You probably stop by LinkedIn a few times a week to see what your competitors are doing, who in your network has something to share, and maybe share a link or comment on somebody else’s post. But have you considered posting your own video?
Like in most social networks, in LinkedIn, video content outperforms any other type of post. And the best news is that you don’t need to go out of your way to create good and converting content that can help you expand your network, get more visibility and maybe even land new cases.
In this week’s conversation, we discuss the critical elements to a successful LinkedIn video strategy for your law firm and how to execute it as an organic or paid strategy. From the checklist you need to review before you hit record, to the considerations you need to have once your post has gone live or even viral.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Your Law Firm’s Guide To LinkedIn Video Strategies
Send us your questions at ask@incamerapodcast.com
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Liel: [00:00:00] In one year, LinkedIn video posts generated more than three hundred million impressions on that platform. Videos on LinkedIn also earn an average of three times the engagement of text posts. I’m Liel Levy, co-founder of Nanato Media, and this is In Camera podcast where we always say yes, to a three-for-one deal.
Liel: [00:00:51] Welcome to In Camera podcast, Private Legal Marketing Conversation. Grace, welcome back. How are you today?
Grace: [00:00:56] Good. How are you, Liel?
Liel: [00:00:57] Great, Grace, I’m excited. We were just talking before coming on the air here that we were preparing ourselves for our first in-person event coming up in a few weeks. And that’s very exciting. Grace, I’ve been looking for this moment for quite some time. It’s just fun. The idea of seeing you, seeing clients, seeing hopefully prospect clients and just being with other people is just nice.
Grace: [00:01:18] It is finally right. Getting to see each other in person. Right.
Liel: [00:01:22] Right. We’re going to be recording as well there. We cannot miss a week of our episodes. So, Grace, with that being said for this week, I thought we can talk about something that we have talked a lot about video. Right, how you can use video to marketing or a law firm. Where should you use video? How can you use it? But I think we haven’t really had a conversation about LinkedIn in a very, very long time. And so I think actually LinkedIn is one of the best platforms where you can actually use video. So I want us to have a quick conversation that really gives you good, insightful information as to how you can make the most of video strategies on LinkedIn. How does that sound? All right. So let’s start with the very, very basics. First of all, what types of videos can you actually upload in LinkedIn? So you have embedded videos now. Embedded videos are videos that are hosted somewhere else. No LinkedIn, for instance, YouTube to think Vimeo. The reason why this may be appealing for some people is because it’s just easy. If you are already uploading your videos to other social networks such as YouTube, you may feel that is just easy to take your link from your video on YouTube and then just posted on LinkedIn. Write your caption and there you go. You have a video post, but it’s not really the best practice. Why? Well, because LinkedIn wants to keep users in the LinkedIn platform rather than sending them out to another social network such as YouTube. So when you’re opting for the way to upload your videos. My next option that I’m going to go into now, which is native videos, is potentially your best way to go. And so what’s the difference between embedding native will be native videos that you actually upload into the actual LinkedIn network. The beauty about this is that not only there are hosted locally and so LinkedIn prefers that, but also they have autoplay. So that means that the moment that somebody is scrolling through their feed and they come to see your post, the video will automatically start playing, which you’ve probably noticed. And you’ve also noticed whenever you’re scrolling through social media, that’s the best video experiences when you’re actually get to a post that has a video and it’s just playing right. You don’t have to click on play or anything or even worse, click on a link to get to the video. Those videos are the only thing that you need to keep in mind is that can only be up to 10 minutes maximum duration. And then, Grace, there is another type of video post that you can put in LinkedIn, but it’s not really an organic post. This is a video ad and these are basically sponsored content that you can put in LinkedIn. And so we’ll just talk a little bit about the paid ads here so we can get that out of the way and then we can go back into focusing on the organic videos. Right. So it’s basically your content which you can promote so it can be seen on the news feed of your users that you’d want to strategically attract.
Liel: [00:04:29] Right. And the beauty about LinkedIn also, Grace, is that it has tremendous, very powerful segmentation, specifically when you’re after professionals and you want to be able to target, for instance, other lawyers or lawyers from other practice areas or people based on their seniority level inside an organization. And so, needless to say, for B2B lawyers, this is probably the most efficient network to do some advertising. But also, if you are selling to businesses, this is also a very powerful way to target. Now, there’s another very powerful segmentation here, which is obviously you can very well get to people of influence and share with them your message. So there’s many different ways that you can use the segmentation that LinkedIn allows you or gives you access to. So with video ads, the key component is going to be your segmentation, choosing the right audience that you want to target, not too small not too big, and at the same time setting up a decent budget so you get enough impressions. Well, and of course, you need to also set up the goal for the campaign. Right. What is it that you’re trying to do or are you trying to do lead generation or you’re trying to drive traffic? So all of those things are going to have to be predefined. However, the video content itself that is served as a way to create interest in your audience and then lead them to complete a call to action. So that would be the video part, Grace. Is there anything else we need to add about videos in LinkedIn for advertising?
