Facebook’s Instant Articles now available for all businesses to share their content with their audience in a new way.
Instant Articles have the potential to be a huge deal for businesses, which will now be able to easily add videos, infographics and written content directly from their website onto their brand page.
Consider that back in July 2015, the Pew Research Center reported that 63 percent of users get their news on Twitter and Facebook. We can only expect that figure to climb once people are able to access full-length articles directly on the social network.
- Facebook benefits because they’re keeping people in their network.
- Marketers will be able to host the same rich content that they would on their website directly on the social network. This catches people who might not want to leave Facebook. With conversion call-to-actions on your Instant Articles, it can potentially remove one layer of friction and make converting even easier.
Refresh: What are Facebook’s Instant Articles?
Facebook’s Product Manager Josh Roberts describes the new product as “an HTML5 document optimized for fast mobile performance, rich storytelling capabilities, branded design and customized visual display.”
“Instant Articles provides a faster, Facebook-native way to distribute the content publishers already produce for their own websites.”
3 benefits of Instant Articles
Speed: Instant Articles display stories as much as 10 times faster than conventional mobile browsers, according to the company’s announcement.
Analytics: Publishers will have the ability to use their existing web-based analytics system, or third-party providers, to track article traffic.
Customization: Instant Articles can be as vibrant as the publisher wants thanks to the ability to support multimedia. This can include slideshows, interactive and geotagged media, and audio captions.
Will Instant Articles result in less website traffic?
Potentially, yes.
When we first reported on Instant Articles back in May 2015, they were only being offered to big brands like BuzzFeed and The New York Times as a pilot. At the time, we noted that this was a good reminder that your Facebook presence needs to serve multiple functions.
Facebook’s new Instant Articles are a great way to get people to read the content on your website in an easier and mobile-friendly way. When you look at your Facebook strategy as a way to build community, brand awareness and thought leadership, it becomes more than just a platform to get people onto your website.
Learn more about Instant Articles on Facebook’s Developer Blog.
