In today’s episode we’re sharing a presentation from MaxLawCon 2020. Our originally scheduled MaxLawCon 2020 speaker Jim Hart presented LIVE to the Maximum Lawyer Guild community and today we share his talk: Start and Grow a YouTube Channel that Your Clients and Prospects Will Actually Watch.
Attorney Jim Hart has 104,000 YouTube subscribers!
In his presentation he teaches us to know our goal for every video.
We should post 3 types of video:
1) Grow your channel (80%)
2) Sell something (10%)
3) Build community (10%)
Jim also shares his story telling formula he learned from a coach he worked with!
Watch the presentation here.
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Transcript: “Start and Grow a YouTube Channel that Your Clients and Prospects Will Actually Watch” w/ Jim Hart
Speaker 1
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum lawyer podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.
Becca Eberhart
In today’s episode, we’re sharing a presentation from Max law con 2020. Our originally scheduled Max lock on speaker James Hart presented live to the maximum lawyer guild community. And today we share his talk, start and grow a YouTube channel that your clients and prospects will actually watch. Let’s get
Jim Hart
to it. Welcome, everyone. Just to let you know, when I prepared this presentation, I prepared it for a live audience. So when I asked questions, I didn’t know you wouldn’t be able to respond. So I will just go ahead and fill in your answers for you, if that’s okay. But anyway, let’s go ahead and get started. So first question I have for you is as a lawyer, who’s running a practice on your own, what is it that you want, and this is where I would get responses from you. But since you’re not going to be giving me responses, I made up some responses, that I think that I know what you want, I think you probably want some more quality clients, you probably want some more time freedom in your life. In your practice, you probably want to impact your clients lives in a positive way. I imagine you probably if you’re building your own firm, you want some level of lifestyle freedom, you probably want to work on cases that you actually enjoy working, I can tell you, I’ve been there where you’re sitting across from somebody in the conference room, and it’s just somebody that you’re listening to their story. And you do, you don’t want to have anything to do with their case. But you also at the same time know that you need to leave, keep the lights on, you need to pay staff, you need to do different things like that. But what if you really I imagine most of you want to work on cases that you actually enjoy, you probably want some financial freedom. Maybe you want all of the above, I don’t know where you are in your practice. But we’ve we’ve probably got some people here on the call today, who are everything from just starting out on their own, right out of law school to more seasoned attorneys that are running bigger firms, or maybe just went out on their own, who have been at bigger firms. But these are characteristics that most attorneys want. Now, the question I have for you then also is why can’t you get these things. And I’ll fill in the answers for you since you’re not here to respond. So number one, you’re probably bogged down in legal work. I know a lot of people, that’s what happens, you get done in the legal work. And then you don’t have time to market your law firm, which leads to number two, you don’t have time to market, you don’t know how to market your law firm, maybe COVID is a problem right now. I mean, obviously, we’re not meeting with people, at least most of us are not meeting with people face to face. I know I’m not meeting with people face to face, that is an issue. And I remember sitting in my law firm back in March, when we first got the news that everything was basically shutting down, didn’t know what to do. And, and I was scared. And I’m sure many of you were scared, you didn’t know what was going to happen. So maybe you’re too busy. Remember those clients that you took on that you didn’t like? Well, now you’re doing their work, and you don’t like working for them, they’re not paying you enough, maybe they’re not paying anything at all. And it’s keeping you from marketing your firm, maybe you don’t have systems in place to run your practice the right way. Or maybe you can’t afford to hire staff, because you’re doing all these other things that like I said, You’re not marketing your firm, and you’re not bringing the revenues you need to bring in. Perhaps for some of you there’s some mental roadblocks. So these are some of the things that this is what’s keeping you back right now. Now what’s at stake for you, if this if this is what it sounds like for you. And many of you, hopefully you can relate to this what is at stake for you and for your life? Well, number one, you’re never going to be able to build the law firm you dream of. It’s great that many of you are in the guild because Tyson and Jim will do a great job of teaching you everything you need to know to start building that life that you want and building that firm that you want. I know this is something that I did happen to me, I got burned out, you know, in maybe you’re getting burned out, you’re doing all these things, you just feel like you’re running on this treadmill and you’re not going anywhere. You’re getting burned out, which leads to you end up hating your work, you end up hating what you’re doing, which is not good for you. And it’s definitely not good for your clients. And then your family relationships are going to suffer as well. Because you’re working all the time on clients you don’t like we don’t pay you enough that work you hate and this it’s all kind of a hamster wheel, right? So you’re continuing to ride the law firm roller coaster, a marketing coach that I had once called this, and I think it’s appropriate purchasing because you’re like a dolphin that’s going up and down and up and down. Call it a roller coaster call it for purchasing whatever you want. That’s what’s