Everyone loves a great story, especially one full of emotion and interesting facts. Throw in details of a fascinating person’s life and you have a real page turner. But how do you translate this great story into an equally vivid and interactive article? Facebook’s Instant Articles are a great way of creating engaging and vibrant content. Big wigs like the New York Times, National Geographic, and Buzzfeed have hopped on the Instant Article bandwagon, making this new platform worth examining to discover exactly what it has to offer.
Facebook has taken a different approach to hosting editorial pieces online, by taking your standard article and making it come to life in a visually dynamic and engaging way. Today, most companies share links to their external sites on their Facebook pages. What makes the new Instant Articles unique is that Facebook will host your articles, like it does your photos and videos. You’ll be able to customize your typeface, colours and layouts, and Instant Article will speed up the load times of your images, videos and other media. This one change makes for an engaging and incredible storytelling experience.
The following 6 Instant Articles features will transform average articles into amazing, premium interactive content.
HTML Tools And Markup
Instant Article’s additional markup works cleanly within regular pages while providing a superior experience on Facebook. It works with Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds too.
Optimized Video
Instant Article’s native video player pushes video out from Facebook, boosting download speeds up to 10 times faster than standard mobile web articles. Videos also play automatically, adding to the experience.
Large Images
Instant Article recreates the gatefold digitally, seamlessly marrying editorial to mobile. Images are managed by the Facebook app and users can tilt their phone side to side to reveal more of full screen images.
Map Integration
Stories are often rooted in a particular geographic location. Instant Article lets you add maps to your articles so readers know about the local points of interest. Maps can also be animated to make viewers feel like they are floating above with the ultimate birds-eye-view. Tapping on images allows users to zoom into a map of where they were taken, adding another layer of information to articles.
Embedded Audio Captions
Instant Article lets users listen to audio while reading articles or viewing images. This can be used to add clips from the authors or interviews, for example.
Content, Ads And Analytics
Despite all its additional features, Instant Article still gives users full control of their content, allowing them to preserve their brand identity through selected styles. Paid ads, including in-content ads, can also be included. And the cherry on top of the cake is that Instant Article comes with in-depth analytics that track content viewership, providing users with valuable insights.
In the battle for spectacular content, you have to take every chance you get to gain an edge against competitors. With Instant Articles, you can create vivid, lively and engaging content that will capture more likes, shares and reading time than any other article on Facebook.