Grace: [00:06:04] Yes. So I think it’s important to mention the fact that when you’re sharing those types of videos, specifically the ads ones, right, video ad format can now be served to members offsite, but only when the campaign is created with website visits or engagement as the objective. So, you know, that’s just kind of an important thought process, because I know that you can’t really serve the native videos offsite except for when it’s a video ad and apparently only with those two objectives. Right. So, as you’re saying, make sure that you have in mind what the purpose of this particular ad is going to be, as well as where you want it to be seen now.
Liel: [00:06:44] Grace, let’s move on to the native organic videos, right? Like you’re just wanting to create a post and rather than just putting up a text with an image which is the most traditional type of post that we all know, or just showing up a link which will then fetch an image. We’re talking now about putting up a video, so obviously, you can do this both on your desktop LinkedIn page or you can do it from your mobile phone. Now, the one thing that is important here to differentiate is when you’re posting you as an individual and when you’re posting as an organization. So obviously, if you want to post as your organization, you need to have access to your business page. So if you are the admin of your business page, well, chances are that you’re going to have access to it. But if somebody else in your team is the person who’s responsible of creating your social media content, you want to make sure they are linked to your business page so they can actually also have the rights to post from their LinkedIn account. Right. Because that’s very similar to the way Facebook works, but it’s just interlinked the network. Now, here’s the thing. When you’re posting video on desktop, you’re very limited to just really uploading video. So it needs to be pre-recorded and then you can put it up now when you’re doing it on your mobile phone there’s more opportunities. Now you can actually record a video from your mobile on the spot and upload it as soon as you’re done. And a little bit like Instagram stories, you can also add filters, you can add stickers, you can add text. So there are quite a few options that you can use to customize and make your content more engaging. And I’ll tell you something. Not a lot of people use these honestly. Not a lot of people uses these. And there is a lot of fun things that can be done here. I mean, just think about not to make a comparison to Tik Tok because it’s a slightly different approach, lip thinking and all those things. But still it’s mobile, short content that has just additional elements of entertainment into them. And so LinkedIn is giving you an opportunity to add those things to your video. And what I do see a lot on LinkedIn is just kind of like hand-held selfie videos, but they don’t have any interactive elements to them on them. And first off, you know, if you feel that your message and the content that you have to share on your video is sufficient. It’s got to do the work good. But there are other things that you can incorporate to just make it a little bit more fun. What do you think about that particularly?
Grace: [00:09:27] Well, that specifically, I always tell anybody any piece of content you put out there has to have some sort of call to action. So for me, it’s yeah, it’s all well and good to put a post in it, but are you going to actually, at the end do that action that you’re asking them to do? Why are you putting out the content? So for me, it’s yes, OK, you can post it, but I think you should use everything you can that LinkedIn offers to engage the audience because everybody else is doing the same selfie video and, you know, potentially giving a call to action. But if they’re not doing that and they’re not putting some kind of engagement piece on their filters or something to make it a little different, I feel like they’re missing the mark potentially. Like, why are you create content, create the content with engagement in mind always.
Liel: [00:10:18] So Grace. Here are a few tips or a list of things that just go through whenever you’re creating your content. And this is both for if you’re doing it as a selfie mode on your cell phone or if you’re actually pre-recording with an actual camera or still your phone what you want to record and edit it before you actually put it up. So I think this is something that by now we all kind of feel almost like experts with regards to how to set up your camera, the height, the lighting in your surroundings so you can look good and also sound great. Right. I mean, these are super basic stuff that by now, since we’ve been a whole year, you’re communicating through video conferences and such, we’ve all came to understand a little bit better and know how to work around those things better than we could 12 months or 13 months ago. OK, now, it’s also very important being precise with your messaging here. There’s some statistical information and studies that say that you need to be able to deliver the main piece of the message within the first 10 seconds. And that is also to be able to capture your audience’s attention very efficiently within the first five seconds of your video. So all of those things are very, very important. And whenever we’re looking at a platform like particularly LinkedIn here, it’s going to be a lot about how do you introduce yourself? How do you start off your conversation? Right. So there is the approach. Hi, my name is Liel and I’m the head of partnerships at Nanato Media.
