Instant Articles For Bloggers: What You NEED To Know Before April 12th

Facebook is set to launch Instant Articles on its Facebook F8 conference on April 12th, after testing it with some of the largest publishers in the world. Is the new, mobile native content format reserved just for The New York Times, National Geographic and Buzzfeed – or can bloggers can take advantage of it as well?

First of All: What Are Instant Articles?

Instant Articles are a new format, akin to Facebook notes or posts that the largest social network in the world has been testing out for months with some of the largest publishers in the world, such as the New York Times and Axel Springer.

The format is, as Zuckerberg has stated time and time again, their answer to the slow websites of publishers. Packed with advertising that hinders not just their speed but also their user experience, the mobile versions of these websites are – according to Facebook – loading too slow for users. And because Facebook’s users expect an experience as fast as the one they get in Facebook’s app (*chukle*), Instant Articles offer a format for content “inside” Facebook’s mobile apps for the iPhone and Android platforms.

While publishers can use posts to share their content and notes to write content native to Facebook, Instant Articles offer a new format to publish content with more control and customisation. As Facebook notes on its official website, publishers can “Customize your articles and News Feed previews to match your brand identity.”

Fair enough.

Facebook, Show Us The Money?

You’re thinking: By publishing content directly to Facebook, aren’t companies losing revenue from advertising that isn’t shown in favour of Facebook Ads that advertisers can buy on their own, bypassing publishers?

Facebook might be ‘selling’ Instant Articles as a content format, but business-wise – it’s a partnership proposal for publishers: Publish content directly on the platform to satisfy our mutual user’s wish for the speedy delivery of content while having the ability to sell ads in your articles and keep the revenue.

The last part is exactly what Facebook says on its website: “With Instant Articles, publishers are in control. You decide what to publish. Sell ads in your articles and keep the revenue, or take advantage of Facebook Audience Network to maximize total revenue.”

Control is the name of the game – for publishers!

Should Bloggers Care?

For one thing – bloggers are essentially publishers. They publish content regularly to earn revenue from advertising, products, affiliate deals, up-sells…

The business model is both the why and the why not of publishers being the same as bloggers when it comes to how to use Facebook’s Instant Articles format.

Bare with me:

While traditional publishers and media companies like Buzzfeed, The New York Times and others still might have alternative ways of making money to advertising, such as creating industry specific events like Vox Media’s Re:code with its conferences hosted by Kara Swisher and Walt Mosberg, or charging for the access to premium content like The Economist does; most of them still make money from advertising.

And what do advertisers need to make that money? Traffic. You might promote your target market, niche, influence or some other factor but in the end – you have to have SOME traffic to make money.

Facebook has also thought of this, by letting publishers leverage their analytics tools for Instant Articles, letting them “add up” their views on the platform to their overall traffic. Facebook has already become a huge traffic source for publishers, in a lot of markets second only to search traffic coming directly from Google (who is currently building an alternative to Instant Articles BTW)!

Even Axel Springer is building a Instant Articles alternative in a partnership with Samsung, called Upday.

Publishers care about traffic and are wary of Facebook; what about bloggers?

Bloggers Care About Users/Customers/… Not Traffic Per Se

If you followed the blogging scene back in the day like I did, you saw an evolution of most professional blogger’s business models. Yaro Starak, Darren Rowse of ProBlogger as well as a slew of others evolved from making money on Google Adsense and affiliate networks on high-traffic websites, to finally selling their products and services.

In 2016, the focus for making money as a blogger has shifted almost entirely to creating your product or service – and creating a “database” (email list?) of potential customers that you sell the product to over some time. Inbound marketing. Lead magnet. Lead generation.
We need to generate leads, potential customers – not just “empty” traffic!

If You Don’t Care About “Empty” Traffic, You WILL Care About Instant Articles

What do I mean by “Empty” traffic?

Most mainstream publishers care about a target audience, but in no way similarly to most bloggers. A professional bloggers selling a niche service or product needs a certain type of person in a certain mindset, with particular goals, particular wants and needs.  Most publishers just care if you’re the perfect “general target”: 18-25, male or female, etc.

Even more so, the incentive for publishers isn’t to produce high-quality content because most campaigns favour unique users instead a loyal number of users who consume more content.

Why?

Let’s say that an advertising campaign has a frequency cap that limits how many times a reader sees it in order not to “overdo it” and “spam” the reader. This is contrary to fixed banners that a lot of bloggers sell because these types of mainstream ads aren’t for someone specific. Because the campaign has a frequency cap, the publisher needs to have as many unique users to show it to. Fewer users that consume more content doesn’t help, because each user will see the ad just a limited number of times.

Bloggers don’t care about that kind of “Empty traffic.”

Bloggers want quality traffic and to generate quality leads for their, mostly niche, products and services…

Lead generation from Facebook – to Facebook?

Since bloggers are already using Facebook Ads to drive traffic to their websites, hosting the content on Facebook makes a lot of sense.  Instant Articles are interesting to bloggers because as a blogger you don’t care where the content is, only that it can drive you those quality leads.
We’ve seen Facebook tweak its algorithm to favour video in the battle with YouTube. You can be sure that Instant Articles will be favourited as well, even maybe more favourited then the content you add from your Facebook page!

The use of LinkedIn’s publishing platform, using multiple formats including YouTube and SlideShare, shows how bloggers can leverage different platforms to drive traffic to their websites and generate leads.

Instant Articles offer bloggers:

• A native format for content on Facebook;
• Great integration with Facebook Ads for targeted traffic generation;
• Faster loading on mobile devices.

Sounds great.

Are Instant Articles Ideal For Bloggers?

While Instant Articles do provide a faster reading experience compared to a lot of traditional publishers websites, that are awash with too many ads, they aren’t that different from a well-optimised blog.

Just compare Neil Patel’s Quicksprout to Instant Articles! Both have a clean interface, few ads, a readable font and can be easily skimmed.

You Can’t Collect Emails, Just Yet!

Unfortunately, what Facebook Instant Articles don’t offer is lead generation tools like the ones that a lot of bloggers are using, such as Optin Monster. Integrated at the end of articles or as an “exit intent” popup, these call to action boxes capture reader’s emails in order for the blogger to later contact them and upsell products or services.

Even in the age of Facebook and Twitter, email has stayed one of the strongest ways to build your own database of loyal, targeted users. While you might have a lot of likes or followers, those are still Twitter’s or Facebook’s users. You OWN your email list and not even Facebook can take that away from you.

In short: An email list is how a blogger makes money.

While you might not be able to add a CTA like the one you’ve added as a plugin to your WordPress blog, we have to keep in mind that Facebook does already have an ad format that acts just like an email capture box! Currently available with “classic” Facebook Ads, there is not reason for Facebook not to include in the future as an option for Instant Articles…

Will You Be Able To Use Instant Articles As A Blogger?

No idea, but probably yes. Social Media Examiner seems to think so! Facebook keeps talking about “publishers”, probably to keep the format “serious” and not scare of traditional publishers from something they might see as a “blogging platform”. The message might be “This isn’t Medium”, but it doesn’t mean that Facebook won’t let bloggers in. Facebook’s introduction says that they will let publishers of any size use the new format: “[We] will be opening up the Instant Articles program to all publishers – of any size, anywhere in the world.”

On April 12th, Try Facebook Instant Articles!

When Zuckerberg and his team opens up Instant Articles on April 12th, I’d suggest trying them out. You might be able to leverage early use of the platform in order to gain a TON of new readers and leads – instantly!

As a blogger, will you try out Instant Articles?

Screenshot credit: The Awl.