Video for Law Firm Websites

I recently attended a panel discussion put on by Law Firm Media Professionals (LFMP) on effective use of video for attorney business development purposes. I gleaned some great tips from the session, and am sharing them here.

Take baby steps.

I am a big believer in a "Crawl. Walk. Run." philosophy, especially as it applies to technology. It might be a good idea to start out with a smaller effort, such as laying audio over a self-running PowerPoint. Screencast software Camtasia from TechSmith is a good tool for this. You can get a free trial; the full app download is $299.

Learn from others.

The good and the not-so-good. Marsha Redmon has a fantastic roundup of examples on her blog.

Keep it brief.

The golden rule for business video that holds a viewer's interest is < 2 minutes. Seriously - if you need more than that, set up an appointment. That's the objective here, right - to create enough interest that someone picks up the phone?

You don't have to go Hollywood.

Many attendees at the event wanted to know how much they should budget for a video. Yes, it can definitely eat up a hefty chunk of budget if you are going to hire a 2-camera crew to visit multiple locations. But professional, quality video can be created using a one camera set-up at a single location. One speaker recommended creating an "interview room" at your annual partner retreat, where you can herd attorneys in one after another for interviews that you can then edit in a studio program later.

Build interest with preview tastes.

Have a conference coming up, and want to get attendees excited about your line-up? Create 30 to 60-second video clips using your iPhone, with the speaker giving a synopsis of the topic on deck. Post it on your website home page, and tweet out to create buzz.

Share.

The usual platforms - email, website, attorney bio - are obvious. But be sure to leverage that sweet content by posting it on LinkedIn, YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, and (for self-running presentations) SlideShare.