That was the recurring theme at Chris Munley’s ATLAS seminar in Naples, Florida. Chris said it very clearly. “Adapt or your law firm will become obsolete.”

Don’t believe me?
Remember when carbon paper was the standard in law firms along with the IBM Selectric typewriter? How many law firms do you know use carbon paper today? (That’s where the cc: came from at the end of your letters; carbon copy).

How about the 8-track player? My dad bought me one when I was 13. It was the coolest thing at the time. I thought that would be the musical standard forever. How many people do you know have 8-track players today? Or cassette tapes, or vinyl phonograph records, or a rotary dial phone? Nobody.

Are you getting the idea? Adapt or become extinct like dinosaurs.

“How exactly do I adapt?”

Are you using traditional forms of attorney advertising? If so, you risk becoming obsolete. At a time when thousands of lawyers are without jobs, you need to understand how consumers search and find you.

Today, they rarely use the yellow pages. Instead, most use Google. That’s a fact, and it’s not going to change any time soon. When they search for an attorney online, what is the best way to communicate your message to them?

According to a Pew research study, 66% of all adults prefer to watch video instead of reading text. 32% of adults prefer text. That means twice as many people watch video as read text. If you create an educational message on video that answers your viewers questions, who do you think is more likely to get a call for more information? You, or your competitor who fails to provide them any useful information either through text or video.

The best way to adapt, stay relevant and ahead of the curve is with video. It’s a no-brainer. Embrace video. Your potential clients expect you to be on it.

ATTORNEY BIO; TO VIDEO OR NOT?

There’s a lot of noise going on in the chat rooms on LinkedIn and some legal marketing sites debating the merits creating an attorney video bio. Big law firms are eager to get their attorneys to create a video biography about their credentials; who they are and where they came from. The midsize firms tend to position themselves on both sides of the fence and the solo practitioners see a video biography as totally useless.

So Mr. or Mrs. Attorney; Which side of the fence are you more closely aligned with? Do you feel that having a video resume on your website is useful? Or are you closer to the solo practitioners who feel that nobody will watch a video that talks about yourself?

The people who advocate that lawyers should have a video resume are typically marketing officers for large law firms. They feel that prospective clients who are looking to hire attorneys in a large firm want to see who the attorney is that they will be hiring. They believe that a video bio is the ideal place to highlight that information. What do you think?

Here’s the basic premise:

Lawyer Jones is good at what he does. He’s experienced and want to generate more calls to his office. He learned that creating video is a great way to do show off who he is and show he’s an expert. His chief marketing officer tells him that his bio page is the highest clicked-on page on their website. Therefore, he must create a video about himself since that’s what people want to see.

Well Mr. or Mrs. Attorney? Do you agree? Do you think that general counsel want to see a video on the attorney biography page? Do you think they want to hear a recitation of where the attorney went to school, what awards he or she won, where they clerked and a verbal recitation of the different jobs they held before their current position?

I am often amused when I see marketing officers for midsize and large law firms strongly advocate creating video to post on their biography pages of their website. Most do not focus on creating educational video, but rather feel the necessity to put lawyers on video to show their credentials. What do you think?

I’ll tell you what I think (as if you didn’t think I’d tell you…)

I think lawyers in large law firms and midsize firms should continue to create video for their biography pages. I think the advice that they are paying for is excellent and will allow them to continue believing that video on the bio page is useful. Personally, I think it’s a total waste of time, money and energy to create a video that talks about yourself. In my opinion, the only people who want to see you talk about yourself is the marketing people who convince you to do this. If you make your family and colleagues watch your bio video, I guarantee you it will come back to haunt you in spades.

Here’s the bottom line

People going online to search for an attorney simply don’t care about you or your credentials. The one exception might be for a savvy general counsel who wants to see how you are different from your colleague at another big law firm. For the most part, your ideal client does not care whether you went to an Ivy League law school, clerked for a federal judge, was on law review, or won the moot court competition for the country. The only question they want answered is “Can you help me solve my problem?” I guarantee that your video biography will not answer that question.

So, to answer the question in the title, “Should you create a video bio?” In my opinion, absolutely not. Tell me if you agree or not and give me your reasons. Thanks for reading!

