StateLawTV.com is up and running and we would like you to give you a sneak peek of our new show – Kate’s Kourt!

StateLawTV launched today and we are thrilled with all of the press and well-wishes! StateLawTV is an Internet TV channel that will also be available offline later this fall.

I attended a conference about a month ago and heard marketing guru Paul Colligan talk about new media content creation. Tonight I received an email from Paul with a link to the presentation on his YouTube channel. If you have 8 minutes and an interest in better online visibility – this is an excellent presentation. As they say “content is king.” You have to have lots and lots of content flowing in order to continually improve your visibility and positioning. Paul talks about creating the content once and then repurposing it multiple ways to get greater advantage from it.

Recently I’ve had some questions about my post last week where I introduced a service called Animoto. Animoto does in about 20 minutes and for a few hundred dollars what would have taken about 8 hours and $5000 worth of video equipment to do just a few years ago. It allows members to upload digital pictures and music, press a button that says “create video” and wait for 20 minutes or so for the program to analyze the images and music and build a montage with the kind of style and impact usually only evidenced by highly skilled directors and editors.

I see multiple potential uses of this program for law firms. However, I do not mean to imply that it is a one stop video solution. It’s not. I simply mean to imply that I think it would be a great supplement to your online video program. For instance, most firms are involved in various types of community events, sponsorships, high school programs, etc. One suggestion would be to have a member of your staff attend and take lots of pictures. After the event, choose the best 40 images, sign up for an account with Animoto and build your first montage.

Here is an example that may help you brainstorm possibilities. Last week, some of my family went on vacation to Florida. We arrived home Friday evening. On Saturday, I went through my pictures, uploaded about 40 into Animoto, uploaded music and hit “create video.” Here is the result:

If you share my belief that online video is an absolute must for law firm marketing programs, then you’ll want to check this out. I had an email yesterday from a video trade group that I belong to. They were recommending a new tool for montage production using still photographs. The company is called Animoto. I flagged the email to come back to because I have such regard for this trade group that anything they recommend has immediate credibility to me.

Today, I opened an account in Animoto. The fact is I do a lot of montages using photograph’s and I have wanted to find an easy to use software to give motion to my still images. I saw an example from Animoto and decided to open an account and try it out. There are various levels of accounts. I chose the business account for $249/yr. I added an all access pass for $25 that will allow me to actually download the videos if I like.

Here’s how it works. You upload your images into the application. You can then drag and arrange them in sequence. Next step is to choose music and then click on create video. Pretty easy. I wanted to show you an example so I just took some of my stock image photo’s and uploaded them into the program. About 5 minutes later I received and email with a link. Here is the video that the system spit out. Oh, by the way, this platform was developed by a group of veterans of the entertainment industry.

Happy New Year!  I don’t know about you but I am truly excited about 2009.    The New Year is a time that I generally focus on goals and priorities and that process tends to be invigorating.  One of the first new projects for our team in 2009 is the launch of Legal Marketing Cafe TV.  www.LegalMarketingCafe.com.  

As with most things we do at Speaker Media and Marketing, we anticipate that this project will evolve over a period of time.  Our philosophy is to kind of roll up our sleeves and test and measure as we go.  We’ll keep you posted on our progress!

I am writing this post from Coeur d’Alene in Idaho.  The M&L group has just finished the first day of their 3 day conference at this beautiful lakeside resort.  I haven’t been to M&L for a few years, and it has been so nice to see friends that I haven’t seen for quite some time.  Of course, Bill Berg is one of my favorites.  Bill is the one that first took a chance on me when I left my position with a Philadelphia law firm and ventured out as a consultant.  My friend and client Terry Bryant is here.  I always get such a kick out of Terry.  We share a thing about time.  I had to laugh yesterday when I was leaving the Spokane airport for the 40 minute trip to the resort.  Terry and a few other attorneys were waiting to get on a shuttle to make the trip.  As I walked by Terry heading towards my rental car he was looking at his watch saying that the shuttle was not meeting his time schedule.  So Terry and 4 others jumped in the rental car with me and we had a fun trip over.  I’ve been working with Rainwater, Holt & Sexton for quite awhile now but we had never actually met in person until yesterday.   Mike is holding down the fort back in Arkansas but both Stephen Holt and Bob Sexton are here. 

A couple of my Atlanta clients came in this afternoon – Tom Ashenden and Bruce Millar.  Greg Stokes, also from Atlanta will be here tomorrow.  Greg has a terrific marketing director, Melanie, and I was so glad to get to meet her this evening.  Melanie gets things done.  It’s great.  She is a mover shaker!

I could go on and on but the hour is late and I want to wrap this up.  I do want to mention one resource that I discussed during my talk today and that is www.ustream.tv.  I have a test site set up and it’s at this link:  www.ustream.tv/channel/legal-marketing-cafe.

Las Vegas attorney Richard Harris and I chatted at the cocktail party tonight and we set Richard up on UStream.TV.  If you want to take a look, here is a link to his show site:  http://www.ustream.tv/channel/las-vegas-personal-injury-lawyer.  Obviously he hasn’t done a broadcast yet but my guess is that he will before long!

 If you’d like to know more about UStream.TV, feel free to email me at cindy@cindyspeaker.com and I’ll help you get started!

There was an excellent article in Forbes magazine today about how Facebook and MySpace would like to help grow small businesses.

Ditch your Web site. Facebook and MySpace are eager to help small businesses find friends