Mobile and social are drivers for law blog discovery

Quantcast released a report this week which demonstrates how the growth of mobile devices has impacted online publishers – not just their traffic – but also how consumers are finding their content. The impact is dramatic.

In the US, traffic from mobile devices has grown from 1% of all web traffic in 2009, to 18% of traffic in 2013. The trajectory in Europe is similar – mobile web grew from 1% of traffic in 2009 to 15% of traffic in 2013.

In addition to traffic alone, in the case of news publishers, social media has surpassed search in referrals from mobile.

Social networks (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) are referring on mobile at more than twice the rate of referrals as from a desktop. In the case of Twitter, mobile referrals outpace its desktop referrals by five to one.

Not all publishers are seeing an equal impact. Some publishers are seeing in excess of 50% of their mobile referrals from social networks, while about half are seeing less than 25%. Quantcast sees this an opportunity for growth.

Keys for publishers (law bloggers included), per the report, are to make certain your content is socially sharable on mobile.

• Large share buttons.
• Content is streamlined for social with limited unique elements on the screen. Responsive important here.
• Brief engaging headlines.
• Limited advertising/promotion.

Law blogs need to be designed and developed for mobile first, desktop second. Rather than think about how you are going to draw traffic to your blog, think about how can make it easy for others on mobile to share your posts on social networks.

People, especially the influencers (bloggers, reporters etc) are consuming and sharing content on social.  If your blog is not teed up to be shared and consumed by users on mobile, you are shooting yourself in the foot.

H/T Lauren Hockenson (@lhockenson) of GigaOm