Facebook Instant Articles: What Marketers Need To Know

Unarguably, technological advancement has changed the face of modern day marketing. For instance, recently Facebook launched optimized “Like” button that dramatically reduced negative comments for the business posts people don’t like as they start giving “Angry” reactions to such posts. Several coveted companies who promote their brands on Facebook got the biggest benefit of this optimized Like button.

Now, Facebook is all set to introduce the feature of “Instant Articles” for content marketers, bloggers, writers, and leading publishers to publish news. This feature will enable publishers to post articles on Facebook and people who access Facebook through their smartphones can see the full article within the app with exactly in the same format of publisher’s website.

The introduction of Instant Articles will surely make an impact on the strategies of social media marketers, content marketers, bloggers, media houses, or social media experts.

So, if you want to know more about this buzz, read this blog.

Instant Articles: A Brief Explanation

Instant articles were officially launched on 12th of May, 2015 with the support of launching partners such as Woven Digital, The New York Times, The Atlantic, NBC News, BuzzFeed, The Guardian, BBC News, and others.

So, the wait is going to over on the coming 12th of April, 2016 when Facebook will release its Instant Articles feature worldwide. For content marketers, it is going to be a whole new experience to create content and post directly to Facebook to it a massive exposure. Facebook’s Instant Articles offers a new way to reach your audience and provide immediate content to the users.

According to a blog published by Brianne Palensky, around 63 percent of the Facebook users confirmed that that they get their news through social media platforms. Social media channels don’t just offer their users to connect socially, but these platforms have become major sources to exchange crucial information also.

Also Read: Everything About Facebook Workplace And Its Two Close Alternatives

As we all know, social media platforms are the prime destinations for the marketers, media houses, leading publishers, and business for performing impactful promotion with the aid of valuable content. Therefore, Facebook has decided to come up with Instant Articles to give a boost to the process of information exchange and also to encourage content marketers to publish their content to enhance outreach to different potential buyers.

Instant Articles: Features

Provides Great Analytics Support

When Facebook officially announced Instant Articles, they said that it will be compatible with analytics such as comScore, Google Analytics, and Omniture. Further, it will also be compatible with different tracking tools that are often used by many publishers. In addition to it, Facebook will also provide its full-featured analytics to track user behavior on Instant Articles.

Therefore, it seems that Facebook is not going to take it softly when it comes to providing flexible analytical support.

Allows Publishers to Publish Articles with Same Layout

Facebook ensured publishers that the posted Instant Articles will preserve the look and feel of their websites, but it will be made more minimalistic to provide excellent support to different devices and user experience to the users. This particular feature of Instant Article gives sense and encourages publishers to publish content as they don’t have to compromise with their sites’ layouts.

Allows to Monetize the Published Content

Facebook has made it pretty clear that ads will appear inside Instant Articles and publisher can keep 100 percent of the revenue in the case they sell the ads. Apart from it, Facebook will charge at 30 percent as a standard charge if it sells the ads.

To get more details regarding ad formats, you can check Facebook guidelines for Instant Articles.

Boosts Loading Speed of Articles

Instant Articles will take reading experience on mobile devices to a whole new level as it will be loaded around ten times faster than standard content. Therefore, Instant Articles are going to be a crucial factor in providing better user experience.

To get better clarity, take a glance at this striking information:

“Catchpoint Networks” conducted a speed test for Instant Articles, reported in “The Wall Street Journal,” confirmed Facebook’s claim that Instant Articles load 10X faster than mobile web articles. (Source: Wikipedia)

How to Publish Instant Articles

Facebook has announced a WordPress Plugin that will make Instant Articles distribution easier. This plugin will help you create a special RSS feed for your blog, and that will automatically export your latest blog/article from your CMS. But remember, you won’t be allowed to publish your content, until your feed gets the approval. To explore more on this you can follow this link.

Additionally, the content distribution through RSS feeds needs to be properly formatted as per Instant Articles Markup.

How Instant Articles Will Influence Content Marketing

Content Marketing is an indispensable part of digital marketing and with the advent of Instant Articles, content marketers will be able to publish content, starting April 12th, 2016.

Earlier, bloggers, content writers were used to link the posts externally but now, they can directly post content on Facebook just because of Instant Articles.

Going with the notion that “Mobile is the future,” Facebook has made this feature available on apps for Android, iOS, and as well on the web platform.

As already mentioned above, content writers, leading publishers, bloggers will get several features that will enable them to add auto-play videos, maps, tilt graphics, etc. On top of that, the biggest advantage to publishing content through Instant Articles will be its ten times faster loading speed.

Earlier, several online audiences used to leave the sites if content take too long to load but this feature from Facebook will eliminate this speed issue. Additionally, Facebook is going to provide support for WordPress plugins that includes email sign-up forms. Therefore, with the help of Instant Articles, you will have the opportunity to strengthen the relationship with your fans, readers, and buyers.

Be Prepared to Leverage the Power of Instant Articles

Instant articles will open the new doors of opportunities for publishers and content marketers. Though, the point to note here is this new feature will take the competition to a whole new level, especially, for businesses. By publishing Instant Articles companies can monetize their articles to make the profit while delivering real value to their fans, followers, and potential customers. So, be prepared to leverage the power of Instant Articles for the best interest of your business.

EndNote

This blog portrays how Facebook’s Instant Articles will make a difference in content distribution whether it is a media house, general publisher, or a company. If you are a content marketer and spend your time in distributing content over different social media, I hope this blog will prove beneficial for you.

What do you think about Instant Articles? Are they going to change the face of content marketing?

Share your views by dropping your valuable comments below.