happening. You know, you’re you’re you’re going high, you’re getting clients, you’re feeling great. And then you have to do the work, you stop marketing, and business plummets, and that’s what happens and that’s what happens to a lot of solo attorneys. So hopefully some of this sounds familiar to you. So who else here and I realize you can’t answer but who else wants to learn to build a better way to build a sustainable law practice. Now, before we get into that, who am I? And what what am I doing here? Why am I talking to you about this stuff? Well, let me tell you. I’m a family law attorney. In Cary, North Carolina, I’ve been practicing about 15 years I’m licensed in North Carolina and Florida. And I’m I’m right now, because of and a lot of this is because of COVID. Now, mind you, Jim, and Tyson asked me to do this presentation back in June at max law con live. And this was probably 18 months ago, they asked me to do this, something like that 15 months ago. So things have changed a lot since they originally asked me to do this presentation. But at this point, I am because of COVID starting to build this online business, and I’m using YouTube as the primary platform to do that. Now, you might be wondering, well, what can you do through YouTube? You know, we’ve tried YouTube, and we don’t get a whole lot of traction through it. Maybe we’re not getting any traction at all through it. And so how do I sell through YouTube? Well, I sell right now, currently, I sell legal templates, through YouTube, I sell business strategy calls, through YouTube, I sell subscription legal work through YouTube, which is basically like, clients hire me and they pay a monthly retainer fee for me to represent them. And is that’s typically on transactional type of work that I can I can handle for them. I receive affiliate revenue through YouTube, I receive I’ve set up a DIY Legal website where people can go online and form their own LLC s and hire my firm is the registered agent do all these types of things online without me having any part in the process at all through YouTube. And I also have now a flagship legal course that I sell through YouTube, as well. And I’ve had 250 students go through that all in the past six to eight months or so since COVID. Hit. So that’s who I am. Now, let’s start talking about the fun stuff. And while you’re out here, and that’s YouTube. Now, this is my YouTube channel. And for those of you maybe you don’t notice, but right here is, is the key number right here. I’ve got 102,000 subscribers, I built this channel, and this is what sustains my law firm right now, in large part and continues to do this. So my question for you is why should you continue paying attention? Because you might look at that and think, Well, that’s great, but But how can I get there? Well, you can get there. Last December, a year ago, almost to the day I had 40,000 subscribers. So I’ve gotten picked up over 60,000 subscribers in the past year, when COVID hit this is the reason I was able to grow the channel is because I started focusing on growing my channel back in March. And I really started digging deep into YouTube, how it works, how the algorithm works, and how I could do things to make sure that my videos got shown to as many people as possible, so I could grow my channel. The great thing about YouTube is that your videos are going to work for you around the clock. And people like Jim can attest to this because Jim is doing a great job with his YouTube channel. And I know he gets clients through his YouTube channel, and your videos is going to work for you around the clock right now I get about 5500 views per day to videos on my channel that adds roughly 20 to 50 new people per day to my email list that I continue to market to and sell services to every week. So I have a very engaged email list. Some people they get people on their email list, they don’t do anything with it. I think that’s a bad idea. I email my list once or twice minimum per week to keep them engaged. It’s allowed me to create these new legal products and services to help more people as I talked about before, it’s also allowed me to create predictable passive revenue into my law firm, which is really helpful. And just to give you an idea of what that means, through month end, November 30 2020, my my revenue was up 24%. Year over year from 2019. My profit was up 33%. And the reason my profit was up is because number one I’m generating more passive revenue. Number two, my expenses have gone down as a result of COVID. So both of those have helped. So again, if you’re live, hopefully all of you be raising your hand right now hooting and hollering saying that you want to learn more. So let’s talk about YouTube. Now, any conversation to talk about YouTube has to start with what is if you want to grow your YouTube channel, what is it that YouTube wants to get? And before I show you the answer, I guess I would throw it out to you just think about it for a second. What is YouTube’s number one goal? And again, if we were live, hopefully some of you would would respond, but they’re their number one goal YouTube’s number one goal is to show the right video to the right person at the right time. So you might be wondering, that sounds great, Jim. But why? Why is this YouTube’s number one goal and the reason that this is their number one goal is because by doing that by showing the right video to the right person at the right time, people will stay on YouTube longer and they will have a better viewing experience. So it used to be that what YouTube wanted to do with their algorithm is they just wanted people to stay on as long as possible. what they realized is that people might stay on for two hours and then they get off and they feel terrible because they just wait Sit two hours are like watching cat videos. That’s not what YouTube wants anymore. They want people to have a positive viewing experience, whether that means they stay on for 10 minutes or an hour or longer. They want them to have a positive viewing experience. So if you can craft your videos in a