Attorney A: “YouTube Doesn’t Work. It’s a Waste of Time.”
Attorney B: “I get comments from clients all the time that they saw and liked my YouTube Videos.”
Before you ever decide that you’ve got to make videos and put them onto YouTube, Google: {your_city criminal lawyer videos}.
Just like your potential clients who may be searching for help on YouTube, you’ll likely see the same rubbish I see.
“The ABC Law Firm provides Experienced and Aggressive Defense.”
“We’ve been serving people in {city_name} for 24 years and will fight for you and treat you like family”
The partner(s) and ‘of-counsels’ will be in suits, standing in front of their law books, looking stiff and wooden, staring into the camera and repeating these mantras.
Same stuff happens on TV and Radio, too.
Want to get the same miserable results all the other law firms get that are blowing money for zero results?
Do the same “professional” junk they’re doing.
Leveraging YouTube the Non-Sleazy, Effective Way
People search for information, not sales pitches. Same reason you’re still reading this article and haven’t clicked away.
If all my content was a cleverly disguised sales pitch, you’re more than intelligent enough to see through it and leave.
You must provide easily-digestible, straight-to-the-point, snippets of information whenever you write content, make videos, and put your marketing message out there, no matter if it’s on TV, Radio, internet, YouTube, in print, etc.
Here’s a simple formula for using YouTube to improve your law practice by getting more clients watching your videos and calling you.
1. Think of the most common questions, reservations, misconceptions, issues, and fears your clients have that you hear over and over and over and over again.
THIS is what people want to know – otherwise, why would they ask you the same stuff so often?
2. Think of the most common issues that new clients are unaware of that you have to bring up in most of your initial consultations. This is the stuff they SHOULD be asking or must know but don’t even know to ask.
Make a list from #1 and #2 that is at least 20 different questions. These will be the subjects of your videos.
You’re going to do 1 question, 1 answer videos, one video for each of the questions you’ve identified in steps 1 and 2, ensuring that each video is no longer than 5 minutes long, preferably 3 minutes long.
3. Block out 3-5 hours of time in your schedule so you can get all these videos blasted out at one time and send them off for editing and transcription. (this is 1 afternoon of time – yes, you CAN spare it)
4. You can use an iphone, android, or a cheap digital camera to do the filming. You do NOT need an expensive camera setup, you do NOT need a camera crew or anything fancy.
And you do NOT need to stand in front of your law books! get comfortable, and get prepared to answer the questions in a relaxed manner, tongue in cheek.
The more formal and “professional” you try to be, the more boring and ineffective you’ll be – I know this from doing well over 84 interviews the past 3 years.
5. Once you’ve got the videos knocked out, do some minor edits, and upload them all to your YouTube account. Again, do not get caught up in editing them for weeks and making them perfect.
There are hundreds of attorneys with videos collecting dust because they never got around to making them PERFECT.
Better DONE vs. perfect and NOT DONE.
6. You’ll want to choose keyword-rich titles, descriptions, and tags for your videos, and link each video back to your website. In addition, you’ll want to embed the videos on your website, have them transcribed, and post it in a video with it’s transcript below-layout for easy reading / watching.