Viewers Leaving Comments

Many people believe that if a consumer leaves a bad review on their website, they should immediately remove it so other online visitors don’t see it. I totally disagree.

Think about why you created a website to begin with; to put information online to let viewers see who you are and what you have to offer. Think about why social networking is so popular today. We have instant communication with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. If you think about why social networking is so popular you’d understand it’s because people are having conversations with each other about their lives, products and services.

It would be nice if everybody’s product and service was 100% perfect and had the best customer service in the world. The reality is that not everybody offers up great content or a great quality product. As a consumer, you want honest reviews of a product or service you intend on buying.

I have seen only a handful of companies successfully deal with negative reviews and comments on their websites. Those companies are to be congratulated for not trying to censor comments made by real-time customers and clients.

The best way to handle negative reviews and comments from your video is to engage that person in a conversation that the world can see. You have the ability and opportunity to explain, not just to this viewer, but anybody who comes to watch your video and reads the comments why this person’s point of view was totally incorrect. On the other hand, you may actually agree with the reviewer’s critique. I suggest that if you do agree with the negative comment, tell your viewers that and explain why.

By engaging in the conversation you have the ability to show that you are listening; that you care about the comments people leave and understand enough to explain why their point of view may be inaccurate. If the comment is spam or has no other purpose other than to defame or slander you, then it should be removed. However, if the viewer offers an honest critique then you should do everything possible to politely respond with a detailed explanation.

This is exactly what happened with a video I created involving a medical malpractice case I recently handled. A doctor commented on my video and was extremely harsh. He claimed that he did not believe my client’s story since he practiced that type of medicine and that type of problem was not evidence of medical negligence. He also claimed, after listening to my 3 minute video, that my client’s injuries could not have resulted from the wrongdoing I talked about in the video. My initial gut reaction when reading his critical review was one of disbelief and anger. I thought “How could he possibly say this? He wasn’t there! He didn’t read the medical records. He didn’t see the comments and reviews by his colleagues- medical experts that the patient had consulted on his own, that clearly showed there were departures from good care resulting in permanent injury.”

However, I recognized that this was the perfect opportunity to educate this physician about why my client’s case had merit; why his own medical colleagues were the ones who determined the case had merit (I was not the one who decided); and why my client’s injuries were permanent and life-altering. In fact, I even went so far as to invite the doctor to write a detailed guest blog post about his thoughts and his area of specialty to explain to my viewers his opinions. I even offered to put this blog post on my website. As of today, he has declined to take me up on this offer.

Engage your viewers in a conversation and you’ll understand what they are thinking.

How Many Lawyers Do You Know Own a Yacht Like This?

You advertise, right?
You use TV, radio, newspaper ads, display ads, classified ads. You hold seminars and you develop a large referral base. Yet for some reason, you struggle to get those large, high value cases? Why is that?

Many times I have been in the lawyers lounge in Court and hear attorneys complaining. What’s their complaint? “If only I had a few million-dollar cases, then I would be on easy street.” Then they conveniently point to very successful law firms who appear to get these multimillion dollar cases out of thin air and look upon them with jealousy.

If only they learned to figure out why those cases are attracted to those particular law firms like flies on a flytrap.

The obvious answer is that they are excellent attorneys who get excellent results. Success always breeds more success. Lawyers in the community recognize and reward lawyers who have extraordinary success. However, a consumer searching for an attorney may not have access to the same information about which lawyers are so successful.

Think about it. Why are those lawyers so successful, and others are not? If you had a file cabinet full of high-value multimillion dollar cases, I’m sure that you would be able to generate significant legal fees and achieve remarkable success simply by applying your knowledge and skill to the cases you handle.

Many attorneys fail to recognize that the marketing they are currently doing do not specifically target those high-value cases. Instead, they choose to use a shotgun approach and target all types of cases and their specialty. To give you a perfect example, imagine a personal injury attorney who markets himself as an accident lawyer who handles all types of accidents including slip and fall cases, dog bite cases, property damage cases, product liability cases, car accident cases, etc. That type of marketing simply dilutes your message.

