About a year ago, I wrote and "produced" a simple video about a new lawyer attending his first ABA Convention. This was around the time the ABA was considering new rules to regulate attorneys behavior online and the video played off that theme and an ad hoc write-in campaign to tell the ABA to back off.
The ABA didn't go nuclear on us, but I don't think my video was the reason. What my video did do was get a lot of attorneys watching it and sharing the link with others. I got a lot of traffic from it.
No, it wasn't a big hit on youtube, but in my niche market, it did okay.
My challenge to you is to create your own video and put it on youtube and on your blog.
You can use the free service I used, Xtranormal, which allows you to give voice to animated characters. Or, you can act out a skit with other live "actors". You can narrate slides on your desktop, or simply talk into the camera.
Your best bets for going viral are to use humor or to take a controversial stand, but I would stay away from politics. How about a funny commercial by one of your "competitors"? Or something about one of the new laws that take effect in January?
Anything goes, but remember, your clients are watching (and so is the ABA!)
Keep it under five minutes. Watching my video today, I realized I could have achieved the same effect with a much shorter spot.
You may not see a ton of results from your video but you will learn some things that might allow you to create another video that does. And you'll have a lot of fun.
Send me the link to your video. I'll choose a winner and feature it in a future post.
Filed under Advertising, Blogging, Just for fun, Legal industry, Marketing legal services, Social media marketing, Web traffic by 
Last night, I heard a speaker talking about how he found more time for work in his already busy schedule.
He had his weekly calendar up on a slide, showing his 12 hour work-days, and showed how he was able to find another 30 hours a week (30!) by doing things like making calls during his commute to and from work, taking 15 minutes to eat lunch instead of an hour, and who knows what else he said, I tuned out about a third of the way through his presentation.
I don't want to do more work. I work enough as it is. Actually, if I were honest about it, what I want to do is less work. Much less. Like none at all.
Of course that depends on how you define work. Here's a simple definition I just made up: if it's not fun, it's work.
So what I really want to do is get rid of everything I don't like doing and replace it with things I enjoy.
Is that unrealistic? Good! Then unrealistic is what I want to be!
Yes, I know there will always be things I can't delegate, things I don't want to do but must. But that doesn't mean I have to fill my day with these kinds of things, let alone find ways to squeeze even more hours of unpleasantness into my day.
Okay, I know I'm ranting, but this guy bummed me out. I should have heard him out (so I could share more of his ideas with you) and simply changed the word "work" to fun. "How to find an additional 30 hours a week for fun". Now that would have been an awesome presentation.
Filed under Just for fun, Productivity, Time Management by
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Filed under Just for fun, Social media by
Lawyer TV ads are often criticized for being tacky. "The Tackiest Lawyer Ad. . .Ever," is a fine example. A lawyer advertising firm, hoping to attract lawyers for their services, created a parody of bad lawyer TV ads, but does it work? Would you hire the firm that created this spot?
[mc src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSKe42bxMZ0" type="youtube"]Bad ad about bad lawyer ads[/mc]
Do you think this is funny?
I didn't laugh. Isn't that the first objective of advertising that purports to use humor? In the first few seconds, I thought this was a cheesy lawyer's attempt to advertise and I was embarrassed–for him and for our profession. Once I got the joke, I thought, "ah, a spoof, okay, we can all laugh at ourselves once in awhile." But I still didn't laugh; did you?
True, parody doesn't always demand LOL and if this was just someone fooling around and poking fun, well, okay, it worked for some and not for others, but this is an ad by a company that wants us to give them their business.
Would you hire this firm?
The ad says, "lawyers' ads are tacky and don't work; we can produce an ad that's not tacky and does work." But they use a tacky ad to make that point. Is that good psychology? Is that good advertising?
I don't think it is. At least not in this case.
If they showed us a successful ad they produced for one of their clients, would that be better? Yeah, I think it would. Show us what you do, not what you don't do. Ads that demonize or make fun of "the other guy" can sell. But they have to get all the elements right and in this case, I don't think they did.
What do you think? Click on the balloon above to add your comments.
Filed under Advertising, Image, Just for fun by
Soon, we'll all be thinking about the New Year. How can we grow our practice? What can we do to enhance our personal life?
For some, the answer is to continue executing plans that are already in place. They know what to do, they just need to get better at doing it or simply give it more time. Others need a new plan. What they've been doing isn't working. New plans call for new ideas, but where do ideas come from?
To answer this question, author Steven Johnson takes us on a visual journey into the creative process in this fascinating video:
[mc src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NugRZGDbPFU&feature=player_embedded" type="youtube"]Where do good ideas come from?[/mc]
Filed under Inspiration, Just for fun, Personal development by
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[mc src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEkuORtuOlY" type="youtube"/]
Filed under Just for fun by
[mc src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSIkjNaICsg" type="youtube"/]Okay, I'm not going to get into a rant on why lawyers who don't advertise shouldn't denigrate lawyers who do. I'm just going to present this ad by one Linclon & Herndon, Attorneys and Counsellors At Law in Springfield, Illinois, who advertised their availability for hire in what appears to be a newspaper of general circulation.
Filed under Advertising, Just for fun by
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