way, that’s going to get people to stay on the platform and give them a positive viewing experience, YouTube is going to reward you for that. So how in the world do you do this? That’s the big million dollar question, right? Well, number one, you have to start thinking about optimizing for humans, and not robots. So many lawyers are optimizing for robots, and we’re talking about that here in just a second, you need to optimize your videos for humans. Many people don’t know this. But I’ve heard a lot of people talking about, you know, transcription, like transcribing their videos or so for search engines, and different things like that, and making sure those get uploaded, because that’s going to help you to figure out what’s in the video, blah, blah, blah. YouTube knows more about your video, when you publish it, then you can ever put into the descriptions into the tags and the title or anything like that. Let me repeat that. So you get it, just make sure you understand. And there’s actually a tool online, where you can see how this works. But when you upload that video to YouTube, when after you upload it, you’ll notice that there it spends all this time processing, what YouTube is doing is it’s internally transcribing the video, it’s looking at all the images that are in your video, it’s figuring out what music is in your video, it’s figuring out what you’re talking about in the video. It knows more about that video, when you finish when it finishes processing that than you could ever put in any amount of titles, descriptions or tags. So keep that in mind as we continue this presentation. Now, how do you optimize for humans and that robots? Well, the first thing I would say is that you need to focus on your ideal prospect. So as an attorney, you need to define what your ideal customer avatar is. You need to be yourself in your videos. If yourself means standing behind some law books, and wearing a suit and tie and acting like an attorney, then fine. That’s do it as long as it’s authentic. But if that’s not you, and I know a lot of attorneys, that that is not them. That is the that is the persona they put on, because they think that the profession demands that. Well, let me tell you something, YouTube does not demand that maybe when you go to court, you have to act that way. But when you’re on YouTube, you do not have to act that way. And a lot of attorneys are going to push back at that. And they’re not going to like that. But you have to be yourself and your videos. And just a quick side note before we go on one of my most popular videos, I literally rolled out of bed, went to my office, my hair was like all scruffy all over the place. I was wearing a scruffy smelly t shirt. I literally flipped the video on recorded for like three or four minutes and uploaded it. It was terrible. It was awful. And it’s gotten several 100,000 views. So you’ve got to be yourself. People want to see people they don’t want to see. I mean they want to see lawyers, but they want to see lawyers who are people that makes sense. So when you’re recording your videos, just like I’m talking to this camera right now, and I really wish I was talking to all of you in person, but just like I’m talking to this camera right now, pretend your camera as a prospect, pretend your camera is someone that you’re sitting in your conference room with, and talking to, and make a biographical sketch of what that person looks like and who they are. And that’s who you should be talking to in the camera. talk to that person. Now, when you’re defining your target audience, make each video for one specific person, if you do plaintiffs work, don’t make all your videos about car wrecks, and medical malpractice and worker’s comp and all these things. Focus on one specific customer avatar and make that video about that person and talk to that person, the more specific you are with your videos and who you’re talking to in your videos, the better your video is going to perform. All right. So let’s talk about I said I was going to get to this what most lawyers and marketers focus on, they focus on three things. Number one, they focus on keywords. Number two, they focus on their tags. And number three, they focus on descriptions, I already told you that you don’t need to worry about that. Because when you’re uploading that video, YouTube’s figuring this stuff out without you giving it to them, you don’t need to give it to them. So if when you’re focusing on these three things that makes sense, if you’re doing this, if you go to Google, there’s a search box, and you’re gonna type in what you’re looking for, right. And that’s how Google knows what to show you as terms of content because most of its going to be written. They might show you some videos, they might show you some images, things like that, but most of what they’re going to show you in the search results are going to be text, it’s going to be information. Now, that doesn’t make sense on YouTube, and here’s why. On YouTube, it’s all graphical. All images, it’s it’s that that’s what people are looking for. So, if you want to get found on YouTube and you want to grow your channel on YouTube, you have to keep this in mind, a lot of attorneys and I’ll show you example of what I did with a really bad video about a year ago, where I was focusing on keywords, because I didn’t know any better back then. And I’ll show you how that turned out. But you need to, if you’re going to be on YouTube, and you’re gonna do well, you need to focus on three things, you need to focus on your thumbnails, and you need to not just have them be an afterthought. A lot of attorneys I’ve seen this from people in this group, and you know who you are, they just let whatever random thumbnail pops up on their image. That’s that’s the thumbnail they put up, you need to give it more thought you should be doing you should be spending at least as much time on your thumbnails as you spend on the content for your videos. Because it’s that important titles. And I put in parenthesis CTR, that means click through rate, because your title