too.

YouTube Screen Shot

This is the coolest comment I have ever received from one of my videos.

You can see the screen shot to the right here.

The video: TESTICULAR TORSION

Views: 11,897

Comments: 86

In this video I discuss a case I handled involving a young boy. The doctors failed to timely diagnose a twisting of his testicle, also known as testicular torsion.

As a result, the doctors missed the window of opportunity to correct the twist. The blood supply had been cut off for too long causing the testicle to die.

In this video comment, this man actually said “…I had only six hours to live, but I made it through by surgery. Now I know what this was thanks to you…”

That is absolutely awesome. Who knew that an educational video, designed to help teach my ideal client and consumers could actually help someone with that particular condition. That is really, really cool.

I have also received comments in some of my videos where the viewer will start by saying “Thank you doctor for providing…”

I don’t play a doctor on TV or pretend to be one. Every one of my videos starts out by telling the viewer that I’m a NY Medical Malpractice & Personal Injury Trial attorney.

When a viewer leaves a comment on your YouTube video, make sure you thank them. It’s a common courtesy that generates good will.

This comment left a smile on my face all day.

My computer had only 41 GB of hard drive storage left. I was trying to find out where I was losing so much hard drive space. The answer for me was obvious. Editing video takes up an enormous amount of resources on my hard drive. That is why I have multiple external hard drives.

However, when I upload videos from my memory card to the computer, they typically will go on to the computer hard drive. Once I began editing, that always gets saved to my external hard drive.

If you are editing your own videos, chances are good that your editing software will create backup files every time you make a change to your video. Those backup files will be large and will gobble up enormous amounts of hard drive space. When you process and render each video, you are doing so at the highest quality which generates an enormous file. Some of my rough videos are in excess of 1 GB. This is absolutely enormous and clearly not useful for the purposes of uploading online.

That is why you must use software that compress large video files without losing quality.

This morning I identified almost 60 video files that were sitting as backup files on my computer hard drive. Almost every one of them was 1 to 6 GB in size. That was the culprit.

I immediately checked to make sure I had final versions on my external hard drive. Then I highlighted all those extra video files and dragged it to the trash bin. That took all of 7 seconds. When I went to empty the trash bin, I gained in excess of 100 GB of hard drive space.

I felt like a tremendous burden had just been removed from my backpack.

Check your backup files to see which ones you no longer need. Caveat: make sure you have finalized your file first before you remove your backup files, otherwise your editing software may be searching for that file while you are editing and processing. If you discard it midway, you may have a problem.

If you choose to edit your own videos, you’ll need multiple external hard drives. Make sure the hard drive you purchase is reliable and has in excess of 1TB storage.

Testing the Video Camera on the Left

Anytime you get a new piece of video equipment, the “newest,” “greatest,” “best,” “most advanced” equipment ever…you’ve got to play with it and test it.

The problem with testing is that you are never quite sure what quality you’re going to get until you fully test it.

I recently bought a new video camera to replace the one I was using. This had all the features I was looking for. A great lens, shallow depth of field, precision controls. I loved the way it looked and felt.

The problem was in the details. The settings were different than what I was used to. The frame rate was different. I was using a class 10 SDHC memory card, and the camera would not allow me to to shoot at the highest quality setting in the AVC HD codec. The purpose of getting this camera was to be able to shoot at the highest quality setting.

Once I tried to put the footage onto my computer, I noticed Error messages coming up while using Final Cut Express, my editing software. Weird errors. Never-before-seen error messages. This was not good.

I changed the settings, then everything worked fine. I changed them again and everything worked beautifully when playing back in the camera. The problem was getting my editing software to recognize the new settings. Still no good. Had to go to online forums to see if others had experienced a similar problem. I had to learn if there was a workaround to fix this.

What’s the lesson here?

Often, getting the newest, best or most updated piece of electronic equipment may not always be the best solution for your problems. Stick with what works and what you have before running out and getting the next best thing.

Behind the scenes in the Lawyers Video Studio…click the play button below.

In today’s video, we see a very creative way to make a $35 teleprompter. While watching the video, ask yourself if this is really worth your effort?

