Join NPR’s Mara Liasson and our panel for a WLMA event on June 6 in DC — it will be a spirited discussion! We will discuss the thought-provoking questions posed by Anne-Marie Slaughter’s article in The Atlantic one year ago, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All.”

The evening promises to be insightful and promising, regardless of your career or life stage.

REGISTER HERE

Cocktails: 6-7; Panel discussion: 7-830
Nelson Mullins law firm, 101 Constitution Avenue, NW #900, Washington, DC 20001.

Panelists:

Courtney Lynch, Co-founder, Leadstar

Elaine Metlin, Esq., Partner, Dickstein Shapiro, LLP

Bizunesh “Biz” Scott, Esq., Partner, Steptoe & Johnson, LLP

Pamela Teagarden, MAPP, Founder, Teagarden Group

REGISTER HERE

Sponsored by Nelson Mullins and Navigant Consulting

For more information about WLMA, visit here. 

As promised in our Legal Thought Leadership Webinar March 28, here is a checklist to give legal marketers and lawyers ideas for quickly re-purposing Legal Thought Leadership content.

We’ve all experienced how tough it is to get enough Thought Leadership content to have an impact.

Our best chance to be effective is to leverage every piece of attorney-generated content into 2-3 other forms of content.

Checklist: How To Re-purpose Legal Thought Leadership Content

Like this checklist?  Sign up for Marsha’s Video Tips — to get bi-weekly info just like this!

STOP Random Legal Thought Leadership

Register for Webinar Replay Here

Effective law firm video takes focus, a commitment and a keen sense of which topics your clients want to know about — now.

Check out an overview of my program “Law Firm Video: What’s New, What Works” for LMA Minnesota.

This program for the Legal Marketing Association chapter (LMA) in Minneapolis is set for June 12, 2013.

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One obvious danger — or annoyance — is that YouTube can add “related videos” at the end of your firm’s videos.  Related videos are videos with similar subjects, as well as seemingly random videos, that show up in a grid pattern when your video is finished.

“Related Videos” Show Up Unbidden on YouTube

Lawyers and law firms are understandably skittish about YouTube adding “related videos” to the end of their legal updates and other videos – when they have no control over what could show up.

Here’s an example of related videos that show up at the end of my video on how to deliver better law firm webinars for business development.

Start at minute 4:23 below.

Removing Related Videos From Videos Embedded on Your Law Firm’s Website

For SEO reasons, we upload our law firm clients’ videos onto YouTube. Then we embed each video on the law firm’s website.  Done properly, no related videos will show up at the end of an embedded video.

If related videos do show up, have someone check the “embed code” and add this: &rel=0 (that’s a zero, not an ‘o’).  That will remove the related videos.  It’s a little bit techy – but worth it.

Avoid Related Videos by Creating A YouTube Channel With Playlists

Another way to avoid related videos is to create a YouTube channel for your law firm. Then create Playlists to organize your videos by topic.

The way Playlists work is they lead the viewer from one video to the next in your Playlist — automatically.  There are no related videos at the end of any of them.

You should then send clients and prospects to your YouTube channel to watch your Playlists.

The Bad News — Individual YouTube Videos Will Still Have Related Videos

YouTube adds related videos at the end of individual videos it hosts. Every time you search on YouTube (or Google) for a video, it returns a list of videos.  Each video will have related videos at the end. There is no way to avoid it as of this writing.  If that changes, I will update this post.

There are work-arounds to make the related videos less noticeable — but nothing will make them go away when a video is found though search, or watched as an individual video on YouTube.

In my opinion — suffering through related videos is the price you pay to get the powerful benefits of using YouTube to get found by your clients and prospects.

What’s your opinion?

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Here’s a quick summary of the videos and firms discussed in our Law Firm Media Professionals program in DC recently with Marsha Redmon, of Marsha Redmon Communications and Peggy Heffner, with Dechert.

