Facebook Instant Articles: How to Get Started

Have you seen Facebook Instant Articles?

Are you curious about how to publish them?

To discover how to get started using Facebook Instant Articles, I interview Leslie Samuel.
More About This Show
The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

In this episode, I interview Leslie Samuel, a blogging expert who runs BecomeABlogger.com. He's also the host of the Learning With Leslie podcast and the head of training for the Social Media Marketing Society.

Leslie explores the benefits and challenges of Facebook Instant Articles.

You'll discover what you need to know to get started with this new feature.

Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below.
Listen Now

You can also subscribe via iTunes, RSS, or Stitcher.

Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show:
Facebook Instant Articles
What Are Instant Articles?

A relatively new feature, Facebook Instant Articles offers publishers content-hosting directly on Facebook, so users get a better mobile experience. If you're on the Facebook mobile app and you see an article with a lightning bolt at the top right of the open graph image, it's the Facebook Instant Articles version.

When you click through to read that content, it loads very quickly because you're not leaving Facebook to go to another website.

Listen to the show to learn about some special features you can add to Facebook's Instant Articles.

Benefits for Bloggers

Facebook has more than 1.65 billion users. Chances are, if you're trying to reach someone, they're on Facebook.

One problem Facebook solves with Instant Articles is eliminating slow page-load times. According to a study by Kissmetrics, if a website takes longer than 3 seconds to load, more than 40% of those users will abandon it. Instant Articles makes content available very quickly.

Other benefits include great user experience. Leslie adds that some of the interactive elements help the articles really stand out.

Since Facebook seems to reward those producers whose content keeps people on Facebook longer, such as live broadcasting, I ask Leslie about Facebook's monetary benefits for those who choose to advertise.

Leslie explains that if you use Facebook's Audience Network, you can do a revenue share. You keep 70% of the revenue generated from ad clicks. It's kind of like AdSense within your instant articles. Leslie doesn't see it as a huge benefit, because you can do that on your website with AdSense or other networks. However, Facebook makes it easy to use ads within your instant articles.

According to Facebook, as of right now, they're not giving instant articles preferential treatment. However, the Facebook algorithm strives to show people the best content quickly. So, if more people click through to instant articles, Leslie can see the algorithm naturally giving preferential treatment to this content. Plus, Facebook will show content that gets a lot of engagement to more of the people who like your page.

Facebook's desire to get users to spend more time on their platform gives content creators a unique opportunity. Leslie says that in the past, if people put up engaging images or videos and others shared them like crazy, they would get additional reach.

With this control over content, ads, and links, a business could use that reach to benefit their brand and business, grow an email list, promote products, and more. For instance, put a link to an email opt-in form at the end of an instant article.

Leslie believes that smart marketers using Facebook as a primary marketing platform will figure out how to take advantage of the benefits of instant articles to get users into their system.

Leslie discusses the difference between Facebook Notes and Instant Articles,