Liel: [00:12:00] And so. That may not be very effective. Now, if I come to you and tell you, I will show you how you can win your Hispanic market in the next 30 seconds. Now, that may be a little bit more attention-grabbing because now I’m telling you about how you can learn how to do something in a very short period of time that may actually be of your interest and that could potentially make your audience stick for longer and want to watch and say, really, I’ll take up that challenge and see whether you can actually show something that I don’t already know or add some value with your content. So that’s, I think, one important element to keep in mind. You also need to keep in mind that your video, particularly if it’s native, it’s going to start playing up without sound. So captions are superimportant. You probably already know as a user when you’re scrolling through video, audio doesn’t sound. They just show you the actual video on mute and just play the video you actually need to unmuted and click on the video. Now, you use captions so you can actually still be delivering your message and people can actually read what you’re saying without necessarily having to start playing the audio. And that’s going to be super, super important because again, right, we’re talking about the first five, ten seconds. You want to make sure that you’re able to deliver that message without being blocked by sound off?
Grace: [00:13:34] No, definitely. I mean, it’s to me, it’s just part of when you’re creating things, you know, in general, when you’re creating content, you have to think about all the permission issues, all the creation issues, all the right. There’s a lot for each one. And like you said specifically to LinkedIn, these are the potential things that you have to think about. I mean, Facebook does have a lot of what LinkedIn does, but not exactly. And it’s also not for the same people, right, it’s B2B. So when you’re creating things, I think, like you said, you need to think about all of the different parameters that are involved. You know, I’m super at detecting. So when it comes to me, to those things, I think you need to look at it operationally and just make sure the processes are clean. And that way, whatever you create, you don’t have these issues.
Liel: [00:14:21] Yep. Now, Grace, there are a few more best practices here to share. So if your objective of your video is brand awareness, then 30 seconds in length of duration will do the job. True that we said that your videos can last up to ten minutes, but you don’t necessarily want to create such long videos. There may be instances in circumstances where in those long videos can actually work very well for you, but initially to get started for brand awareness, 30 second videos are actually good. Now, if you have something a little bit more extensive to share and if you’re trying to target more, kind of like upper funnel audiences, 30 to 90 seconds could be a reasonable length to your video. But again, I mean, we need to also be mindful about the attention span of people. How long can you actually keep them engaged? And also remember the most important part of it all, which you just mentioned that a few minutes ago, is your call to action. The more space that you are putting between that first interest of your audience and the call to action, the less likely you are to lose them. It’s kind of like to put it into context, the same principle of sending your traffic to your website and instead to a landing page when they’re coming hot from having clicked on an ad.
Liel: [00:15:43] The more. Complex, the place where they land, like a website that has a bunch of pages, a lot of information, they’re most likely the user is going to get overwhelmed, tired or just loses interest altogether or her interest all together. Whereas if you make it very concise to them, deliver your message very fast, very efficiently, and make it very clear what are the benefits of completing the call to action then you’re going to be more likely to actually get them to complete the call to action. So that’s the last kind of like tip from how you should go about producing your video. Make sure that you don’t lose sight of your call to action and very clearly emphasize that you are wrapping up because that’s your last ask is going complete this call to action.
Grace: [00:16:29] I think it’s super important. I mean, that is probably one of the most important elements is to make sure that your call to action is clear, concise and as quickly done as possible where it makes sense in your content, whatever your content is. And that’s because you have the only reason to create content is for people to act on it. I’ll give you a perfect example that actually happened that I saw because I clicked on an ad. I love shoes, right? I mean, I love shoes. I saw a pair of shoes that I wanted and it was an ad. And I want to be taken to that shoe. Right. I want to be yeah. I if I’m clicking on something, I want to be taken directly to what I’m clicking on. Right.
Liel: [00:17:12] True, absolutely.
Grace: [00:17:13] Don’t send me to your homepage. Yeah. That’s what happened. They sent me to the home page. I like that shoe so much I actually searched for it. But because that happened to me with another company before that I didn’t care so much about those pair of shoes. When I clicked on, it took me to a home page instead of a landing page with that true that line, that product that I was looking for that you showed be the ad for I just bounced immediately. I jumped right off that site and I will never most likely go back to that company again because I got super annoyed. So to me, yes, that is one of the most important elements, if not the most important element. You have a call to action and actually take them to something that helps them complete the action that you’re asking them to take.
