Just when you think you’ve figured out how to make Facebook’s News Feed algorithm work for your business, the social media giant shakes things up.
Facebook has recently unveiled Instant Articles, and marketers are trying to decide how this is going to affect their content writing strategy.
This new feature, which allows publishers to post articles directly to the site’s newsfeed, has two stated purposes:
- To create a faster reading experience for mobile users
- To introduce a suite of immersive features, such as auto-play video clips, audio clips, interactive maps and more
Instant Articles is currently open to only a handful of large publishers, such as The New York Times, National Geographic and BBC News. While we don’t yet know if this feature will eventually be available to content marketers, it’s still a good idea to make sure that your content writing strategy adapts to the changes.
Taking Content to the Next Level
The most obvious way that Instant Articles will impact online marketers is by setting a high expectation for content quality. While faster load times will certainly be appreciated by readers—after all, they’re scoring about 8 more seconds of productivity for each article they read—the interactive features will be what steal the show.
Publishers are now able to integrate tilt-able images and videos, interactive maps and auto-play video clips into their content.
Each article can offer its readers a rich and immersive reading experience right on their mobile device.
Keeping Up
Even if Facebook never allows content marketers to take advantage of Instant Articles, you should still be asking yourself how your content writing processes can evolve to provide an outstanding reading experience.
What can you do to build your social media presence and effectively compete for readers’ attention?
- Take the time to create a great Facebook Page
- Show that you have an up-to-date understanding of what matters to your readers by regularly publishing fresh content to your social media channels
- Give your readers the ability to interact with your content by incorporating images, videos, infographics and other media
By maintaining a strong social media presence and providing your followers with enriching content, you can keep up with the ever-evolving arena of content marketing.