and your thumbnail in conjunction together, that’s what’s going to drive people to look for and click on your video. And that’s what you want, you want people to click on your videos. And if people are clicking on your videos, and you have a high click through rate, YouTube is going to reward you by showing it to more people. The third thing is the content and the watch time. So these are the three things that you really should be focusing on, not what I talked about before the keywords, the descriptions, and tags and things like that, you need to focus on your thumbnails and titles, and then also your content. And we’re going to show you how this works here in just a second. So in terms of titles, and thumbnails, I’ll be honest, I still work on that I still struggle with this, I’m getting better, but it’s hard for me. But I have gotten pretty good at showing getting people to keep watching my videos, which is why I think that my channel has done so well. So what I want to share with you today is how you can get people to keep watching your videos. And this is very important, you need to do this. Number one, you need to determine what is the goal for each video that you’re going to put out, every video should have a goal. And the goal of the video is not going to be to get people to click an ad, we’re going to go through this here in a second. So I’m not going to, I’m not going to get ahead of myself. There are three video types that you should be publishing on your YouTube channel. The first type, I would say 80% of the time, you should be putting out these videos, these are our videos to grow your channel, this is going to be substantive evergreen type of content, whose goal is to provide value to the viewer. So they will keep watching and watch more information on your channel. Second type of video is to sell something. Now this is where most lawyers make mistakes. And again, you know who you are, you get on you do your video. And in the first 10 seconds, you’re telling people to go to your website. At the end of the video, you’re telling people to go to your website, you’re telling them to say well, subscribing isn’t as bad, but you’re telling them to click a link, you’re telling them to call a phone number, you’re trying to go to your website, if you if you let’s say you were an attorney who had one of the marketing things you did is you invited a bunch of people to a happy hour each week when when we can have a happy hour, right. But let’s say that’s what you did. And you invited a bunch of people referral sources and things like that this happy hour each week. And you did that. And after a couple of weeks, you started noticing that about half the people that came to your happy hour, were leaving about halfway through. And you weren’t quite sure why. But then eventually you figure it out. And you figured out that what’s going on is one of the people that’s coming to the happy hour about midway through is realized this is a really good marketing plays for him. And all he really likes these people that he’s networking with there. So he starts inviting them to his own event in during the middle of your happy hour. But how happy are you going to be about that? Probably not very happy. And you’re probably going to stop inviting that person to your happy hour. It’s the same way with YouTube, again, optimized for humans, not robots. If you are every time you post a video on YouTube telling people to go somewhere else and stop watching YouTube. How many videos do you think YouTube is really going to surface to more people to watch? Probably not very many. So that’s the second type is to sell something. So I’d say 10% of the time these percentages I kind of came up with them this is probably what I do for my practice. Anyway The third type of video is to build community and let’s go through what the goal should be for each type of these videos if when you’re publishing them so before you start publishing anything you need to decide what is the goal of this video. Each one has to have a specific call to action if your video is trying to grow your if you want to grow your channel the call to action should be asking the person to watch another video if you watch any of my recent videos now some of my older videos are a little bit different but if you watch videos that I’ve done in the last six to eight months, almost every single one of them at the end of the video is asking them to watch another video on my usually on my channel occasionally. I’ll ask And I’ll tell them to watch another channel if I think it’s a value to them, but usually it’s going to be watching another video on my channel. If the goal of the video is to sell something, then yes, you can, you can include a link, tell them to call your firm, tell them to join your email list, tell them to click a link, whatever you want to do. But you need to be aware that when you do that, and that’s the call to action on the video, that YouTube is not going to show that to very many people. So the shelf life of that type of video is going to be much shorter. Because after you publish it, you might get some people that watch but then it’s going to the number is going to go way down. And we’re going to show you what what I mean by that here in a little bit. This third type of video is to build community, this is kind of you can do this as a live video, you go on, you know, once a week, do an Ask a lawyer type of show. And the goal here is to really engage with your audience and get them invested in your channel. And I don’t do these as much as I probably should. But it’s a good thing. And every time I do it, the people that come on, they love that I do it. And it gets a lot of really good positive feedback. But I will typically unlist these videos after a few weeks. Because, again, YouTube’s not going to be servicing them anymore. The only videos that YouTube is gonna be surfacing are the ones that are going to help you grow your channel. And in those building communities COMMENT, LIKE SUBSCRIBE, that’s the type of stuff you’ll be asking people to do.
