“Good Blogging Practices for Personal Injury Lawyers” — Eric Turkewitz from Nick Carroll on Vimeo.

Fellow New York personal injury trial lawyer Eric Turkewitz describes the pros and cons of blogging. For those of you who don’t know Eric online, he’s a very well-known blogger and you should check out his blog New York Personal Injury Law Blog. In this video presentation which he gave this past May, 2010, he explains what you should and shouldn’t do as a blogger.

Why does this help you as an attorney who uses video to market yourself? Everything that Eric talks about in this great presentation can be used when creating video. I highly recommend watching this entire video. It will make you a better marketer and open your eyes.

How would you feel watching a video in which you see a nice family having a meal together, leaving in a car, and suffering a catastrophic car accident, complete with screams, glass shattering, ambulance lights and siren, heart beat audio in the background, scenes of the emergency room, and even a trip to the lawyer’s office? That’s what you see in this truck accident reenactment by Gordon & Elias.

Contrived and overdone, this video tries to play on your emotions complete with a badly bruised child, a trip by the widow to the cemetery to lay a single flower on her husband’s tombstone, the widow at home overwhelmed by her bills, etc.

To read the full YouLaw review and watch the video at Technolawyer Blog, click here.

Lawyers who work in a law firm with 5-20 lawyers may think video should not be part of their marketing plan to gain new clients. They’d be 100% wrong. Lawyers fail to look at marketing from a potential client’s eyes.

Think about why you even have a website: To provide information to online viewers.

How do you distinguish yourself from other mid-size lawfirms? With pictures? With flash animation? With your credentials? With your results? With the articles you and other lawyers in your firm have written?

Most mid-sized law firms have pictures of their office building; a photo of generic, well-dressed people in a waiting room; photos of their law library; a photo of a senior partner standing lawyerly and formal while looking at a law book. Here’s my question: “So what?” What good does any of that do to help you distinguish yourself to your online viewer? The answer is likely nothing.

Here’s why: Your viewer doesn’t care about your office building. They don’t care about your law library. They also don’t care about those people in your waiting room or your custom cherry wood cabinets lining your office. Most viewers searching for an attorney online assume that you are qualified to practice; that you’ve passed the bar; that you have (some) experience. Static pictures simply don’t cut it. Static websites are not helpful. Lawyer directories are useless. Flashing your credentials and whether you were on moot court or law review doesn’t really help a viewer distinguish you from a hundred other lawyers in your field of law.

Know what works best? Video.

Video shows you’re human; you’re approachable; you’re confident; and you interact with your viewer- regardless of whether that viewer is a consumer or another attorney looking to hire you. Remember, a viewer is sitting (usually) in the comfort of their home or office or maybe Starbucks. They want to know more about your firm. They want to see you; hear you; and learn information about you. Video is the key to converting visitors. Currently, it’s the best way to get a viewer to pick up the phone and ask for more information.

Thanks for taking the time to read my blog. Have a great day!

______________________

Gerry is a New York medical malpractice and personal injury trial lawyer in practice for over 21 years. He has produced and created over 200 educational and informative videos to help consumers understand how lawsuits work in the State of New York. If you want to see how Gerry has used video to promote his own practice click here.

Gerry created the Lawyers’ Video Studio to help lawyers get onto video. To get started with creating video to market your legal services, Gerry offers a simple and cost-effective turn-key video creation system where he does everything for you except appear on camera, click here to learn more.

You can reach Gerry personally at 516-487-8207 or by e-mail at Gerry@lawyersvideostudio.com. He welcomes your call.

If they do, ask “Why?”

Why should they get free advertising off your video that you are using to promote your legal services; not theirs. Why don’t you make them pay to advertise on your video? That’s only fair. As a trade-off, maybe they’ll reduce your fee in order to put their name, website and contact info right on your opening sequence, so your online viewer sees your video production company info, and not yours.

Hello…lawyers. Attention all lawyers…WAKE UP! “I said HELLO!”

Do you hear what I’m saying?