Liel: [00:18:01] Yeah, absolutely Grace. I totally agree with you. It all has to be with user experience. And again, when you’re sharing content like video on LinkedIn, you’re not necessarily looking at high intent audience, particularly when you’re not running ads, when you’re just running it as organic content. And so the fact that somebody has stopped and started watching your video already is giving you a great opportunity to actually capture them and maybe take them through one more step. And so just make sure that you get to that one more step quick enough before they lose interest. Right. Don’t try to oversaturate your messaging and your objectives on that first video. It’s always very important to remember what you’re after and particularly when you’re selling something like legal services to people who, again, they’re not necessarily high intent is going to be just getting to that next opportunity to interact with them and reminding yourself that nowadays it takes multiple touch points for someone to convert. And it’s always really has been like that. The only difference now is that we have an analytics that actually tells us that. And so just keep in mind, I’m not saying and it’s rare, really.
Liel: [00:19:18] I mean, let’s be honest, very few law firms actually know the number of touchpoints that it takes them to convert an organic user into an actual client. And even then, it potentially may be a little bit off because you’re not counting other factors, like maybe those are billboards, sign sightings, maybe those are radio ads that they’ve listen to, depending if you’re running digital radio ads or not. But not everything necessarily is actually be quantified. But the point is that we do know that it takes multiple touch points. So, again, understand that this is one of those. And when you’re running ads, well, of course, you’re potentially going to be able to get yourself in front more of an audience that may have a little bit more of intent. But again, they may not. Right. The fact that you actually you’re targeting your desired audience doesn’t mean that they are ready to buy from you, that they are ready to hire you. So have your list of expectations and create your message in a way that is built for just creating interest, getting that first connection established?
Grace: [00:20:25] Definitely. I mean, right. It’s just about getting that initial like and trust started.
Liel: [00:20:32] Yeah. That’s why, you know, if you go through LinkedIn, a lot of the campaigns that you see running are campaigns that are offering you ebooks, white papers, case studies. Right. That’s a lot of the information that is being offered by other enterprises that are advertising there and trying to share something of value to you for exchange of your contact details, and you may then decide, is it interesting enough for me to actually want to share their contact details? Maybe you actually think that not only is it interesting to me, but I actually do want to share my contact details because I would love to learn more about it. So that same approach is a little bit of what you need to keep in the back of your mind is will people see your ad? Will people see your video? Will people see your content? Will they respond in that same way? So, Grace, I think we can actually come to our takeaways now. And I want to start off here by sharing, you know, tips of how you can actually use these video opportunities on LinkedIn to share things that are happening in your law firm. So in other words, how can you actually create content in video that makes sense to be shared on LinkedIn? So just out of the top of my head. Grace, I think client testimonials, of course, without overthinking it. I think it’s a wonderful piece of content to share.
Liel: [00:21:54] Why? Because it’s a success story. It’s relevant because if your network is made by other law firms, then, you know, great that you can share your success stories with them. If you have referral sources in your network, even better because they see now that you’re great at what you do when they’re going to want to refer to you. If your network has past clients, then this is amazing because it reminds them that you’re there and that you continue to do a great job in your community. And so I cannot see any reasons why testimonials are not great. Another thing that I think it’s amazing to share and I really love when I see this on LinkedIn Grace is success stories from team members, not necessarily just the main attorney or managing partner or partners, but in general team members. Right. Where it’s an organization, everyone contributes to the small and the big wins. And so celebrating talking about all of those, it’s great. And video is a great and very powerful way of doing this. I’m not saying that images don’t work. They work a ton. Right? I mean, probably LinkedIn is one of those places where the famous picture of somebody holding their certificate, a diploma or something or their credential first day on the job works wonders. But you can also get creative with video. What do you think?
Grace: [00:23:12] You can always get creative a video, right? I mean, to me, that’s one of the more fun elements. And, you know, you and I have talked about it before. Video doesn’t feel right for some people. But honestly, people want to see you. They want to know your story. They want to know about you. So if you can bring yourself to do it, video’s a great. Great way to do it, and LinkedIn is even better because then you let your network know what your successes are, what you’re doing, and people like to hear about other people and things that are going good in their life. So if you even picked up a phone and done a video, you probably should start now.
