A Beginner's Guide to Producing Law Firm Videos – Part 1

This edition of Practice Tips is inspired by last week’s launch of LegalTube.ca, a new online portal showcasing videos by Canadian lawyers on a wide range of law-related topics and practice areas.

Is it time to release your own law firm’s inner Cecil B. DeMille?

Or more directly, should your firm be creating online video content as an educational and marketing tool?  An October 2013 Globe and Mail article by Lisa Ostrikoff makes a strong business case for doing so:

The Content Marketing Institute’s 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends report shows the majority of North American small businesses and big brands are focusing on video as a critical content marketing element. Enterprise marketers use it more than any other approach, with 71 per cent of small businesses incorporating it into their strategies

Fuelling the fire of the online video content marketing revolution is the increasing use of mobile. A recent Invodo study discovered mobile consumers are three times more likely to view videos than laptop or desktop users. Simply put, videos are quicker and easier to digest than text-heavy content. Video also enables your brand’s content to stand out from the online clutter. The data backs this theory up: ROI Research reports users interact with content that incorporates video at twice the rate of other forms of content.

What does this mean for your business? Video content marketing is all about creating a memorable visual representation of your brand. For it to be most effective, you need to learn how to use this storytelling medium effectively and incorporate it into your content strategy, much as you would with blogs or articles. While not all video needs to be heavily produced, it does need to be polished to a level at which it aligns with your brand and its messaging.

As daunting as it may seem at first, the technological revolution has blessed us with many tools to self-produce and broadcast law-related video at minimal cost.

High-definition video cameras that connect via USB to your laptop or computer are readily available in the $100.00 range. Free video-editing software, like , can be used to snip superfluous raw footage and take your video to completion with the addition of digital zooms, effects, titles and credits.

For the DIYer in a hurry, most smartphones and tablets are equipped with high-quality cameras that allow your firm’s video-selfies to be created and published to YouTube or Facebook in mere minutes.

And of course, numerous options exist to have your firm’s video offerings professionally produced. Google “legal marketing video production canada” for some of the contenders.

However you choose to get there, consider adding video content to your firm’s website and blog.  Your audience awaits.

In subsequent posts in this series, we’ll have some tips on:

• choosing topics for your firm’s videos
• production do’s and don’ts
• on-camera presentation hints
• editing techniques, and
• publishing and promoting your law firm videos.

See you at the movies.

– Garry J. Wise, Toronto (@wiselaw on Twitter)