Is your firm leveraging the popularity of YouTube for marketing efforts?
It should.
The popular haven of cat videos and viral moments has become the new home of marketing savvy firms taking advantage of a more holistic approach to marketing.
Eschewing the “hard sell” focus of some mediums, YouTube allows firms the opportunity to build their marketing efforts around a “value first” model in which brand recognition, client loyalty, and trust are embedded within the process of providing valuable content to users across the web.
In this way, firms are able to garner attention, as well as leads, simply by providing expertise to those in need of solutions.
Additionally, the nature of YouTube marketing can be adjusted to provide law firms, usually restricted by stringent regional regulations regarding marketing, the opportunity to engage in digital marketing efforts while still remaining compliant with their respective regulatory bodies.
So that said, if your firm is not already utilizing the marketing advantages of YouTube, let’s hit play and explore YouTube marketing for legal professionals.
YouTube by the Numbers
YouTube marketing, much like any marketing effort, requires an understanding of the platform, first and foremost, as to create content that is both suited to the particular ways in which users interact with the platform as well as to leverage the internal mechanics of the platform to your firm’s benefit.
To address the former, what draws users to YouTube is as varied as the content hosted on the platform itself, as evidenced by the accompanying chart provided by a Think with Google study, though when taking into account the underlying intent associated with each usage case two common threads become apparent. For one, users flock to YouTube as a source of education, and to the other, users utilize the platform as a source of entertainment.
It is imperative to understand the reasoning behind usage as it allows your firm to shape your content creation efforts in a way that is tailored to what drives users to the platform. Though, more on content creation strategies in our Marketing a Solution post.
To address the latter point regarding mechanics of the platform, YouTube, similarly to all social platforms, utilizes algorithms developed to serve content to users based upon user behavior and queries.
While the full mechanics of the algorithm are kept confidential, the two strongest deciding factors, in which user recommendations are based upon, are the content’s metadata, the data dictating title, descriptions, associated tags, etc., as they relate to a user’s specific query or search and the level of engagement, thumbs up’s, time spent watching, shares, etc., associated with a particular video.
In considering both factors, it becomes apparent that while actively influencing engagement may be a more difficult task the ability to craft content metadata as to influence recommendations is very much possible with very little technical skills necessary.
Though more regarding tailoring metadata in our Marketing a Solution post.
Before continuing and hitting play on the process of creating your firm’s first video, it is worth noting the sheer volume of users that utilize YouTube.
Start at the Beginning
The first step to cultivating a finely tuned YouTube marketing effort begins with creating a brand channel for your firm.
Simple enough in process and requiring a few steps, this portion will be the foundation of all further efforts moving forward.
That in mind, there’s no better way to learn to create your own channel than using YouTube itself as a tool of learning, much in the same way your future leads will be drawn to your videos.
So, let’s press play and learn how to create a YouTube channel.
Credit: David Walsh Online
And with your brand channel now active, it is time to add a sense of identity to the channel via strategic branding.
As YouTube users are privy to a flood of content that is continuously added to the platform daily, branding allows your channel to stand out among the crowd and garner the needed views to create an effective marketing effort.
Strategic branding can at times be a bit difficult without a plan set in place, fortunately, Impact has created a helpful list of branding don’ts that firms can follow to ensure that the foundation of their YouTube marketing will be one that is conducive to growth and lead generation.
With that, your firm is almost ready to begin uploading content for the world to see. Though, before leads begin coming in, it is imperative to discuss some key strategies for content creation catered to the legal industry. More on that in our follow up post Marketing a Solution.
Questions? Comments?
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