Frankly, I was exhausted watching all the time, energy and effort needed to literally construct the prompter from scratch. Even if I had all the tools needed, there’s no way I’d spend all that time and effort to create this.

My feeling is that as an attorney, you should work from outlines and never a script. Scripting is way too stilted and unless you’re a pro, it just doesn’t look and appear natural. What do you think? Let me know below.

Lawyers Video Studio

This is the concluding blog post in this series…

5. Video has marginal benefit and does not justify the cost

He’s right. For someone who does not understand how to use video; both tactically and strategically, I will agree with that video has marginal benefit.

On the other hand, let me give you a quick example of some of the benefits I have personally seen from using video to market my solo practice in the most competitive market in the country.

• $5.1 million settlement, brain-damaged baby case
• $1 million settlement failure to diagnose
• $495,000 settlement wrongful death from foot surgery
• $300,000 fall from bed resulting in trauma and death

This is just a tiny sampling of cases I have obtained from people who have come to me with valid cases because they watched my videos. My videos were the driving force that compelled them to pick up the phone and call me instead of my competitors.

For those lawyers and marketing experts who believe that video marketing doesn’t work, I’m going to tell them that they are right. It doesn’t work. It will not work for you or your law firm.

Instead, those lawyers and marketing experts should keep focusing on other methods to generate clients and traffic and leave the video marketing to people who understand how to use it effectively with proven results.

If you have your own video marketing myths that you’ve heard, leave them below. I’d love to see them!

Lawyers Video Studio

This is a continuing series addressing video marketing myths…

3. Video is not cost-effective for a small firm

It was clear to me that this expert did not understand the production costs involved with creating a video marketing campaign. He did not understand the value associated with creating 50 or 100 videos. He did not recognize that once videos are online, there is virtually zero cost associated with having them online and using it to drive traffic to your website.

It sounded as if this marketing guru was using TV-based production to determine the cost benefit analysis. That type of corporate mentality inhibits big law firms from using effective and proven techniques to generate traffic.

As a solo practitioner, video marketing has created the best return on investment for me. I did allude to some of the cases I have obtained because of my video marketing. In response, he justified the fact that my website was well optimized, that my videos were well optimized and that my particular niche is better suited for business to consumer video than his corporate attorneys.

Once again, I felt like it was talking to a brick wall. Despite pointing out that video marketing works for every niche category in law, this marketer was resolute and firmly believed that the return on investment for a small firm would not justify the expense.

After a while, I stopped participating in the discussion. I recognized instead that this was an opportunity for me. The opportunity is that they are many legal marketers with a corporate mentality who actually believe this stuff. That means that there is plenty of room within the video marketing community to help other lawyers who truly “get it” and use it to their advantage.

4. Viewers to our website do not watch these videos

This marketing guy actually cited statistics showing that people who came to his lawyers’ website were not watching the videos. I am proud that he was tracking his statistics. However, in my opinion he does not understand the purpose of creating video to market a law firm online.

The purpose of creating educational video is not to get viewers to watch the video on your website. Instead, the purpose is to get people to see you, hear you and begin to trust you before they ever pick up the phone to come into your office. By educating them through video, on video sharing sites, your goal is to then drive them into your website so they can become even more familiar with you.

The bottom line goal of creating these educational messages is to build trust and to convert an online viewer into a caller. Using video messages happens to be the best way to do that.

This discussion thread clearly suggested that the majority of people going online already know your name and your law firm and are going onto your website to learn more about you.

I didn’t want to tell him that he was wrong. Nor did I want to remind him that online viewers who are searching for an attorney online simply do not care about you or your law firm. The only thing they care about is themselves and their legal problem.

If you can get rid of the egocentric mindset that is so prevalent among lawyers and legal marketers and instead focus on how you can help potential client, you are much more likely to attract viewers and visitors.

Join me in my next blog post as I conclude this series of video marketing myths.

1.  

