Are you designing/managing blogs? Do You Know Google's alarming estimate - “53% of mobile site visits are abandoned by users, if the pages take longer than 3 seconds to load!”?
Major platforms have deviced their own ways to tackle the problem of mobile loading speed. Apple has deviced Apple News, Google has introduced Accelerated Mobile Pages and finally Facebook has made use of Instant Articles to solve this issue. How can Bloggers address this serious concern and benefit from the above mentioned solutions?
Blogger (Blogspot) users can rely on this article to convert your blog into an AMP one. While Accelerated Mobile Pages can speed up your website browsing experience, Instant Articles can drive referral traffic from Facebook.
Implenting both can be equally important, so start publishing Instant Articles immediately. Instant Articles are simply mobile versions of webpages, that load fast because of Facebook hosting. It makes use of the same technology used by the Facebook mobile app to quickly load images and videos. According to Facebook, Instant Articles loads mobile articles up to 10 times faster, increases readership by 20 percent, reduce bounce rates by 70 percent and increase sharing by 30 percent.
FIA = Facebook Instant Articles
Pros of Using Facebook Instant Articles:
- The best thing about Instant articles by Facebook is that it's FREE.
- FIA gives full freedom to design and brand your content.
- FIA enjoys all the benefits of Facebook’s EdgeRank and improve the traffic.
- FIA entices your site traffic by providing faster, seamless experience with interactive features.
- FIA increases your social signal through boosted user sharing prompted by better user experience.
- FIA's Content Monetization options - 100% of the ad revenue from direct-sold ads & 70% of the revenue generated from Audience Network.
Cons of Using Facebook Instant Articles:
- Facebook limits the number of ads delivered through FIA.
- Third-party advertisers are restricted and this may incur a drop in the revenue
- Facebook might restrict the number of images & videos on your FIA to decrease the loading time of your content.
- Any widgets within the article, will no longer appear on your FIA.
- Any widgets, advertisements or information in your sidebar will not reach your audience.
- Most shortcodes and custom fields will not be displayed in your articles.
How to get Instant Articles on Facebook?
- Step 1: Go to this website to create Facebook Instant Articles - https://instantarticles.fb.com/.
- Step 2: Click Sign Up.
- Step 3: To enable Facebook Instant Articles, choose the appropriate Facebook page. If you don’t already have one, Create Page - https://www.facebook.com/pages/create.
- Step 4: Check the box to agree to the Terms and Conditions of using Instant articles.
- Step 5: Click the “Access Instant Articles Tools” button.
- Step 6: There will be pop up there, all you have to do is click “Continue”.
How to get Facebook Instant Articles for Blogger?
Ever since Facebook opened up Instant Articles to publishers of any size, anywhere in the world, it has become one of the top referrers of traffic to news sites and blogs of all sizes. Traffic analytics company Parsely had revealed that Facebook had even overtaken Google as the number 1 referrer of traffic to news sites. Let us use it to the advantage of the Bloggers making use of Blogspot domain.- Step 1: Click on "Authorize your site" link. Facebook will scroll you to the Tools section.
- Step 2: Click the “Connect Your Site” and copy the meta tag specific to your blog.
- Step 3: Go to your Blogspot Dashboard and click Theme.
- Step 4: Click Edit HTML and put the meta tag in the <head> section and click Save.
- Step 5: Go back to Facebook Publishing Tools and enter your domain in URL.
- Step 6: Click “Claim URL” button.
How to get Facebook Instant Articles RSS for Blogger?
Blogger provides a robust RSS feeds page by default for each blog that you create. This step is to add your blog's RSS Feed link to Instant Articles, so it can automatically fetch information about the articles when they are published on your site. All you have to check is whether RSS Feeds are turned on your Blogger site and are set to Full.- Step 1: Click the tab Production RSS Feed.
- Step 2: Put this RSS Feed - https://yourblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss.
- Step 3: Then Click Save.
- Step 4: Go to Blogger Dashboard >> Your Blog >> Settings >> Others >> Site feed >>.
- Step 5: Make sure "Allow Blog Feed" is set to Full.
How to Stylize your Instant Articles template?
FIA is centered around delivering a high-quality experience to the user—with fast load times and interactive visuals. Style templates allow you to customize the look and feel of your Instant Articles. These Article Templates can be used to mirror the look and feel of their blog brand.- Step 1: Click Styles and click default or click on "add styles" to create a complete design of your own.
- Step 2: Decide what design of font and color you want and customize your style .
- Step 3: Upload your blog's logo, which must be a transparent PNG file of minimum dimensions - 690px width & 132px height.
- Step 4: Upon uploading the Logo and Completed customising your style, click Save, and then click Close.
How to Submit Your Instant Articles for Review?
Before you can submit your Instant Articles for review, make sure that there are at least 5 Instant articles in your Production library. An Instant Article is a streamlined copy of an existing blog post and is indexed with the blog post's canonical URL. You can create the sample articles either manually by using the provided examples as templates or automatically by connecting your blog's RSS feed.- Step 1: Go to your Facebook page and click on Publishing Tools.
- Step 2: From your left menu, click on ‘Configuration’ under Instant Articles.
- Step 3: If there are no Auto-generated errors, you will be able to Submit your Instant Articles for Review.
- Step 4: Click on "Submit for Review" to send your feeds for reviewing.