Check out Marsha Redmon’s process for Rapid Video Development for Law Firms here.

1. Branded Thought Leadership series on YouTube channel:

Navigant Consulting’s “3 Minutes to Impact” series

visit the channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/navigantinsight

2. Creating effective law firm video without using a camera:

Marsha Redmon Communications screencast — Webinar Summary

Note that screencast videos can be used effectively for webinar or other event promotions, as an executive summary for firm Legal Alerts, for a quick update to clients about a breaking legal or business issue, and as a follow-up to speeches.

3. TV news-style packages on legal topics:

Allen Matkins

Note that each news style package is roughly 5 minutes long, though some are longer.

Firm has a new video-centric website

Note that firm has grouped together 121 videos and presentations. The presentations are hosted on Slideshare.net, now owned by LinkedIn.

Posting website video of multiple speakers shot at live event

4. Video on hot legal topic: Dechert LLP

Leveraged firm-wide meeting to shoot video of lawyers located in multiple offices

5. Biography videos used to show personality of lawyers and firm:

Levenfeld Pearlstein

Note how tightly edited this is. It keeps the pace nice and brisk and viewer interest high.

Note the non-practice topic. The firm incorporated personal questions as well as practice-related questions.

6. Ongoing video podcast series:

Arent Fox’s “After Hours With Harry Johnson”

Seen on iTunes and YouTube, this ongoing employment law video series has 20+ episodes and has been ongoing for 1.5 years. Most episodes are about 8 minutes long. It is shot and edited by outside professionals and then optimized and distributed by internal marketing resources.

Is your law firm using video for marketing and business development? Please show us your examples!

Email us at: info@marsha.com

TOP 6 Lawyer PowerPoint Mistakes

Lawyer Presentation Advice from a Lawyer Speech + Presentation coach — who has watched and listened to 2,000+ lawyer speeches!**

** not that I feel strongly about this!

Top 6 Lawyer PowerPoint Mistakes: The List

1. Too many slides
2. Too much text
3. Reading to your audience instead of engaging them
4. Too small font
5. All words — No images
6. Slides as handouts

Lawyers Use Too Many Slides

• Assume 2-3 minutes per slide (not one minute — that’s for NON-lawyers)
• Time it out and then you’ll see I’m right
• Quick tip: Go ahead and remove 25-30% of your slides now — you know you need to

Lawyers Use Too Much Text on Slides

• Shoot for one idea or take-away per slide
• Two levels of bullets max
• Why? People really can’t read and listen at the same time (I know you can — but your audience can’t)

Lawyers Just Read Their Slides

• And guess what — your audience can read ahead faster than you can read aloud to them — you do the math!

Lawyers Slides Are Hard to Read and Harder to Understand

• Use 30 point font — at least try to
• Tell audience what to look at on a graph and what it means
• Chop complicated charts into pieces and put each point on a separate slide

Lawyers Slides Have All Words and No Images

• Images help your audience to think, understand and remember
• That does not mean you should decorate your slides with clip art — like sprinkles on ice cream
• Images are hard to use well. So start learning now.
• A few good slides with images buys audience good will and increases understanding.

Lawyers Actually Project Their Handouts — Not Slides

• Project a set of slides that has your key points — your synthesis, advice and experience
• Hand out to the audience your very detailed, all-text slides (you know, the 120 slide deck you used to think was your presentation) as a resource on the issue
• Yes this will work for programs that are approved for CLE credit

Just so you don’t think I’m unduly harsh — take a look at the PowerPoint advice experts give in the business world.

I love Guy Kawasaki’s 10-20-30 Rule of PowerPoint article.  While created for the venture capital and entrepreneur world, his core points are well taken.

Or if you like video, watch Guy talk about presenting well with PowerPoint in this TEDx Talk.  Watch it from 9:12 – 11:30.

For Guy Kawasaki’s PowerPoint advice watch from 9:12 – 11:30.