7 Things You Need to Know Right Now About Facebook Instant Articles

If you want to up your Facebook marketing game, you need to understand how Facebook Instant articles work.

Facebook made Instant Articles available to all users of its iPhone app (version 30 or above) with Android beta testing underway. 

Instant Articles allows publishers like BuzzFeed, The New York Times and similar websites to distribute content directly to the Facebook news feed via RSS. And now, you can customize your content to make it more interactive than ever before.

Here are seven things you need to know right now about Facebook Instant Articles (join me after a quick video):

... And we're back - let's dive in!

1. Instant Articles Serves Content at Lightning Speed

Instant Articles tackles the problem that many publishers have with their slow-loading websites (which is super frustrating for mobile users). By many accounts, the content via Instant Articles loads in under one second.

A lightning bolt icon in a user's news feed lets people know the content is available in Instant Articles, and entices those click-throughs that publishers are looking for.

2. Some Worry It Will Steal Their Website Traffic 

Some are stressing out about Instant Articles because they think it will steal traffic away from websites (keep in mind that there's no longer a need to visit publishers directly to view the content).

But that's offset by the increased sharing of content that publishers are seeing with Instant Articles (versus posting the link to their Facebook pages manually).

And, since the content published by Instant Articles is judged by the same signals asany content in the news feed, more shares can work in the content's favor.

Also, Facebook partnered with comScore so publishers can count Instant Article views in the Facebook app as regular traffic.

Bonus: Each article published through Instant Articles has the same URL as the original content on your website, so anyone can open the article when it's shared with them - no matter what platform they use.

3. Only Select Publishers Are In, But Plans to Open It Follow

As of today, Facebook is working only with a handful of select publishers to distribute content through Instant Articles, but says it's looking forward to extending the program in the future so any content publisher or blog can participate. This is huge.

4. It's Really Simple to Distribute Your Content

Automated publishing of your website's content to Facebook is easy through an RSS feed that contains the full content of each article (plus, you have access to manual content editing as needed).

5. You Can Create Stunning Content Like Never Before

Once you're part of the program, Facebook offers some amazing features to make your content a real experience for readers. Instant Articles uses HTML5 and allows you to create articles that contain autoplay video, audio captions, interactive maps and much more (it also provides support for social media embedding, ads and analytics!).

6. You Get All Sorts of Goodies About Your Audience

Instant Articles gives you access to analytics like reach, engagement, time spent on the article, scroll depth and interaction with rich media. Facebook wants to be sure publishers have the same data they're used to having about visitors on the mobile Web, and that's a good thing.

7. Publishers Can Monetize Their Content Through Ads

Good news! Facebook Instant Articles invites publishers to host and monetize their content by selling banner ads in their articles and keeping the revenue or making use of the Facebook Audience Network. (By the way, if you're not advertising on Facebook, you should be.)

If you're a publisher with a subscription model, Facebook says it's currently in talks to see how Instant Articles might support your business model, too.

I really like this new feature and urge publishers to get on board as soon as possible. Early adopters usually benefit disproportionately from big, new features like this.

Interested? Learn more or sign up with Instant Articles here.

Originally published in Inc.com

About The Author

Larry Kim is the Founder of WordStream. You can connect with him onTwitter, Google+, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

Featured in: Facebook, Marketing, Social Media, Facebook Marketing