Digital Dive: How to Create (at least) Nine Pieces of Content in One Hour

In just one hour, would it be valuable to have at least nine pieces of content that your lawyer clients may use on your website and on social media?

You know your attorneys should create content to further their business development efforts, but they rarely will prioritize it into their otherwise jammed schedule, right? How can they justify investing their limited hours to draft marketing content?

I've refined a simple strategy to develop at least nine pieces of digital and social media content in one hour. This content will assist your lawyers to boost their business development efforts. They will build top-of-mind awareness in front of prospects who will think about them more often than not, especially when a matter comes along that is a sweet spot for the lawyer and/or law firm.

It is critical for prospect clients to hear from your lawyers on a recurring basis. If too much time lapses between the last time they heard from the lawyer, the probability of retention is significantly reduced.

Let's begin with video. Why? Video is the most effective way to stay in touch with prospective clients for two reasons:

1. Unlike an email or phone call, the prospect can place your attorney's face with their name.
2. Video clips may be used to educate prospective clients in a much more effective way than the written word alone.

Here are the steps to produce an effective video clip:

• Step 1. Record video using a phone or inexpensive camera that is stabilized on a tripod. Speak about the issues that you hear each week from your clients and your prospective clients, and simply respond to those questions, concentrating on one question at a time. Either edit the video yourself by adding some music or graphics or have a staff member help edit it to professional quality before uploading it to YouTube. (Check out editing tools such as Adobe Premiere Pro, Elements and Corel Video Studio).
• Step 2. Once the video is uploaded to YouTube, YouTube will create a close-caption identifier, at no cost. Your spoken word will be converted into a closed-caption format in which the app takes what it perceives as your words and presents them into subtitle form. The results may not be perfect, but it is simple to log in and edit the content to ensure accuracy. Once you have finalized your edits, download the caption file in SRT (SubRip Subtitle) file
• Step 3. Lawyers or your digital marketing team may upload the finalized video and captions to the attorneys' LinkedIn and Facebook profiles. This is particularly important on Facebook since the vast majority of video clips are viewed in silent mode. If you upload the subtitles, viewers will see your words on the video as they scroll through their feed. So, viewers can actually watch the clip in silence and read your words rather than or in addition to hearing your voice.
• Step 4. Use your video editing software to edit one (or more) 60-second clips and upload that to Instagram.
• Step 5. Use your video editing software to edit one (or more) 30-second clips and upload that to Twitter. Note: The Twitter time limit recently increased to 140 seconds (2 minutes, 20 seconds)

Upload videos natively to social media

Why not just link to YouTube on those platforms and save a lot of time? The social media networks reward us, so to speak, by uploading the video to their native platforms. Instead of just showing the viewer a YouTube link, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter will begin playing your video automatically, and the video will usually be shown to more people than a link to a YouTube video. This is definitely worth the time invested.

Now that you've used the original video four (or more) different ways, let's explore the written word.

• Step 6. Take that SRT (SubRip Subtitle) file that you downloaded and edit it into a blog post format. Remove all the closed-captioning notations and add the title, subtitles, bold text, italicized text and anything else to make it appear aesthetically pleasing. Upload the article to the blog on your website. Use that same blog on LinkedIn, Medium or anywhere else that you can contribute to, on a regular basis.
• Step 7. Take excerpts of your blog post and share those updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and/or Instagram.

This strategy is designed to optimize content that may be yet undeveloped and produced into video form. Once the video is produced, it is cost and time efficient to edit and transcribe it to re-purpose on all different social media platforms.

This content development strategy is efficient and can work extremely well for your firm if you incorporate it into an overall marketing strategy. How will you take advantage of these ideas in 2019?

*****

Spencer X. Smith is the founder of spencerXsmith.com and AmpliPhi, and services law firms throughout the country. He is a faculty member for the State Bar of Wisconsin's Business of Law Conferences, and is also an instructor at the University of Wisconsin and Rutgers University. He may be reached at spencerXsmith.com.