Speaker 4
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Jim Hacking
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Jim Hart
So how not to grow your channel, we’ve already kind of gone through this, but I’ll go through it again. Tell the viewer to stop watching a call your firm, tell the viewer stop watching the Visio website, send viewers to other videos in the middle of your video. In general, I used to put videos like like in the middle of the video and say hey, click this link, watch this video. If you want to learn more about this, I’ve stopped doing that. And I typically put those videos at the end. It’s not a terrible thing to do. But I think it’s just one more way to tell YouTube Okay, people are dropping off this video halfway through so we don’t want to show it to more people. Again, I’m gonna show you that here are the stats and just a little bit send viewers off of YouTube in the middle of the video. That’s a big no, no, you don’t want to do that send viewers to a lead magnet in your video, I include a lead magnet I said at the very beginning, I get 20 to 50 people on my email list every day from my YouTube video. It’s not because I’m telling people to go on my my email list. It’s because I’ve got multiple links in the description of the videos, where people can go and find more information and get on my email list. But I’m not telling people to go there. And I don’t recommend that you do that either people or smart people know how to look in the descriptions. And if they like your videos, and I like what you’re doing, they’re going to subscribe, you don’t have to tell them to do it. They know how to do that by now. And they’ll find your lead magnets in the description, that’s fine. But don’t tell people to go there and jump off of YouTube. Don’t spend a whole lot of time introducing yourself, right? You don’t need to spend a whole lot of time introducing yourself, you want to get to the content pretty quickly, I’m going to show you how to do that here in sec, don’t telegraph the end of your videos. Again, that’s going to lead to drop off rates and your audience retention. And I’m cutting a sample that that I will show your little bit as well. So the best way to keep your viewers engaged. And again, if we were alive would be asking who knows the best way to keep people engaged? I bet you know, it’s to tell them a story. It’s tale is oldest time, right? That’s how you keep people engaged. That’s how you keep people on your channel. Here’s my storytelling formula. I can’t take credit for this. I got this from a coach that I worked with to learn more about YouTube paid him a lot of money. And here’s how I structure every single one of my videos and my audience retention has greatly improved as a result. I start with who’s the character? Who is it that I’m talking about in this video? What do they want? Why can’t they get it? What is at stake? If they don’t get it? Who comes along to help them? How ultimately do they get what they want? And how are they transformed as a result, where most people go wrong here is they’ll go through this story template. And they will forget to do number four, what is at stake if they don’t get it. This is a huge one and it really gets people to buy into your content. So I’d like to do a couple of examples of what I’m going to go through these pretty quick to be cognizant of your time. Again, I was going to we were live I’d be asking the audience to come in and kind of tell me what they thought each of the elements are for them. But let’s let’s talk about how this will work. For a personal dri practice, for example, and let me just grab my notes here. So who’s the character, the character somebody has been injured, whether it be a car wreck, medical malpractice, whatever it is, they’ve been injured somehow, what do they want, they want to get better. They want to have their medical bills paid for, they want to know that they’re going to be okay, they want all these things, why can’t they get it, because they don’t know the rules, they don’t know how to do it, they don’t know how to talk to the insurance company, they’re afraid they’re going to do something wrong. What’s at stake, if they don’t get it, there’s a lot at stake. If they don’t get it, they may not get better, they might not get the money they rightfully deserve. Because they weren’t at fault in the accident, they may never be able to get back to a normal life who comes along to help them. Typically, it’s going to be someone great, like a great pie lawyer like Tyson is going to come along, he’s going to help them and he’s going to hold their hand along the way and show them exactly what they need to do to get better. How do they ultimately get what they want, Tyson is going to come in, he’s going to hold their hand, he’s going to get all their information, he’s going to do all the negotiation on their behalf. He’s going to file a lawsuit, if a lawsuit needs to be filed, and he’s going to take care of all this for them, and they’re going to feel better about it at the end of the day, how are they transformed, they’re going to not get a nice big check. And they’re going to feel much better about their situation. And obviously, they’re going to have lots of happy, wonderful feelings about Tyson as well. So a family law example, who is the character, someone who’s not so happy with their spouse maybe doesn’t want to stay in their marriage? What do they want, they want freedom, they want to be at peace, they want to live a happy life, they want to maybe be free from their, their spouse? Why can’t they get it? A number of reasons, they’re probably scared. They probably don’t know what their legal rights are. They they don’t know what to do, they don’t know how to move out without messing everything up, they don’t want to lose half their life savings. What’s at stake, if they don’t get it? Well, they’re never going to be happy, they’re never going to live the life they want, they’re always going to be stuck in a relationship that maybe is just dragging them down and makes them unhappy. And they feel like they’re never going to be able to live that life that that, that they finally want no freedom, who comes along to help them? It’s probably going to be someone like Billy tercio, or Brian reedy or someone wonderful like that, or Aaron, who’s going to help them? How do they ultimately get when they want one of these wonderful lawyers is going to show them exactly what they need to do. They’re going to hold their hand, they’re going to walk them through the process step by step, and they’re going to make sure they’re protected. How are they transformed as a result, they’re going to get out of their marriage, they’re going to be happier, they’re going to move on to a better life, maybe they’re going to find another boyfriend, girlfriend, husband or wife. And you know, they’re going to be happier. Alright, last example, immigration, who’s the character? Someone who wants to