Improving the reach of your content with Facebook Instant Articles

At Novus we stress the importance of having good content on your website.

Static content that forms the basis of your website, and which details the products and services you offer. And fluid content, that details changes and updates, in the form of blogs and videos.

Fluid content shows your consumer a number of things. One: that you’re an active brand and not one that went out of business ten years ago. Two: fluid content shows that you have your finger on the pulse when it comes to trends and developments in your industry. Three: it shows the personality of your brand far more than your static words.

Fluid content is all well and good for your regular customers and those who know you exist, for the reasons above and more. But what about your unknown, potential clients - the people that have never even heard of you? How will they stumble across- your wonderfully crafted articles or your artfully-shot videos?

This is when third-party platforms come into play. On these, you can create a link back to your site and to the article in question; place this link under the nose of your potential clients (i.e. where they hang out/where you’re likely to find them), and/or on your social media channel, and voila! Increased visibility.

Another option is placing the entire article on a third-party platform.

This is more difficult and limiting than it may sound. For example, you can’t publish many articles in Twitter’s ‘What are you thinking?’ box, even if the site has now doubled its character limit to 280.

Instagram is image-led; few people will read an article of any length in the description.

Thankfully, Facebook is a good option. But we don’t mean cutting and pasting your blog/article into your page’s feed…we’re referring to one of FB’s more recent developments:

Facebook Instant Articles.

It’s ten times faster at getting in-front of readers than standard mobile web articles, and it has 20% more readers than comparative platforms. Facebook also boasts that 70% of its readers are less likely to abandon an article on its platform, which equals an impressive read rate. FB makes its instant articles easy to share, which further increases your article’s reach from it simply being sat on your website. You can even monetise your instant article feed.

As with the vast majority of content aimed at your clients, it shouldn’t be sales-led, and FB echoes this sentiment.

Facebook is one of the world’s largest social media platforms. Can you think of any better way to extend the reach of your content?