A TV ad often doesn’t focus on one type of case (unless it’s a pharmaceutical case involving a medication that was taken off the market, or asbestos). A Yellow Pages ad all too often fails to target high-value cases, and instead adopts the one-size-fits-all approach.

When I ask attorneys why they aren’t getting those high-value cases, their answers revert to those marketing methods of successful firms.

However, there is a way that you can market to those high target and high-value clients and consumers. There is a way that you can craft and create a message that is highly-targeted and focuses only on those individual high-value cases. I won’t keep you in suspense any longer… the way to do that is by using education-based video to market your targeted message.

What does that mean? It means that you can create a series of videos addressed to your most profitable and highly targeted potential client. It means that you can provide information to people who may ultimately have a high-value case. There is no other form of attorney advertising that allows you to do as with video.

Video has the best return on your investment. Create a video once, put it up online and have it watched it 10 times or 100,000 times. The cost to have it watched one time or one million times is the same: NOTHING. You can’t say that about any other form of attorney advertising.

Mindset:

When you create a specific marketing message on video, that message is available for your ideal client who is actively searching for that information. That is totally different than typical attorney advertising which basically shouts out to the world that you have a service that a consumer may need at some point in the future. That shift in mindset is significant. Lawyers who fail to recognize how significant it is will clearly lose the ability to properly focus on their ideal client and high-value cases.

To learn more about how video can help improve your bottom line and target those high-value cases, I encourage you to call me for a free 30 minute phone consultation at 516-487-8207, where you will also receive a free copy of my book “How really smart lawyers are using video on the web to get more clients.” I look forward to your call.

In the “old days,” the answer would have been absolutely.

In the old days, you would have put your content onto an audio cassette, preferably Memorex or some other high quality audio tape. You might even have tried to put an audio message onto an eight-track tape. Going back even further, if you had the money, you could have tried to put your audio message on a 33 RPM record. Ahh…those were the good old days.

Well, the cassette tape along with the eight track tape have gone out the window. Film cameras have become antiques along with vinyl records. CDs and DVDs were the next hottest media to arrive. Everyone went from having a VHS VCR to having CD players. Then, DVDs came along with the much-hyped blue-ray. Standard definition video is so “old school” since now everything is high-definition video.

Studies have shown that consumers have moved away from the CD and DVD format for listening and watching content and instead prefer having instant access going online for the same information. Not many people really want to be in front of the TV and pop open their DVD player to sit down to watch a DVD. Instead, they want to sit in front of their computer, login to a website and be able to pick and choose whatever content they want at whatever pace they want.

That brings me back to my original question in the title. As an attorney who markets to consumers who raise their hand asking for information, should you still continue to put your content on CD or DVD? As with most typical lawyer answers, this one is a definite “maybe.”

Duplicating your content onto a CD or DVD is inexpensive. There are fulfillment houses all over the Internet that will eagerly duplicate your material and then send them out to wherever your potential clients reside. However, as more of the population joins Facebook and goes online for their daily dose of information, you have to wonder whether a CD or DVD in your box of stuff is worthwhile. I know some attorneys who would argue that they should throw it in there. Others would say “Give your prospective clients access to your attorney portal where they can listen and watch you talk about whatever it is you want to tell them.”

My opinion? Just like yellow pages and lawyer directories have become less relevant in today’s age of social media, I believe that CDs and DVDs are likewise becoming less relevant every day. Having said that, it does not mean that they are useless. Each form of media has its place, and your goal is to figure out how to use them creatively to help you stand out from the crowd.

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Stand out from the crowd. Be different.

Lawyers who want to differentiate themselves from all of their competitors would do well to watch some testimonials of some really smart lawyers who created video with the lawyer’s video studio. Click here to see what they had to say.

In the ‘old’ days, you would have to upload each video to each individual sharing site. Each site had their own forms, their own format and their own requirements. If you wanted your content on five different video sharing sites, it would easily take over an hour or more to upload just that one video. Every video must be given a title, a description and keywords.

Thankfully, the ‘old days’ are gone. There are now programs and services that allow you to upload your video to one place and then that service shoots your video out to multiple sharing sites at once. You still have to optimize each video, but these services allow you the ability to upload once and distribute to many locations.

