Andrew Stickel

I just got the following question: “What are the most common mistakes you see with lawyers uploading videos, for example, posting incomplete posts or handling feedback? How can I avoid those mistakes?”

I don’t see that many mistakes with uploading videos. I would say incomplete posts would probably be the biggest issue, and maybe not doing the right tags or not using the right titles.

How To Optimize A Video For Youtube

If we’re talking about YouTube for example, you want to use the main search term that you want to rank the video for. An example would be California DUI consequences, or How to stay out of jail after a DUI in California. That’s typically what you want to name the video.

Whatever the most important thing is that you want to show up for, that’s what you want to put as the video title, at least in the beginning of it. And then make sure that you use that in the tags also, and use relevant tags.

A Very Helpful Plugin

I use a plugin called Vid IQ that will actually suggest tags for you, and you can even use tag templates and different things like that. The other thing is to make sure that the beginning of the description also has that phrase that you want to rank for.

So I would say the biggest mistakes probably are just not using the correct tags and titles. You just want to make sure that your video is optimized really well.

Why You Should Use Vid IQ

I would use something like Vid IQ. Vid IQ is free and it works pretty well. There’s a premium version that you can use that I think is about 49 bucks a month. Vid IQ is a plugin that lives in your Chrome browser.

And whenever you upload a video, you put in a little bit of information, for example, whatever you think you should title it, and then it’ll go out and grab other suggested titles and tags and different things like that. It’s pretty cool. So I would use that plugin. And that will probably eliminate most of your mistakes.

What’s a Good Optin Rate For Lawyer Landing Pages?

Today, I’m going to address the following question: “What are some of the email marketing strategies for growing my list and giving them valuable content? How frequently should I send emails?”

Here’s the interesting thing about emails and email marketing. I email my list every single day and I have a significantly lower unsubscribe rate than the industry average. I also have a higher open rate and a higher click rate, meaning people are clicking things in my emails. All my rates blow away industry averages.

Why People Don’t Mind My Daily Emails

The reason why they don’t mind them is because none of the emails I send are sales pitches. All each email does is offer help: “Hey, do you have this problem? Okay, here’s the solution. Watch this video.” Then you click the link inside, and it’s a video that provides a lot of value.

The reason that people don’t get mad at me for emailing them every single day is because I provide value with everything I do. I think that’s the best strategy. You just create. You think about what are the problems that the people in your exact market have and just provide solutions and answers to the small problems that they have.

The Key Is Solving Problems

You could literally come up with a million different video topics. Here is what I do every day. And I’ve got it all automated at this point. I create a new video and then I write a short email saying, “Hey, do you have this problem? Well, here’s how we handle that.”

“Here’s a video about how we doubled a client’s intake in two months,” or “Here’s a video about how Avvo is screwing attorneys and they don’t even realize it.” You just basically offer value that’s relevant to them. As long as you’re not just selling, selling, selling. If you just try to sell people, they’re going to get pissed. People know that you’re an attorney, they know they can hire you.

Why I Email Daily

What’s interesting is that I only get 20-30% of my emails opened, which is a pretty good rate, believe it or not. I can see who’s opening and who’s not opening and it’s a different 20-30% every time. The reason that I email every single day is because if you only open one in three emails and I email you once a day, that means every three to four days, you’re having another touch with my brand.

Whereas, if I email once a week, then every three or four weeks you would be getting a touch with my brand. Where we are with the internet now, you’ve got to have 30 touch points or more before somebody will even consider doing business with you.

Here’s How My System Works

I’d rather just make those thirty touch points go much faster while providing value and not selling anything. Eventually, people buy from me because that’s just what happens. The secret is to provide value.

I send a short email that talks about a problem they have, points them to the solution, and provides the link to a YouTube video. It works really well.

The interesting thing is that when people contact me, and people contact me every day to do marketing for their law firm, it’s very rarely after the first email. I can see when people contact me and which message they reply to. It’s the 30th or 40th email.

If you join my email list today, I’ve got enough emails in there to email you for an entire year. There are people that reached out to me after the 120th email. It’s just about providing constant value and eventually, it works.

I always look at it as people sitting on a fence and you’re just throwing rocks at them to try to knock them off the fence. Eventually they’ll fall off. You know what rock it is? Each email is a rock that will knock them off the fence. And then they’ll contact you and will eventually want to hire you. That’s what I recommend. 

Here’s a question I just got: “What would you recommend if someone can’t decide on which niche to delve into simply because they’re interested in and capable of several areas that look viable.”

How To Handle Multiple Niches

So what would I recommend if you don’t want to niche down because you have many different interests? It’s tough because my recommendation is to pick a niche. After all, the riches are in the niches. Now I don’t know specifically which niches you’re talking about, but you might be able to figure out a way to combine them.

You Could Combine Them

So for example, a lot of criminal defense lawyers also do personal injury. For some reason those two practice areas seem to go hand in hand. So you could basically, if you’re creating content, just create content.

How To Create Content For More Than One Niche

Doing something is always better than doing nothing. So if you create two videos about car accidents a week and two videos about getting arrested every single week, then at the end of a year, you’re going to have a hundred videos on car accidents and a hundred videos about criminal defense.

So I mean, there’s no wrong answer. I always recommend picking a niche because you can target people better. And it’s probably much more likely that you’ll stick with it. But at the end of the day, if you’re interested in multiple things, and you think you can handle it, then that’s great.

An Alternative Method To Create Content For More Than One Niche

Now here’s the other thing, you could focus on one for a couple months and get it up and running. And once you have that niche going after a little while, then you can start another niche. Meanwhile, the first niche is kind of running and has some momentum behind it. Then you can start doing your second niche also.

So it’s not like you have to be pigeon-holed. If you do criminal defense and personal injury, it’s not like you’d have to only do personal injury for the rest of your life.

Basically pick one and focus on it. There’s a saying that if you try to catch two rabbits, you’ll catch neither. So it’s the same thing here. If you try to focus on too much, you won’t get anything done.