What You Need To Know About Facebook Instant Articles

As promised, Facebook Instant Articles is now available to all publishers, allowing anyone to import their branded content into the social network and add it directly to a user’s News Feed.

Take note publishers! You’ll want to be in the know and this blog will help you do just that.

What are Facebook Instant Articles?

Facebook Instant Articles are a way for publishers to create fast, interactive articles on Facebook. The articles that publishers create are delivered within Facebook and promise an incredibly fast and immersive reading experience. All you need to do is sign-up for Instant Articles and develop and submit your work.

What are the advantages?

The platform has been in testing with select partners since May 2015 and Facebook’s recent stats on the feature seems promising. Instant Articles are read 20 percent more often, have 70 percent better retention, and are shared 30 percent more often than regular links. In other words, making the web faster and more mobile friendly makes people like the web more – no surprise here.

Here’s a few more things Facebook’s developers shared:

• Better Experience for Readers. Instant Articles displays stories as much as 10 times faster than conventional mobile browsers, while also providing the kind of fluid, high-quality experience and interactivity readers want.
• New Creative Tools. Instant Articles introduces a suite of creative tools that allow publishers to bring their stories to life in new ways, with high-resolution photos, auto-play videos, interactive maps and audio captions.
• Built for Publishers. Instant Articles keeps publishers in control. Publishers decide what to share on Facebook, with article templates that mirror the look and feel of their brands. Publishers can even automate their workflow by using an RSS feed or API to publish Instant Articles directly from their existing content management systems.

What about ads and analytics?

For articles that are primarily images or video, ads cannot exceed 15 percent of the content.

Publishers who want to sell ads themselves have the ability to keep 100% of the revenue, or you can let Facebook handle the selling through the Facebook’s Audience Network and keep 70% (giving 30% to Facebook for their services).

To track audience and engagement, Instant Articles is compatible with industry-standard content analytics tools, including Google Analytics and comScore attribution. Publishers can also use their existing web-based analytics systems or third-party providers to track article traffic.

You can now go to instantarticles.fb.com to join the program. For publishers who want to dive in even deeper with Instant Articles (there’s a lot to learn), click here.