   

   Lawyers Video Studio

   Video marketing for lawyers does not work in the business-to-business category

    

2. Our clients don’t go onto YouTube to search for a lawyer

3. Video is not cost-effective for small firm

4. Viewers coming to our attorney websites simply do not watch the videos

5. Video has marginal benefit and does not justify the cost

The content for this series of articles came directly from a conversation I was having online among legal marketers. A question was posed about whether video is useful to market an attorney online. The thread was mostly positive. However, one legal marketer believed each of the following myths listed above. Despite my best efforts to educate him, he still believed that he was right and I was wrong.

It got to the point where I felt like I was arguing with a religious fundamentalist. Although this legal marketer had some good points, his observations made absolutely no sense from a legal marketing standpoint.

Being a marketing student of Dan Kennedy, there is an inside joke among members of Glazer-Kennedy Insider’s Circle that goes like this. “This tip, tactic or strategy couldn’t work for me because I’m in the XYZ business.”

The old “My business is different” excuse simply has no place in marketing. In fact, you can adapt pretty much any marketing tip to apply to your business since we are all doing the same exact thing; we are marketing our business or service. It doesn’t matter what your business or service is.

Let’s get right into and demystify the myths above.
MYTH #1

Video marketing for lawyers does not work in B2B

For someone to say that video marketing does not work in a particular category because it is a business-to-business category is 100% incorrect. Video marketing works in every single category, in every single niche.

That comment suggests the same type of closed-minded thinking mentioned above. It also tells me that this marketing guy did not know how to use video effectively for the B2B market.

When somebody claims a particular tactic or strategy does not work, they are often not using it properly. In the discussion, I explained there could be many reasons why a video may not work.

Some common examples include:

• A poorly worded title
• The video may not have been search engine optimized
• The attorney who was in the video may be boring
• The video quality may be poor
• There may be distractions within the video that turn off a viewer
• The content, though important may not be compelling
• There may be no call to action

All of these things can impact whether a video is found, watched and ultimately converts a viewer into a caller.

If you do not understand these basic concepts you will continue to scratch your head and claim that video marketing simply does not work.

MYTH #2

Our clients do not go on to YouTube to search for an attorney

To be fair, this person stated correctly that the best type of clients are ones who come from direct referrals. I agree with that 100%. It appears that most of his attorney clients are corporate and they get many of their clients from general counsel and other attorneys. His point was that those people are not going on to YouTube to search for a lawyer.

In some instances, that statement may be correct. However, YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world directly behind Google. People of all walks of life use YouTube to search for information. They do so because they don’t want to read text. They want to see, hear and listen.

This expert assumed that YouTube would only be used by consumers and a younger demographic and there was no way YouTube could be useful for his attorneys. That type of thinking is closed minded and simply untrue. GC’s looking to investigate a new attorney will definitely explore the law firm’s website. They will do a general search and a specific search.

Videos show up in the general search results and if an attorney targets the content that GC’s are looking for, they stand a better chance of being found than their competitors who have static websites.

Join me for my next blog post, where I debunk even more video marketing myths.

Lawyers Video Studio

I’m proud to say that every single week this year I have posted 3 blog posts: Monday, Wednesday and Friday for a total of 156 blog posts in one year. That’s just awesome. Great content for a great audience.

You, my audience, have rewarded me with great comments and personal interactions that have taught me much and shared with me your concerns and video marketing problems.

Throughout the year I have provided useful content and information to help you become a better video marketer and a marketing student in order to take your business to the next level.

Here’s a list of my 10 best blog posts for the year 2011.

Enjoy your reading and may you and your families have a wonderful and prosperous new year!

1. Attorney Video: How To Choose a Video Producer
2. Should You Use Your iPhone To Shoot Attorney Video
3. Lawyer Video Marketing: Being Different Makes All the Difference
4. Why I Shoot Video on Vacation
5. Our Video Program Is Right for You, But Are You Right For Us?
6. Burn Victim Comes Into Office Saying “I Feel Like I Already Know You
7. Lawyer Marketing: TV Ads v. Online Video- Part 5
8. Bob Parsons® 16 Rules for Success in Business and Life in General
9. 3 FAQ’S About the Lawyers Video Studio That Will Blow You Away
10. The Power of Being Small; An Observation From Israel