Becoming a video distributor is pretty simple. Really, it is. As long as you’ve done it hundreds and thousands of times. As long as you know what will compel an online viewer to watch your video over everyone else’s, and as long as you understand how to get the search engines to recognize your video content over your colleagues and competitors. Simple.

Let’s start with the basics.

Your video must be in the right format. Usually .mov (Quicktime file), mp4 or flash file is a sure thing. Next, you must make sure that your video file is not too large, otherwise you will get an error message saying your file cannot be uploaded because it’s way too big. Once you have your video file in the right size and the right format you now upload it. Depending on what service you use, like Tubemogul.com (a free service for personal use and paid for business use) or TrafficGeyser.com (a paid service with lots of bells and whistles, it will ask you a series of questions.

The first is: Title. Seems simple, right? Sure it is. Just ask the people who work at the tabloids how they come up with those outrageous titles all the time. “Oprah is sleeping with Obama; Marriage on the rocks,” or “Aliens abduct Charlie Sheen and take him to rehab.” No matter what you think of those tabloids at the checkout counter in the supermarket, I guarantee you the headlines catch your eye.

Let’s use this headline as an example and tell me what you think. “New York lawyer wears black leather shoes to court.” That’s about as dull as you can get and nobody will ever click on that video, guaranteed. Your title is designed to get your video noticed. If your video is not noticed, it will not be watched.

CAVEAT: You must stay within your state’s ethics rules regarding what you can and can’t say.

The next section to fill out is the description. This is often misunderstood and often the video guy is asked to deal with this. He (or she) will usually not have a true understanding of what works best. I actually teach an entire class on how to properly optimize your videos. I explain what works and what doesn’t. I use actual examples by lawyers and other companies so you can see what they did right and what was done wrong.

Let me give you a hint…a one sentence summary of what you talk about in your video will not get your video found.

Keywords are the next box you must fill in. Do not put in 25 keywords. Over-doing it will not help you get your videos noticed. A handful works well. Here’s an example. If I create a video about medical malpractice in New York involving a failure to diagnose breast cancer, my keywords might be: cancer, breast cancer, misdiagnosis, failure to diagnose, lawyer, attorney, new york.

If you are using a service to upload your videos, you still need to create accounts at the multiple video sharing sites first. Then you have to input all the user id’s and passwords. Some sharing sites do not accept specific videos. You must identify which videos work best for which sharing sites. You also have to assign your video to a particular category. Is your video about sports? Business? People? What happens if you don’t categorize your video properly? I’ll tell you…your video will not be found as easily as if you put it in the right box.

Ok, you’ve now just uploaded your first video. You think you’re done right? Wrong. You’ve got so much more work ahead of you. There are other sharing sites that you want to upload to that do not participate in the services of Tubemogul or TrafficGeyser. That’s more time invested in uploading. Do you have that time to spare? If you have ten video clips, do you have the time to upload all ten? I don’t know any attorney who has the time or desire to do this. Do you?

Want to be a video distributor without having to learn or do any of it yourself? It’s simple! We can do it all for you using a proven and effective Total Online Video Solution for Attorneys. Just show up and start talking and let us handle the rest. We make it fun, profitable and have the experience and knowledge to make it happen. There is no other video production company in the country that has a veteran medical malpractice trial lawyer as your video producer. Listen to what attorneys Jack Carney-Debord and Greg Stokes had to say about my video program.

I encourage you to call me for a complementary executive briefing about how I can help you market your law practice using video. It’ll be the best 30 minutes you spend all month. Call my secretary Frances at 516-487-8207 or by email at Gerry@lawyersvideostudio.com to set up our phone consultation.

First, take their belts away from them. (A little lawyer humor here.) Really.

Strip away their marketing foundation and what do they have? People who are throwing money at different media in an attempt to be sexier, hotter and more provocative than the next lawyer. If you undress your biggest competitor’s strategy, you will see sheer flimsy efforts to copy what others have done.

