Well, we all love Facebook. Right from the moment we open our eyes in the morning until we close it at night, we keep on scrolling the Facebook page. There is absolutely no doubt that Facebook is a useful tool for any organization’s marketing arsenal. Having more than 1.7 billion users across the globe, Facebook is an incredibly influential way for your business to reach to potential clients and customers.
With this new feature, “Instant Articles”, Facebook has just come one step closer to publishers by allowing them to publish content across the globe, delivering an incredibly quick and immersive reading experience for Facebook users. This so happening feature will be implemented with effect from April 12, 2017.
Instant articles must be first published on your company’s website or mobile app and then can convert into an instant article. The obvious benefit of this exclusive mobile feature is that it enhances the speed of access to content by loading it up to 10 times faster than any standard articles.
How does instant articles work?
The instant article is an HTML5-based document that is optimized for a quick mobile performance, great visual display, strong storytelling abilities, and branded design. Therefore, it will have less friction while opening articles on the Facebook page, which makes it more possible for users to check out the content.
Why does speed matter so much?
Did you know that more than 90% of Facebook’s monthly users stay active by accessing the platform from mobile? Yes, 90%. So it is significantly important for brands and businesses to understand the essentiality of speed as users will not wait more than 3 seconds for a page to load.
Content is increasingly becoming more visual in which half of it is driven by user preferences. That could be one of the reasons for Facebook in future to introduce many functionalities into this feature such as videos, maps, and photos can be searched more interactively. And visual content is on its way already. Facebook has made Instant Articles available to Platform Stellar, a storytelling mobile app.
With Instant Articles, both brands and Facebook can get benefited. The quicker experience of Instant Articles keeps users stay on Facebook and brands get new methods to promote their branded, quality-rich content, connect with potential customers and convert them into buyers.
How does an Instant Article look?
Facebook’s Instant Articles look a bit different than the usual blog design and layout. Though the format and layout remain same for every website, however, below is the image of how an Instant Article looks like in the Facebook app.
How can the Instant Article change your company’s content marketing strategy?
According to Kissmetrics, a one-second delay in page loading time can actually result in nearly 7% reduction in conversions. People do not like to wait for websites that take the time to load. This new feature of Facebook will help you by loading your article faster within the mobile app. As there are more mobile users than the desktop, this feature will likely rule the coming year 2017.
As from the above graph, it is quite obvious that more users will visit your page from smartphone devices. Also, the number of Facebook users who access it from mobile is around 894 million and which is a huge. So, now you might have understood the number of users that you can easily target from the Facebook mobile app.
Facebook has achieved 894 million mobile users number in the first quarter of 2016 and very soon this number is expected to cross 1 billion. Over the years, Facebook has evolved as a platform where businesses and customers meet than a just networking tool. With the new feature implemented in 2017, Facebook will get more content share in the coming years.
The content marketers will also be interested in sharing the content on Facebook as much as they can as the articles will now load faster. Users too will get a unique digital reading experience with videos and images in the article.
Highlights of Instant Article Feature
More Clicks
When a publisher’s post is being shared more and more then there will be more chances for users to click on the articles which may lead to more exposure for the company.
Convenience
Instant Articles are about saving time by loading the article faster which gives convenience to both companies and readers. Without having to rewrite or reposting the article, Facebook has made Instant Articles quick and convenient.
Ad Revenue
Facebook’s Instant Articles lets publishers incorporate ads. You can save nearly 70% of the revenue by using Facebook ads or save 100% by using your own ads.
Faster Sharing
Since Instant Articles are 10 times faster than standard mobile web articles, articles can be quickly loaded and shared at a much faster rate. This way, the publisher’s post can be easily spread further.
Very soon, Facebook will be filled with content marketing as people will share more articles on the Facebook page and Facebook groups. Certainly, this new feature will change the face of the content marketing strategy but to what extent? That we will have to wait and see. However lightening fast speed with commerce integration will surely make it more fascinating for businesses.
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