You create a video to market YOUR legal services. Not to promote your web company. Why would you voluntarily agree to have their logo and name plastered in your video; in the intro, in the exit graphic and in the sidebar? It makes no sense. What consideration are you getting for giving them this exposure? Probably none.

This is their likely response: “It’s the only way we advertise. How else will someone find our work? If a viewer likes your video, they see our name and can come to us to create their video too.”

If this is the only way they have to promote their videos, then there’s a problem. In my opinion, they should not be riding your coattails. Do you really want your competitor watching your video to get an “AHA!” moment and say, “Hey, I want to use the same video company as this lawyer did.” No.

There’s no problem inserting their name and contact info inconspicuously somewhere in the video or maybe in the sidebar. But please don’t have it displayed in the opening credit or ‘brand’ the entire video with their name while your video plays. That’s just tacky and distracting.

If they want to advertise their company on your dime, ask them to pay for it. It’s that simple.

Thanks for taking the time to read my blog. Have a great day!

______________________

Gerry is a New York medical malpractice and personal injury trial lawyer in practice for over 21 years. He has produced and created over 200 educational and informative videos to help consumers understand how lawsuits work in the State of New York. If you want to see how Gerry has used video to promote his own practice click here.

Gerry created the Lawyers’ Video Studio to help lawyers get onto video. To get started with creating video to market your legal services, Gerry offers a simple and cost-effective turn-key video creation system where he does everything for you except appear on camera, click here to learn more.

You can reach Gerry personally at 516-487-8207 or by e-mail at Gerry@lawyersvideostudio.com. He welcomes your call.

When you have video on your website or blog, you usually have the option of having it play immediately anytime someone opens that web page. The other option is that someone needs to actually click on the “Play” button to start your video.

Let’s say you’re sitting in a quiet room in the library searching online; or maybe you’re in a quiet bookstore browsing online and all of a sudden you come to an interesting-looking website and “BOOM!” music is blasting and someone’s voice comes on with a video, without ever touching the “Play” button. Shocked you, didn’t it? Glaring. Loud. An obnoxious intrusion into an otherwise quiet moment of your time. What do you think of ‘autoplay’ on a video?

There are some who hate it. There are others who argue that it’s the only way a viewer will watch their video.

Here’s my take on it. I generally do not like having a video autoplay. Having said that, there are exceptions. In law, you know that there are ALWAYS exceptions, except when there are no exceptions. Ok, enough about exceptions. The only way I will tolerate a video that plays on opening a webpage is with two conditions:

1. It cannot have any music at the beginning, and
2. It has a delayed play function. This means that it does not open immediately when you come to the site, rather it waits 10-20 seconds before playing. This way, it gives you time to start reading the web page and decide if you really want to be there.

“What about a walk-on video?”

For those of you unaware, a ‘walk-on’ video is done with green-screen effects. It’s made to look like a miniature version of you just walked onto your web page, out of thin air. Some people think it’s nothing more than a gimmick. Others like spending large amounts of money to have it custom made. I’m still undecided. At this point, I still prefer something close up that gives more of a personal feel, rather than a ‘mini-me’ version of myself talking and wandering around on my website. You may like the way it looks.

With a walk-on video you’ll notice that they always autoplay and try to ‘interact’ with a viewer by saying “Hey there. Nice to see you. If you look over here (pointing to the right) you’ll find my credentials. If you look down here (pointing down) you’ll see a picture of me pointing down at my website.

You should give the ‘autoplay’ serious thought and look at it from your viewer’s perspective- not yours.

Thanks for taking the time to read my blog. Have a great day!

______________________

Gerry is a New York medical malpractice and personal injury trial lawyer in practice for over 21 years. He has produced and created over 200 educational and informative videos to help consumers understand how lawsuits work in the State of New York. If you want to see how Gerry has used video to promote his own practice click here.

Gerry created the Lawyers’ Video Studio to help lawyers get onto video. To get started with creating video to market your legal services, Gerry offers a simple and cost-effective turn-key video creation system where he does everything for you except appear on camera, click here to learn more.

You can reach Gerry personally at 516-487-8207 or by e-mail at Gerry@lawyersvideostudio.com. He welcomes your call.