Jimmy Craig and Justin Parker on YouTube Videos for Law Firm Trust and SEO

John McDougall:  Hi, I’m John McDougall with the Legal Marketing Review, and I’m here today with Jimmy Craig and Justin Parker of Methodloft. Welcome, guys.


Justin Parker:  Good to be here.


Jimmy Craig:  Thanks.


John:  Absolutely. Why is YouTube specifically so important for Law Firms?


Jimmy:  YouTube is the second‑largest search engine, so it’s important to take advantage of basically any opportunity to increase your visibility. Specifically YouTube, because Google owns YouTube, so Google favors websites with YouTube videos.


John:  Yeah, coming up in the organic search results.


Jimmy:  Right. Absolutely.


John:  What are some of the different styles of videos that you can do for increasing trust and search‑engine optimization?


Justin:  There are a few different kinds. One, you could have just your general overview video of your firm, so that’s like your commercial. Pretty straightforward. You can also have FAQ videos, where you’re going to be — it starts with a very specific question, and you’re going to give a very specific answer and just share your knowledge with the viewer.


John:  Based on keywords.


Justin:  Right, based on keywords. It’s not really a sales pitch, you’re just sharing knowledge. You can also have testimonial videos, where you’re having people you’ve worked with before talking about how great you were. That might be the best sales tool of all. Much better coming from somebody else than from you. Those are really effective.


Jimmy:  Another one is practice area videos — we do that for a lot of attorneys. Basically we think of your website, what are the different sections you’d like to highlight? It’s good for someone to go to that section of the website, and see a video of you highlighting what the specific thing is.

For example, if you’re a business attorney and you specifically want to reach out to startup companies and you want to make a video about what the contract laws and stuff like that are, that’s a thing we do with a lot of attorneys.


John:  Absolutely. Google now is looking for what they would call topical authorities. Somebody that has covered a topic completely, as opposed to just cramming keywords in the business law page of their website. If there are videos, and videos around those keywords, it’s going to make you more likely to come up as an authority.


Jimmy:  For sure.


John:  There’s a study from Cisco I recently learned about that says that 79 percent of internet traffic is going to be video by 2018. Have you guys been hearing about that at all?


Justin:  Good news for us.


John:  I don’t know if that’s a prediction, or how accurate that is, but that’s pretty stunning. How can law firms create a strategy to take advantage of that trend?


Jimmy:  It’s important to create a content calendar. It’s not a one‑and‑done deal. One thing we do is — for example, with the FAQ videos — is we’ll go in to work with an attorney and we’ll shoot maybe six to twelve of them, and they’ll release those weekly. It’s important to continue to maintain your presence online.


Justin:  For sure. Also, you want to tie your video strategy into your content marketing and search engine optimization strategy by using keywords and social sharing techniques. You want to have whatever your particular business goals are, and as you’re building new pages on the site to highlight a new practice area, or also, if you make your video, you don’t want to just have it just live on your page, or just whatever you get organically to come in.

You’re going to push obviously to your Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, what have you. But you also want to submit that video to larger websites to try to get traffic from them as well.


John:  Yeah, there are some ways to syndicate. I had a podcast I did recently with Linda Pepe from Mintz Levin, or when she was originally at Mintz Levin, and she was syndicating out to Mondaq and J.D. Supra, and pretty pricey to get your content syndicated there. But absolutely, that’s a good suggestion. Don’t just have the keywords — which are important, they’re going to drive traffic to your site — but there’s this whole other world out there beyond just Google search — social media, Facebook, syndicating to other big sites, so that’s a great tip.


Justin:  For sure.


John:  What about creating videos that feature people outside your firm? You could do, for example, a law firm that represents police, you can interview the police chief, things like that.


Justin:  Exactly. The more knowledge you can share on your website, the better. And the more varied the voices are, whether it’s an attorney or a police chief or a testimonial, it’s makes the overall package that much better.


John:  Absolutely. Thanks for talking to us today, guys. This is John McDougall with the Legal Marketing Review, and see you next time.