move the United States, in all likelihood? What do they want? They want to move to the United States? Why can’t they get it? They don’t speak the language. They don’t know the rules. They’re not sure what visa is going to apply to them? What’s at stake, if they don’t get it? Yeah, maybe they get deported. Maybe they mess something up, and they can’t get here legally. Who comes along to help them? Probably our superhero gym hacking? How do they ultimately get what they want, he’s going to walk them through again, step by step, hold their hand, talk them through the process, make sure they understand what they’re doing, make sure they dot all their i’s and cross all their T’s so they can get here legally, he’s gonna fight for them. If the government tells them No, how are they transformed as a result, they get the citizenship they want here in the United States, and they get to live a better life. So those are some examples, you need to start incorporating those type of stories into your content, it’s okay, if you do the same type of video multiple times. Because number one, you’re going to get better at it. And you’re going to get it’s going to be easier for you to tell that story. And you need to come up with an origin story like that, that’s going to share with people exactly what they need to know so that they can start relating to you and they can start wanting to work with you as their lawyer. Now, how do you know if people are watching, you can do a number of things. You can look at your impressions, by impressions, I mean, the number of times that YouTube is surfacing your content to other people on the platform, you can check your click through rate, this is going to be really indicative of whether or not your videos are going to do well. If you’ve got a low click through rate, you’re going to need to upgrade your thumbnail and figure out something to or maybe change your title around a little bit to make sure that you get more people clicking through and watching the content, you want to check the watch time, we’re going to go through some audience retention graphs here in just a minute. And I’m gonna show you exactly what these look like and what you should be looking for. That’s the audience retention. So audience retention is basically the percentage of people that have viewed your content. So let me give you an example number one, this is a video that I posted about a year ago, this thumbnail not great, you know, I look at it now. And I realized how bad it is. But the title was, and this is funny to me, social media marketing and 2020 legal contracts you need to clearly what I was doing with this video and I remember when I did this is I was targeting that term social media marketing and 2020 This is before I knew anything about telling a story or anything like that. So I imagine legal contracts you need was also a keyword that I was I was targeting but you know that first part of it social media marketing and 2020 has nothing to do With two contracts you need, they’re at, on the thumbnail. And, you know, so the fact that anybody watched this video is really pretty surprising to me. I published this about a year ago when say that, yeah, this is 17. So I published it a year ago today, it’s gotten 1700 views, not terrible. And I’m sure most of you out there that have smaller YouTube channels are probably thinking that’s, that’s pretty good for a video. And it’s not bad, I’m not gonna sit here and say, That’s a terrible stat. But compared to some of my other videos, it is not great. My click through rate on this actually wasn’t terrible 2.8%. For most of my videos that do really well, we’re seeing click through rates in the five to 7% range, anything lower than three or 4% is not going to do as well. And again, this is going to, it’s going to depend on your channel, there’s much more high volume channels, where the click through rate is going to be much smaller, and they’re gonna get a whole lot more views. And there’s channels that are very niche that don’t get a whole lot of views, where the click through rates are going to be higher. So it really just depends, I gain 28 subscribers from this video. All this stuff can be found in YouTube’s analytics, by the way, it’s a great platform. And the average percentage viewed for this video was about 42.6%. Again, not great in terms of trying to grow a channel. So if all my videos were like this, my channel probably wouldn’t grow. Let’s go through this second example. So I as you can see, I’ve kind of upgraded my thumbnails a little bit, this thumbnail was generated in Photoshop, I believe, we got a little bit more bold to try and bring the tape out a little bit better. It’s got an expression on my face that kind of shows some aggravation. The title here was single member LLC mistakes, you should avoid 2020 update, you can see that title syncs nicely with the thumbnail, avoid these common LLC mistakes, they’re not exactly the same. You don’t want to use the exact same title in your thumbnails. But it’s very similar. And it shows that, that that’s kind of what the video is about. I published this in June, that was about six months ago, it’s received 41,251 views, obviously, you know, much better than the previous video that was published 12 months ago, the click through rate on this was 5.6%. So again, it’s a higher click through rate. And I’ve gained about 1100 subscribers from this video. And this is what I really want you to take away from this, this is what’s really important that percentage viewed of this video was 58.7%. And I’m gonna show you here what that looks like. So this is audience retention. So that this image on the left is that first video I showed you with the percentage view to 42.6%. So you can see as we get towards the end of the video, it’s down around 10 to 15% Are people are still watching that video. And it’s a 10 minute video. If you look at the other video on the right, the average duration is almost double that of the first video, eight minutes and 43 seconds versus four minutes and 16 seconds. And apart from a drop off at the very beginning there were dropped down to about 66% A couple minutes in, it kept that pretty steady for the entire video right route to the end, where it dropped down to about 33%. And just before that, I think about 30 seconds before that it was still doing pretty well. And that’s because I teach all the way through the video. And I didn’t have any other call to actions except to watch another video. And that was at the very end. That’s how audience retention can be important. So you want to go into your YouTube analytics, and you want to look at your audience retention graphs and see how they’re showing up for your videos. So I can open up for questions. If there are any questions, Becca, or also I’ve got some other examples directly from my channel that I can show to show people to walk them through my channel a bit more. But I’m happy to do whatever you want me to do.
