Facebook’s Instant Articles May Change PR

Facebook’s recently-announced Instant Articles may revolutionize publishing and change public relations along with it.

Through Instant Articles, Facebook will host entire articles from media outlets on its own platform. Facebook boasts they’ll load up to ten times faster than typical web articles now loaded through apps.

Facebook has included many features to attract publishers to Instant Articles. Each article displays the logo of the publication and includes a “follow” button enabling viewers to subscribe to the publisher’s Facebook page. Articles can contain photos with audio captions, graphic displays, videos, interactive graphics and embedded tweets. And, of course, articles include social media features including likes, shares and geo-tagging.

Overall, it’s a more robust online publishing format than most publishers now have.  The addition of news articles that include video and interactive elements moves Facebook from its current position as a crowd-sourced social media platform to a reincarnation as full-fledged media conglomerate — a fully-integrated source for traditional news, social media interaction and entertainment.

More Online Readers

With hundreds of millions of users on Facebook – most of whom don’t subscribe to print publications or access online news sources regularly, it’s likely the news articles published on Facebook will achieve greatly increased numbers of readers/viewers. Publishers clearly see the Facebook alliance as an additive in terms of audience exposure and advertising revenue.

The Wall Street Journal reported that big web publishers are already getting 60 percent of their referral traffic from Facebook. [Referral traffic accounts for just 17% of web traffic; search engine results account for nearly 65%.] With the new deal, that referral traffic to the publishers’ websites may essentially disappear, possibly affecting the publishers’ advertising rates based on traffic. The publishers may also lose inbound links to the article’s URL on their website, potentially reducing their traffic from search results.

At the launch of Instant Articles, Facebook hosted only select articles from nine major media companies including The New York Times, NBC News, The Atlantic, National Geographic and BuzzFeed. Facebook managed to include a diversified cross-section of participating publishers to better assess which types of content fares best on a social media platform.

Many observers are already wondering what will happen when the channel expands to include more organizations. CNN, Time Inc., Hearst magazines and other major publishers are expected to agree to include their content on Facebook’s Instant Articles in coming months.

 Facebook as Your Daily Newspaper

With the addition of Instant Articles, Facebook may become a primary funnel for readers looking for information about current news and trends. Commentators call it Facebook’s latest bid for world domination and another blow to print media publishers. News articles displayed on Facebook may bring publishers more ad revenue, but they won’t send readers to their own websites to read other content.

The movement could signal a paradigm shift in social media and publishing. The publishers may be ceding power over distribution of news to Facebook. In this way, the major publishers may be now acting in the digital age more like bloggers who turn over all back office technology and distribution to platforms like WordPress or BlogSpot in order to focus on editorial development.

Similar dire warnings about the survival of news publishers could be heard when Google started scraping the content of news sources and including the search results in Google News. Far from dooming publishers, Google News created more traffic and increased readership.

Major publishers often require subscriptions to access content. Their articles on Facebook’s free platform won’t require subscription. Publishers may reserve their best content for their own paid subscription sites or shift to an advertising revenue model in partnership with Facebook.

Potential Effect on Public Relations

The trend portends major changes for public relations. It could change how PR assesses and values media placements and how it creates content for distribution.

Placement of articles on Facebook provides access to a more mobile audience than traditional news outlets, even online sources. Short-form articles and video are more likely to resonate with the mobile audience. Facebook’s audience also skews more to millennials than do traditional news publications – possibly changing the content, tone and format of media placements PR professionals.

Instant Articles may also prompt changes to PR professionals’ relationships at media outlets. Publishers may rearrange job functions of staff members or perhaps hire new writers with knowledge of writing for Facebook readers.

PR pros with multimedia skills will gain a greater advantage. Although publishers could simply upload their long-form articles, the social media network places greater emphasis on photos, maps and especially videos.

Articles posted on Facebook could prompt more engagement from readers than articles on publishers’ websites. The number of shares, likes and comments are likely to increase quickly at first due to the format’s novelty before reaching a plateau.

Today, news that’s popular on social media sites – selected and placed by algorithms based on likes and shares of individual users — differs greatly from editorial content selected by trained journalists and their editors. Social media news tends to the frivolous, while journalist-produced news for the most part covers serious topics, including international affairs, politics and business news. It’s unclear how Facebook will rank and place the articles of the news sources. Many PR professionals worry that Facebook’s algorithms will subvert thoughtful journalism, including business news.

Media Monitoring and Measurement

The Instant Articles may change tracking of media coverage. How will PR track and measure coverage, track and compare coverage of different media outlets? For instance, should an article viewed on Facebook be rated differently than when it is viewed on the news organization’s own website? Is there a difference in the value of readers who search out and read/view an article on a website as opposed to a reader where the article is automatically placed in front of the reader?

Facebook says it will provide analytics to publishers, but it’s not clear if media monitoring services and PR will be able to view the data. Lack of Facebook data means PR measurement would miss a major segment of readership when measuring the impact of news releases and other news mentions.

Companies able to adapt quickly will leave others behind.

“Brands and organizations need to start thinking and behaving like media companies,” writes David Greenwood, a social consultant at Pegasus, in a LinkedIn Pulse post, “And if now is not the time to get ahead and start curating your own brand story, communicating with your audience directly, when is?”

Bottom Line: By hosting entire news and feature articles produced by major news organizations on its own platform rather than sending viewers to other websites through apps, Facebook’s Instant Articles will change how content is packaged and consumed. In addition to revolutionizing publishing, the channel may change how PR creates content and works with publishers.