It’s only a few months back, since Facebook’s new feature was released. Instant Articles is a great tool not only for businesses but also for any publisher around the world.

In simple words, Instant Articles are a fast and interactive experience for reading articles in News Feed. Powered by the same technology that loads photos and videos quickly in our mobile app, Instant Articles were built to solve a particular problem—slow loading times on the mobile web – giving users what they want in minimal waiting time.

Beyond creating a great experience for users, Instant Articles were designed to make it as easy as possible for publishers to use with their existing Content Management Systems (CMS), as there are not new tools to learn.

Some interesting facts:

  • 10x faster than standard mobile web articles.
  • Instant Articles receives 20% more clicks than mobile web articles from the News Feed.
  • Once someone clicks on an Instant Article, they’re 70% less likely to abandon the article before reading.
  • They are shared 30% more than mobile web articles on average.

In terms of referral traffic, mobile users who in the past viewed your content through your website, now users will not be redirected to your website, and therefore won’t count as referral traffic. However, you can still track traffic through web analytic tools (e.g. Google Analytics) to count visitors.

 

Publishers who already use Instant Articles


Things to get started with Instant Articles:


#1: What you need for Instant Articles

  1. A Facebook page.
  2. The Facebook Pages app to preview your instant articles on your mobile device (iPhone or Android).
  3. An RSS feed that displays the full content of your articles, if you want to automate publishing your content to Facebook Instant Articles.
  4. Facebook Instant Articles markup on your blog or website. WordPress users will be able to use an official plugin that’s currently in development or the PageFrog plugin available now, which also enables support for Google Accelerated Mobile Pages.
  5. A minimum of 50 articles to submit to Facebook for approval into the Facebook Instant Articles program.

Avoid publishing articles with too many words, complex charts and tables and other content that is best suited for desktop display.

#2: Sign Up for Facebook Instant Articles

After signing up, you’ll receive an email that links you to the Facebook developer’s guide for Facebook Instant Articles and the closed Facebook group for media publishers.

#3: Set up Instant Articles into your website

Contact eproductions to set up Facebook’s new publishing platform into your website!

#4: Prepare to Optimize Your Website’s Overall Mobile Experience

With this new platform, be prepared that more and more people will be visiting your website, expecting a superior quality of user experience. If your website, does not provide that kind of mobile experience, get in contact with eproductions as we provide many ways to do so!

To conclude, Instant Articles will totally take up the market, however it requires a lot of preparation for publishers. So, get started today: https://instantarticles.fb.com