How Immigration Lawyers Can Use Video to Grow Their Law Firm Brand and Business

Video is one of the most powerful tools you can use to grow your immigration law firm and increase awareness of yourself as an immigration expert, both among your peers and your ideal clients. In fact, according to Entrepreneur magazine, businesses that use video grow 49% more from one year to the next than those that don’t.

Maybe you already knew that video is effective at capturing people’s attention and being entertaining (pet videos are a great example of this) but hadn’t considered how you, as a lawyer, could use it to build your immigration law firm. This article looks at some of the reasons why video can be an effective way to make an impression on others, which platforms are a good place to start depending on what your area of immigration practice is, and how to ensure your content is of the best quality possible to make the most of the videos you post.

Let’s dive in.

Why is video a good idea for immigration lawyers?

Video is a good idea for immigration lawyers for the same reasons it's a good idea for other professionals - using video as part of your marketing strategy can help those who view it see you as more relatable, more knowledgeable, and more inviting as an attorney. In a way, it’s easier for a client to connect with you if they’re already familiar with what you look like, your tone of voice, and the way you approach your practice.

Consider these five reasons as to why video is a great tool to use consistently to grow your law firm:

• Video improves your search engine visibility: In a poll conducted by Entrepreneur magazine, 65% of business executive respondents said that if they see a brand video, they will visit the brand’s website. Moreover, people can watch video across multiple devices, which makes you more accessible as an expert. This is in contrast to written content, which is not always mobile-device friendly.
• Video keeps people on your page for longer: Most people find video more engaging and easier to follow than reading, as it engages two senses at a time: watching and listening.
• Video leads to better retention: It’s more likely that people will remember something they watched in a video as opposed to something they only read about. In fact, 90% of the information processed in the brain is visual, so it’s safe to say that information presented visually is easier for the brain to work with.
• Video leads to more conversions: According to Oberlo’s Top 10 Video Marketing Statistics, 93% of businesses using video for marketing have landed a client thanks to a video they put on social media, and 73% of consumers say they were influenced to make a purchase after watching a video on social media. In addition, 88% of those using video as part of their marketing strategy feel satisfied with the Return on Investment (ROI) they’re getting out of the videos they make.
• Video is more shareable: If you’re working on growing your referral network (client and professional), video is one of the tools that will help the most. According to Small Biz Trends, “92% of mobile video consumers share videos with others.” When you look at the frequency at which video is shared compared to the frequency of shares of text and images, it’s much more likely that you will get in front of more people’s screens if you’re on video.

The numbers are very clear in how effective video can be to reach a wider audience, but you may still be wondering what platforms are the best for an immigration lawyer to post videos.

Here are the platforms you can share video content as an immigration attorney, and why.

Let’s not only look at some of the biggest, most popular, and most effective platforms to reach a wider audience, but also think about when would it make sense for you to use one over the other.

YouTube

Given how long it’s been around, the variety of content you can find on it, and how many people use it, it’s hard to dispute YouTube’s position in the general online space: YouTube is the second most used social media network in the world, with over 2 billion (yes, billion with a B) active users each month worldwide. That’s a lot of potential viewers.

There are two clear advantages that YouTube presents in terms of its position as a platform to share video content online as part of your marketing strategy:

• Google owns YouTube, so Google search results feature YouTube videos prominently. For example, if you have a YouTube channel, videos on your channel that feature specific search results, say, if someone searches for “how to file for Adjustment of Status” and you post a video on YouTube explaining how to do that, your video will appear on Google Search results.
• Also, YouTube is ideal for long-form video content since it doesn’t have time limits for video like many other social media apps do (we’ll discuss that on the next point).

YouTube is a good platform to create immigration law content no matter what type of immigration law you practice. it does appear to be better for family immigration as most of the existing channels at the moment cover family-based immigration law.

Instagram, TikTok and Facebook

If you want to create shorter videos, some of these other platforms may be a better fit. Shorter form videos are the most popular kinds of videos on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook, although it is possible to share longer videos in all of them, including most recently TikTok, which now allows for videos up to 10 minutes in length. Even with the longer lengths, however, the most popular and reshared forms of video on these platforms are shorter forms such as Reels and Stories on Facebook and Instagram, and the shorter videos that TikTok has become better known for.

These short-form videos can be great for answering common questions in a concise, engaging format, which in some platforms, you can save for your audience’s future reference and to reshare with others. In addition, short form videos and posts may appear on the suggested posts of people who don’t follow you on Instagram “Explore” page or as part of TikTok’s “For You Page” that recommend content based on past searches or people that you follow. So in the same way that a search engine may show you other “related searches,” platforms like TikTok and Instagram may show you content that is relevant to your viewing history, which increases the chances of your video reaching a wider audience.

LinkedIn

If you feel like the prior platforms are too informal for you, LinkedIn may be your ideal platform. Widely considered as the most professional social media platform, LinkedIn is a great place to share videos aimed to establish you as a field expert and expand your professional network. You can, of course, repurpose videos you’ve made for another platform and share them on LinkedIn, or focus on making videos just for LinkedIn.

For employment-based or investment immigration attorneys, LinkedIn is likely to be the best platform to focus on when it comes to video content. That’s because LinkedIn, as a business-focused social media platform, tends to be where HR, investment and other business professionals spend their time, and where they’re more likely to explore business-related content rather than when they may be on Instagram or Facebook or YouTube in their personal capacity.

Your law firm website

Here are three ways in which you could use video on your website to present yourself in a more relatable way, to help your ideal clients feel more comfortable with you, and allow other lawyers to get a feel for your knowledge in your area of immigration law:

• Introducing yourself in a short video: if you’re an immigrant, or immigration is part of your family story, sharing part of your story in a video can be a powerful way to connect with prospective clients on your website who may find things in common in your personal experience that helps them build trust.
• Talk your website visitor through the process of working with you. Here you can explain, step-by-step, what the prospective client would need to do to start working with you, (e.g., “Once you reach out to my office through the form below, you’ll hear from one of our staff to set up an initial consultation. At that consultation…” etc.), thus making it easier for a prospective client to imagine working with you and increasing the chance that they take that next step.
• Explain your specialty within immigration law or describe possible situations your clients may have been in and how you helped others as a way to show your expertise and separate yourself from your competition.
• Embed social media videos onto your website, which is one way to make it easy to add content to your website without having to record specifically for the website.

Hopefully this article has been helpful to both educate you about the value of video content as part of your law firm’s marketing plan as well as where to focus your efforts when you do decide to get serious with video content.

Docketwise: case management solutions made by and for immigration lawyers

Now that you’re determined to focus some more time on marketing, streamlining your firm is more important than ever so you can save time and energy for more creative work. From a full library of immigration forms to client questionnaires in multiple languages to an industry-leading set of API integrations, Docketwise helps you stay up to date on all your cases, communicate easily with your clients, and otherwise build and manage your firm. If you want to learn more about Docketwise, schedule a demo at the link below, or sign up for our Immigration Briefings newsletter for daily and weekly immigration updates!

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