2013 is year of mobile business development for lawyers and law firms

It’s all about mobile when it comes to business in 2013. That’s the word from Clair Cain Miller (@clairecm) in a post in the New York Times’ Bits Blog yesterday.

[A ComScore Report] shows that the effects of a movement toward mobile are everywhere, from shopping to media to search. According to the report, “2013 could spell a very rocky economic transition,” and businesses will have to scramble to stay ahead of consumers’ changing behavior.

Cain Miller found the following facts from the report of particular interest.

• Last year, smartphone penetration crossed 50 percent for the first time, led by Android phones.
• People spend 63 percent of their time online on desktop computers and 37 percent on mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets.
• Facebook and Google are dominant and at each other’s throats. Facebook reaches 76 percent of the smartphone market and accounts for 23 percent of total time spent using apps each month. The next five most used apps are Google’s, which account for 10 percent of time on apps.
• As mobile continues to take share from desktop, some industries are seeing significant declines in desktop use of their products. They are newspapers, search engines, maps, weather, comparison shopping, directories and instant messenger services.

A few takeaways for lawyers and law firms:

• Lawyers ought to be networking through the Internet in the places and in the form their target audience is. That’s on apps on smartphones and tablets. Lawyers equipped to network on smart phones and tablets will be far ahead of their competition when it comes to business development.
• As with newspapers which are losing viewership on the desktop, law firms will start to lose their website and content viewers on the desktop. All law firm content and websites need to be mobile optimized.
• A lawyer’s and a law firm’s target audience is networking on Facebook’s mobile app to build relationships. Lawyers ought to begin to use Facebook for networking so as to appreciate Facebook’s business development value.
• The best applications for networking through the Internet are on mobile devices, especially the iPad, not laptop computers. Networking from a desktop or laptop is much less effective and a time waster.

As Cain Miller reports, “If there is one theme that will be the topic of digital business this year, it is mobile.”

Image courtesy of Flickr by MRBECK.