Liel: [00:23:51] Grace, this is also important, which I did not mention at the beginning of the episode. But it’s important because the American Bar Association estimates that about 78 percent of attorneys in the United States actually maintain presence on LinkedIn. So they have an actual profile created. And apparently this is a drop from what it used to be before. But here is the thing. Here is the thing. Disregarding the number of engaged lawyers in LinkedIn, I think is increasing. Quite frankly. I see way more people interacting, people commenting, people posting, people sharing. And if for any reason there has been a decrease because some people prefer other types of social networks, it doesn’t necessarily because it’s the business network, social network, it’s the right network for people. Some people still prefer Instagram, so people will still prefer Facebook. Some people found that clubhouse is a place to be, right? I mean, there is not a one size fits all, but the bottom line is that LinkedIn is a widely used network by attorneys and a still a very, very, very powerful platform for B2B. So I don’t know if you would agree. One of our takeaways can be don’t underestimate the value that LinkedIn can actually bring to your law firm. Make sure that you’re not just listed there, but also create a company profile, encourage your team to go and create their own profiles, associate themselves with your brand and just show yourself in that network as well. I mean, we’re just gave you so many reasons why it’s a great network to share content and a terrific opportunity to do so with video. So, Grace, how about one more take away? You have something
Grace: [00:25:39] I do you know for me, it’s all about process. I’m going to kind of go back to that part of the whole thing. When you are creating your video for LinkedIn, just have the purpose and the way it’s going to work very clear in your mind. And what do I mean by that? Well, the types of videos that they offer you are animated demo, interactive live-action, and animated graphics. So they give you a lot of options to create the content video-wise or picture wise, the way you want to just take advantage of that. So that’s my last. To me, that’s the takeaway that I think is as important as the other two. You said think about the creative that you want to present to the LinkedIn people because you have all the options. So just make sure you have it clear in your mind, have your call to action and choose the one that’s going to best display what you’re trying to achieve.
Liel: [00:26:38] Absolutely, Grace. Plan it, right? Don’t overthink it. Just plan it. And always keep in mind you need to start. You need to think on those first few seconds. You need to really capture you only get one opportunity to capture your audience’s attention. Right. The moment that it takes for people to scroll from one post to the other, it’s just barely a few seconds, if not less than that. And so you really need to come out strong to actually be able to get them to stick around for a little bit longer and then maybe for a little bit longer and then complete a call to action. So start with something strong, powerful, who knows, maybe even controversial as long as you can then land at home and, you know, be able to build that trust and that connection. If you’re just going to say something controversial for the sake of saying it, and then not going to really be able to get back to it throughout the rest of your video, then you are potentially just going to alienate people because you’re not actually someone that’s coming across as trustworthy, reliable or potentially that have anything of value to share. So just think well of your ideas and involve your team. Don’t necessarily think of these ideas by yourself, bring other people to the table, have this conversation with them and get them involved in the process. And again, particularly if you’re a law firm that has multiple team members and such, get them involved in it. And another thing that is very, very important, if you’re posting through your law firm, make sure that those posts are then reshared by yourself and other team members of the actual organization so that the reach increases because, again, anything that gets posted on their business page is going to get less visibility than things that actually get posted on a personal page. So sharing it’s always going to be a powerful way of boosting the visibility of organic posts. So keep that in mind
Grace: [00:28:42] What you’re just saying right now, it’s the same with Facebook, right? I mean, if you have a feed on your personal feed, things will show up on your friends pages and other pages a lot quicker nowadays than the page feed, right? Yeah, it’s I mean, it’s the same thing. If you if you share it on your own LinkedIn, you’re going to get much better engagement.
Liel: [00:29:03] So LinkedIn still has a has really, really good rich compared to what other social networks give you. Of course, there is a lot of algorithmic factors here that will impact and influence how much your posts are being seen by your network. But definitely just by keeping things simple, if you’re posting for your business page, you’re less likely to be seeing the need for a posting from a personal page. So if you’re posting from a business page, just make sure that then these posts are getting shared by the actual team members of your organization so then it can reach faster their network. Great. Thank you very much for so many insights and for giving us an opportunity to do a quick dive here into LinkedIn and video.
Grace: [00:29:53] It was fun. Thank you, Liel.
Liel: [00:29:54] Yeah, it’s always fun, Grace. So we’ll be back next week with another conversation
Grace: [00:29:59] Next week, another conversation one week before NTL.
Liel: [00:30:02] Countdown begins. All right, Grace, take care.
Grace: [00:30:05] You too.
Liel: [00:30:09] If you like our show, make sure you subscribe. Tell your co-workers, leave us a review, and send us your questions to ask@incamerapodcast.com. We’ll see you next week.
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