Thin straps of social media hold up some lawyers. Look to see who is wearing the red heels with the mini skirt. Hopefully it’s a woman. (Another attempt at some humor.) Look to see who is pushing their body parts up and out with press releases. Listen to the sultry siren call of a TV commercial that says (imagine a deep baritone announcer with hip 70′s boing-boing music) “Hey baby…been injured lately?”

Maybe you’ve seen an attorney in a courtroom with a very tight fitting blouse, pencil skirt and five inch heels. Does she have to shout to get noticed? Certainly not. Compare that to all the guys waiting for their case to be called, wearing their navy or grey suits. How do you stand out with that kind of crowd?

The key to beating the pants off your competitors is to be different. Don’t do the same TV, radio, newspaper or magazine ads that we see so often. Be different. Always keep in mind your state’s ethical rules and make sure to stay within them when choosing to do something different.

What’s the best way to show you’re different? I’m glad you finally asked.

With video!

Your competitors don’t know how to use video to their advantage. Only a small percentage of lawyers have learned the true value of showing and educating with video. When you show your consumer instead of selling to your consumer, you set yourself apart. It’s that simple.

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Listen to what personal injury attorney Greg Stokes had to say about Gerry’s Total Online Video Solution for Attorneys:

Gerry Oginski, Esq.

It’s true. With the prevalence of YouTube and social media, your clients now expect to see you on video. How do you think that will make a prospective client feel when they come to your website and there’s no video of you explaining to your viewer how you can help solve their legal problems?

In three years, Google expects that 80-85% of all content online will be video based. If true, how do you set yourself apart from all of your competition? What makes you different from every single lawyer who does the same type of work they do? Do you know the answer?

I’ll give you a hint: (It’s educational video.)

I really hope you don’t read this three years from now wondering why your competitors and colleagues are getting all the calls and emails about potential new cases and you’re stuck with a static website with little information on it.

Learn how to stand out from the crowd; develop a bond with your viewer and create content that will compel them to call you instead of your competitors. Learn from the only veteran medical malpractice trial attorney who is also an experienced video producer.

Want to learn what content to create for great attorney video? You can.
Join the only video coaching program in the country that teaches lawyers what content to create or learn it when you sign up for my Total Online Video Success Program. That’s why I created this program- to help lawyers market themselves online using the best media available today that generates the best return on investment anywhere.

To learn more, I encourage you to pick up the phone and schedule a 30 minute phone consult with me. It’ll be the best 30 minutes you spend this month. 516-487-8207.

Gerry Oginski, Esq.

Most lawyers don’t understand the benefit of using social media to market themselves online. When you say the words “social media,” most people naturally think of Facebook, Twitter and  LinkedIn.  Facebook is the 800 pound gorilla leading the way with social  interactions. “You like me. I like you, and everybody likes each other. We’re all friends. Isn’t that nice?”

Want to know what is king of all social media? The answer is video.

I created a video that asked one question. I then gave the answer to that question. Based upon that video and that question, thousands of people viewed that video. I received over 100 calls from people who had similar problems to the one I described in the video. Of those callers, only a small fraction of them warranted a full-fledged investigation. Of those cases I investigated, only a handful survived the investigation process. Of those remaining, one recently settled for $395,000.

Why did that person come to me? Because of that video.

You don’t really think I’m going to disclose which video this was, do you? However, if you had seen me lecture to hundreds of attorneys throughout the country in Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, and New Jersey this year alone, you might have heard me say which particular video this was. Maybe if you participated in one of my infrequent online webinars discussing how video can improve your income, you might have heard me talk about this video.

Maybe you missed the part about how one of my videos resulted in a case I accepted that settled for $450,000 earlier this year. Maybe you missed the part where one of my videos was picked up by the New York Times online blog in a story about snow and ice. Or maybe you missed the part where I was quoted in the Wall Street Journal because of a video I created.  Did you  pay attention when I talked about a video that resulted in a call from a gentleman in Massachusetts whose case I settled for $350,000? Oh yes…did I mention the case that settled for $5.1 million by trial counsel, where that client came to me after watching my videos and viewing my website?

Those attorneys who think that creating online video to market their practice doesn’t work, well…they’re dead wrong.

