The past few weeks, my phone has not stopped ringing. I mean that almost literally. It has been hard for my staff to get work done, we’ve had so many calls. I’m actually thinking of making my part-time assistant a full-time offer.

Nothing major has changed in the past few weeks. Except for the videos.

A while back, I bartered services with a friend: I would set up the LLC for their film studio, and they would shoot a bunch of videos for me to use in marketing my services. We shot a bunch of video of me sitting in my office and my friend interviewed me about basic business legal topics. Then she went away to edit the videos, and I did her corporate work. That was the easy part.

A few weeks ago my friend delivered the videos, and I set about getting them online where people can find them. Now, I’m fairly tech-savvy, having a career in IT prior to law school. I had no problems setting up a YouTube channel for my firm, converting the videos to the right size for YouTube, and getting them all uploaded to their site. Your mileage may vary.

Then I set up a page for the videos on my web site and added the YouTube-supplied embedded links to each video. You can see the finished product here. The hardest part of all of it was waiting for the videos to upload. This had the advantage of being fairly straightforward to do (YouTube makes it easy) and also creating a separate “landing page” for each video on YouTube’s site, which then have links back to my web site. Those cross-referenced links play a huge part in search engine optimization, as does the quality of the content in your videos and on your web site.

And then the phones started ringing, and my inbox started filling up with emails from people filling out the form on our Contact Us page.

People are simply finding my firm online more. My site traffic increased by 62% the first week over the previous month’s traffic (I heart Google Analytics). 62%!!!! That’s insane. And the people who watch the videos also check out the rest of our site, rather than just hitting the main page before moving on. Page views have increased over 30%. While my videos haven’t exactly gone viral, they are producing quantifiable results. Prospective clients are watching the videos, checking us out, and then calling, and I have the Analytics reports to prove it.

So I guess what I am saying is to go get yourself some videos made! Like, right NOW!

It doesn’t have to be complicated. You can sit in front of your web cam and record yourself talking to the camera. That’s exactly what I do for my SPU classes, and it works great. Just remember – this is marketing and you are making your first impression with your videos. Make it look good. Wear a suit, clean up your office so that the viewer can’t see the piles on your desk, and prepare what you plan to say. Be informative – a video saying “this is what we do” as an introduction is great, but actual educational content is even better. We did eight videos containing a good amount of general information about small business legal issues, and all eight of them have been getting hits. And when you edit your videos, use decent software (I use iMovie on my Mac).

If you aren’t so tech savvy, and if you don’t have a friend who runs a small film studio or videography business, you’ll need to hire a professional to shoot videos for you. Ask around and see who has a good reputation in your area. Or go to Guru.com or Elance.com to find one near you. If you want to hire the godfather of video marketing, well, of course you’re going to hire Gerry Oginski (who also teaches a course at SPU on using video in your practice and how to do it right). Your videographer can also help with setting up a YouTube channel and uploading the videos if you need it. Finally, if you don’t already have a web development guy or gal that you use, Guru and Elance can also help you find a web developer to put the videos onto your web site.

And while you are at it, update the content on your web site (how long has it been since you wrote a blog post or updated your bio? Be honest!). How recently you’ve updated also affects your SEO.  Now, get started!