THE TROLLOPE APPROACH TO BUILDING A YOUTUBE AUDIENCE

In the 138 years since he wrote his last word, Anthony Trollope, the Victorian-era novelist, has had more than his fair share of both critics and fans. Henry James once critiqued one of Trollope’s novels as “…a sort of mental pabulum,” while Alec Guinness loved Trollope’s work so much that he carried one of his books with him whenever he traveled. Love him or hate him, the one thing everyone can agree on is that Anthony Trollope was a prodigious writing machine. Between 1843 and 1882, Trollope wrote 47 novels, 17 non-fiction books, 2 plays, and over 20 articles and letters.

Exactly how Trollope managed so much productivity over a span of nearly 40 years is no mystery. His approach is well documented both by Trollope himself in his Autobiography and by modern-day researchers such as Mason Currey who examined the lives of 161 successful artists in his book, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work. The writer, Mayo Oshin, recently published an article about Trollope in which he breaks down the novelist’s productivity secrets – an excellent summary that I highly recommend. Oshin’s third point is that Trollope focused on a system, not on specific goals. In fact, systems thinking is a theme that runs through lots of great books on productivity including Atomic Habits, Thinking In Bets, and Measure What Matters. When it comes to maximizing one’s output, regardless of the field, it helps to have a system in place that creates intense focus and output.

In December 2018, I wrote an article about why lawyers and other professionals don’t post more YouTube videos, and I concluded that most people are not willing to put in the hard work, over a sustained period of time. In order to generate lots of content, you need a system for sustaining the effort. “Whether it’s a blog, a podcast, or a YouTube channel, the secret to success is having a long-term commitment to generously creating excellent content.” What most professionals don’t realize is that giving away great content is the surest way to build a sustainably successful business. The days are long gone when someone could hoard intellectual property and build a moat around their ideas. What draws new clients (and customers) is one’s reputation, and as Seth Godin points out, what builds reputation is to create content that you’re proud of.

A year ago, I looked at the leading law firm creators of videos on YouTube and discovered that fewer than 600 nationwide had a channel. It’s a telling statistic but one that I believe will change dramatically over the next few years, not just for lawyers but for all professionals including doctors, dentists, architects, and engineers. Those who create useful and interesting content will thrive; those who don’t will find it increasingly difficult to remain competitive.

When I last checked in on Hackard Law in Mather, California, they had generated nearly 400 videos in two and a half years. Today that number is rapidly closing in on 600. When I tabulated the data I expected to see an S-Curve with productivity beginning to level off, but what I found was a straight line up and to the right.

What is remarkable about Hackard Law’s video production is that it is a model of consistency; the firm is generating an average of 3 new videos per week (12 per month). What that speaks to is a system that prioritizes video production regardless of what else may be going on at the firm.

Such consistent production has now lifted Hackard Law two spots in the top 10 law firms nationwide when it comes to YouTube videos and puts some distance between them and the next closest firms.

Ogmen Law Firm continues to lead all firms with a staggering 3,721 videos, up from less than 2,000 in late 2018, which means they’re now posting 3 new videos every day, while Nomberg Law also grew substantially from 337 and 12th place to 618 and 5th place in the current ranking. Reeves Law Firm has stalled out at 623 videos, as the firm has not added any new YouTube content in more than two years, and is likely to get passed by several others this year.

As I noted earlier, quantity is no guarantee of quality, and it’s theoretically possible to post hundreds of trivial and useless videos, but I’d venture to say that most professionals would never risk damaging their reputations on such a marketing strategy.

With all that said, and for those professionals interested in building in a long-term YouTube marketing strategy, here is what I see as Hackard Law’s system for creating video content:

·        Create original and valuable content at least twice each week. Set aside time to do this important work, even if it means ignoring some of the urgent matters that constantly come up.

·        Keep it simple. Plan to do short two- or three-minute videos on a variety of subjects related to you and your practice. Find topics that you can speak about with authority, and which are likely to be useful. (Hint: These may be questions your current clients are asking.)

·        Target 300+ videos and two years. I’ve seen countless firms that did 5 or even ten videos and then gave up. To avoid this short-term thinking, imagine each video is a lottery ticket. As the old saying goes, ‘if you don’t play, you can’t win.’

·        Generously add value. No one wants to see a commercial unless it’s hugely entertaining. What are the most valuable tips you can offer people? What information do you know that others don’t fully appreciate? What advice would you give your best friend? The object is to add value to your viewers with no expectation of any return. If you can consistently do that, the world will beat a path to your door.

·        Have fun. If you’re not having fun, your audience will notice that in a heartbeat.

·        Integrate video in a broader strategy. As I’ve written, SEO combined with original content is a winning formula. If you create and post new videos to your website, make sure that you add appropriate links and keywords. The ultimate goal is to show up in search, and while Google is getting better at parsing video, it still primarily searches text.

Of course, not every novel or book Anthony Trollope wrote was a hit, and there are lots of his novels that no one reads these days. Nevertheless, his enormous body of work speaks to his consistent work ethic and a system that allowed him to show up and generate useful and interesting content every single day. That lesson alone is easily worth the price of a Trollope novel.

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