Want to learn how to convert online viewers and callers? Lawyers who join my total online video solution participate in my one-hour mastermind strategy call where we discuss exactly how to convert views and clicks into callers. Don’t you want to participate in the online video revolution? This isn’t some flash in the pan idea that’s here today, gone tomorrow. The Internet is here to stay. It has become a vital fabric for our society that connects people throughout the world. Lawyers who take advantage of this unique opportunity still have the ability to market themselves in ways that most attorneys still don’t understand.

Have questions? I urge you to explore my blog here and to pick up the phone and call me to schedule a complimentary phone consultation at 516-487-8207 or by e-mail: Gerry@lawyersvideostudio.com.

Come join me as other really smart attorneys are learning how to use educational video to their advantage.

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Lawyers, read this classic disclaimer:

Just as you know that you can never guarantee a particular client a specific result, the same is true for all types of marketing including video marketing. Of course, as much as I would love to tell you that every video will generate qualified leads, that does not always happen. Nor can any marketer ever guarantee whether any case you accept will result in the kind of settlements described above. There are many variables including how your video is search optimized and what effort you put into telling the world about your particular video that will affect whether your video is clicked on, watched in its entirety or even if it converts a viewer to a caller.  Once you get a qualified case, there is no way any marketer can guarantee or predict the outcome of that case. The goal of an information marketer is to provide education for a viewer. Not every person who calls or inquires has a valid case. However, your goal is to get qualified leads and creating video is the best way to do that.

How’s that for a disclaimer? Notice there’s no fine print and it covers the FTC disclaimer for internet marketers as well as the type of disclaimer we typically tell our clients in our attorney advertising. Now, I want you to assume a really deep voice when reading the next quote: “Past results do not in any way establish or guarantee future outcomes.” Are we clear now? I can’t guarantee anything and neither can any other marketing expert. Having said that, by becoming educated and informed you stand a much better chance of making a decision that is based on useful facts and information to help market your law firm.

Thanks for taking the time to read my blog (and the disclaimer).

Gerry

Gerry Oginski, Esq.

Let’s see…

A person in need of legal help who does not know an attorney.

A person who does not know a friend or relative who knows an attorney.

A person who has never had a legal problem before.

Question: What type of person chooses a lawyer the way they choose their plumber, by going to the yellow pages and picking the biggest ad in the book believing that they must be better than the other lawyers because they have a bigger ad?

Answer:

A person in need of legal help who does not know an attorney.

A person who does not know a friend or relative who knows an attorney.

A person who has never had a legal problem before.

Does that sound familiar? It should. That’s the way many lawyers hoped their clients would find them. By taking out the biggest and loudest and most colorful ads they expected readers to rush to the phone because they were screaming louder than all the other lawyers who had similar ads.

Mindset:

Practice tip- If you understand this next point, you will be miles ahead of your colleagues and competitors.

“Why is someone going online to find an attorney?”

Have you asked your new clients why they used a particular advertising media to find you? Was it TV, radio, classifieds, newspaper display ads, a website, a video or something else? Did you ever try asking them “If a friend had recommended a lawyer that they used, would you have ever gone online to look for an attorney?”

“Why do you have a website or a blog?” is a question I often ask attorneys. “Because everyone has one today,” is the off-the-cuff response I get. “Yes,” but why do you have it?”

“To advertise,” is the response.

For those of you familiar with Dan Kennedy in the Glazer-Kennedy Insider’s Circle, he will often repeat that the goal of getting a customer is not to make a sale. Rather, the goal is to get a lifelong customer who trusts you and will buy from you repeatedly over their lifetime. Think about that. Then re-read it again. It’s profound and it’s 100% accurate. Most salespeople focus on just making that one-time sale. That’s the wrong mindset. Instead, develop a relationship where your viewers like you, trust you and learn from you. If you do that, they’ll keep coming back over and over again.

Now, how can you use that in your marketing messages online? Is your goal to get that one case that will pay for the newspaper ad? Or, is your goal to get someone in need of your legal services who likes you, trusts you, and will turn to you for all their legal needs?

When you create educational video, that’s exactly what you are doing. By educating viewers you are developing trust and showing your expertise at the same time. That’s the type of person who hires an attorney after watching his online videos.