Becca Eberhart
Absolutely. So I don’t see any questions in the group right now. I had thought of two questions that maybe we could run through quick and then you could show us some of those on your channel.
Jim Hart
Okay, that’s fine.
Becca Eberhart
So I was just wondering, you had talked about thumbnails and how they are kind of that visual search. So what is your opinion on only text thumbnails? or should there always be some sort of imagery on a thumbnail?
Jim Hart
I don’t have an opinion yes or no and that it really depends on the thumbnail, right? And I’ll be honest, I didn’t focus on this all up because I am really bad at image stuff. I’m actually there’s a there’s a company that does thumbnails that I might hire, to see if they can jack up my thumb my click through rates a little bit better. The nice thing about thumbnails is if you see a video that’s doing really, really well, but the click through rate is really low. You can swap out the thumbnails anytime you want. It’s not going to have any effect on that video. The other thing I will say If you have one video that does really well, and another video that does really bad, that’s not going to affect, they’re not going to affect each other. I’m sorry, that’s kind of a tangent. But just people people do worry about that. So I would say, test it, one of the things that I do is I use a tool in to buddy that allows you to AB test. And basically what it does is you set it up and you put in one thumbnail, maybe you want to test one thumbnail that has an image, and one thumbnail, that is just text, and you can set it up and two, buddy, were two buddy will will put the two off against each other, for as long as you want, you can tell them to do it until it’s statistically significant. Or you can say to do it for two weeks, whatever you want to do. And that’s what they’ll do. And then they’ll pick the winner at the end. And then you could throw another thumbnail if you want it. So what I would recommend is if you’re if you’re thinking that maybe images of me aren’t going to be as good as just a techspace image, or vice versa, test it out. And you can figure that out. Because by swapping those images out, you’re not going to hurt the overall stats for the
Becca Eberhart
video. Awesome. Okay, so my second question, very related to that was because you had showed us the two different images of your thumbnails. Are you actually specifically taking photos that you know, you’re going to use as thumbnails? Yes. Okay.
Jim Hart
I don’t I don’t pull images out of my videos, I used to do that. I don’t do that anymore. Now, what I’ll do is after I’m finished recording, I’ll turn off the camera, and then turn it on again to start a new file. And I’ll just, I’ll live, I literally will, like, sit in front of the camera for like, you know, two or three minutes and just do a bunch of poses and see what and kind of think about how it’s going to play for my video. So if I’m giving a five tips, I might make sure I put my hand up for five tips or it’s terrible. It’s not great. It’s not what I recommend, but as a lawyer, and we’re just trying, you just have to be kind of better than most other lawyers, right? I was on a call with somebody today. And she’s like, she’s like, I love your videos, because you’re not like all the other lawyers. Now that’s me that I don’t want anyone to copy what I do. I mean, you vote if you want, I guess. But it’s not going to work for you. You have to be who you are like, I could never copy someone like will you Mansky and try and, you know, swear and do different things like he does, because I’m not willing to ask you that’s his persona. He’s the law man, right? I’m not the law, man. So you just have to be who you are. And most lawyers, especially a lot of the lawyers that are in this group, have enough personality to to have a pretty unique presence on YouTube, they just have to get out of their shell and stop doing them. Hi, my name is Jim Hart. I’m a lawyer and Carrie, and today we’re going to talk about equal distribution. Nobody wants to hear that they don’t they want some, you kind of got to amp yourself up for your videos.
