Instant Articles will be Available to All Publishers

Read about the benefits for you–as a reader and as a local business owner:

Slow loading time on mobile is the bane of all internet marketers at this time. So many people get their information from mobile devices that they cannot be ignored. As more and more platforms and apps recognize this, they are scrambling to increase the load speed.

This is great news for the mobile users. However it has also allowed them to become less patient and more finicky about how they received data. Since there are sources where the information loads quickly, the users tend to migrate to those outlets.

Bottom line: if you want to keep up, you have to satisfy the mobile users’ need for speed.

Facebook has been working on doing precisely that with Instant Articles.Touted as a way for publishers to get content to their readers more quickly, this program has, to date, only been available to a select group of publishers for testing.

The wait for the rest of the publishing (and marketing) world is almost over! Facebook has recently announced that on April 12th Instant Articles will be open to all publishers. Yep, ALL publishers. No size restrictions. No location limitations.

We built Instant Articles to solve a specific problem—slow loading times on the mobile web created a problematic experience for people reading news on their phones. This is a problem that impacts publishers of all sizes, especially those with audiences where low connectivity is an issue. With that in mind, our goal from the beginning was to open up Instant Articles to all publishers and we’re excited to be able to do that in a way that makes it fast and easy for all publishers to reach their audiences on Facebook.

This is a great idea for Facebook–they will be able to keep their user base rather than seeing them head for greener, and faster, pastures.

Here is what also sounds great for the publishers: publishers retain full control! Control over the content, control over how it looks, and control over the advertising! Facebook will even allow publishers to show content that has ads that are not part of the Facebook product line–without taking a cut.

With Instant Articles, publishers have full control over the look of their stories, as well as data and ads. They have the ability to bring their own direct-sold ads and keep 100% of the revenue, and track data on the ads served through their existing ad measurement systems, or they can monetize their content through the Facebook Audience Network. Additionally, publishers can use their existing web-based analytics systems to track article traffic or use third-party providers. They can do all this while accessing a rich suite of multimedia tools to create dynamic, interactive stories, that will load quickly everywhere on Facebook, regardless of where in the world their readers are.

Instant articles using the same technology that is currently used to upload photographs with speed.

And speaking of photographs, rather than being limited to the size of your mobile phone screen, users will be able to tilt their phone (yes, tilt, not swipe) and see more of the photograph. Users will be able to zoom into the photo and see an interactive map of where the photo was taken.

Videos will also run seamlessly with this technology. In all, it is an awesome user experience.

Although geared for media outlets, this technology will have a big impact on any local business who engages in content marketing. And let’s be honest, content marketing is an important part of being found on the internet today.

To learn more about the opening of Facebook Instant Articles, read Josh Roberts’ original post here

Read more about Instant Articles here.

To learn more about how you can take advantage of Instant Articles as a publisher, read this documentation from Facebook

Photo courtesy of Facebook