Becca Eberhart
Love it. I think that those behind the scenes tips like that are super important. So those are the two questions that I had thought of,
Jim Hart
well, what I was gonna The other thing I was going to show, let me just see if I can pull it up. So there’s a couple other videos, I think this is really interesting. And I want to show this tool that you can use in YouTube, if that’s okay. Alright, so this is, um, this is like the back end, this is what it shows and, and so what I think is important here is going down here. So for every video, I’ll just show you how you got here. So for every video, you can go over to this channel, this content tab, right here. And that shows you a list of all your videos. And you can sort them by date, by views by comments by different things. So let’s go to views. So this is like one of my and by the way, the way this video performed has throw everything that I just told you out the window because I don’t know why this video performs so well. But it did. Anyway. So you go down, you click on the video and you go to the analytics tab and you can go down here and then you can see audience retention. Now I don’t know if it’s actually going to play this. But I think what’s really important is it shows you at the beginning, like here, 31 seconds in 73%, we’re still watching the video, that’s pretty good. You want to be about 75% 80% 3030 seconds. And so if you’re if your audience retention graph, and they’ve got a little guide here, if it goes straight down, then you know people aren’t watching your video, or they’re jumping off and YouTube isn’t going to show it to more people, if that’s the case. So you want it to be pretty flat, right? There’s always going to be a downward slope. But then what I think is really interesting is here at the end, and I don’t know if you’re going to be able to see this or not. But I’m going to hit play and see what happens because it’s really interesting. What I say at this point. What I said was hopefully this has been helpful to you basically what I did is about three minutes before the video ended. I said hopefully this has been helpful to you and I started rambling into make sure that you click the link to subscribe do all this go down to the bottom and check out my description and then my if you can see it just it just torpedoed. I mean it went down to 10% at the bottom. Now, again, this video did really well, I’m not sure why, what’s what’s going on here, I think the thumbnail is horrible. Maybe it’s just a topic that has broad interest, I’m not sure that’s something to check, then this one, I think this was interesting. This is that same one that I was just showing before as an example. And on the back end, what you can see here is that with the first couple days after I published this video, it had like 1600 views typical in this period was two to 3000. So it actually was underperforming in the first four days, it wasn’t until about 30 days in that it started to take off. So this gray line down here is what typical videos on my channel do. And this line shows it kind of took off. So that will happen sometimes. And that’s great, you want to see that happen. But you don’t know when it’s going to happen or what videos it’s going to happen to. So you got to just keep publishing, the more you publish, the more likely something like that is going to happen. And then this one, I think, is just another example where you can see a little bit clearer. This is a shorter video, it was just published like three months ago. And it’s just right there in that gray area. So it’s pretty typical, it’s starting to break out, I don’t know what’s going to happen with it. But again, on the audience retention here 48% watched, and this is where I changed, and I started going directly to showing another video. So at the end of the video, I still got 35% of the people watching it, and then just don’t show it off, because that’s when the video ends. So I just think it’s interesting to look at that stuff. And you just really need to look at these graphs and see how they do. And the other thing you can check, which I think is really important is if you go to the reach tab up here, and then you’ll see how whether YouTube is showing it to people so you can see how many impressions and then you can see the click through rate again, three point naught 2%, not great. Probably could do better. But it’s got a good average view duration. So people that do click on and watch it, they tend to stay on and that’s great. Then here you can see where people are coming from you want people to be coming from browse features. That’s like YouTube’s homepage. So that’s like the goldmine. That’s the goal, you want to get all your videos onto the homepage, which means they’re going to show it to more people. But anyway, and YouTube search will actually be pretty low. A lot of people try and optimize for YouTube search. But what what’s really happening there is people will search for your video, they might find your video and watch your video, but you’re not building any engagement or community by doing that. Because they’re just looking for an answer their question, then they’re dropping off. I mean, how many people can relate to that, right? You want people to want to come back to your channel and watch more. So that’s kind of what I got
Becca Eberhart
is you don’t have any questions right now. And that was actually going to be my last question was what’s the best way to contact you? So we got an email there. And then of course, subscribe to your YouTube channel, because it’s incredible.
Jim Hart
I wouldn’t say that. But I got lucky. I literally lucked into this figuring this stuff out. But I really did start focusing on it. Probably back in March. Before that. It was all just dumb luck. I would say. It’s fun. I love it now.
Becca Eberhart
That’s awesome. All right. Well, thank you so much for sharing this with us today.
Jim Hart
You’re welcome. If if any of your members if they reach out or they have questions, and you want a forum to me, I’ll try my best to respond. Awesome. Thank
Becca Eberhart
you so much. Thanks, Becky.
Jim Hart
I look forward to seeing you hopefully next year. And when are you guys planning it for compromise? For as of right now? It’s going to be live. Exactly. Fingers crossed.
Becca Eberhart
high hopes. Exactly. That’s right.
Jim Hart
All right. Thanks, Becca. Have a great night. Thank you.
Speaker 1
Bye bye. Thanks for listening to the maximum lawyer podcast. Stay in contact with your host and to access more content content, go to maximum lawyer.com. Have a great week and catch you next time.
