When Facebook unveiled its Instant Articles, the appeal was instant, but so was the potential drawback. Do we really want another place to share our content? How much do we want to fragment our audience? Aren’t our owned media enough? How much more ad revenue can we give to Facebook?

These are all relevant questions we have to ask when approaching a new, shiny feature full of promises. The good thing is this feature explicitly targets media outlets, hoping to draw them in with minimal loading time and nearly complete control over ad revenue. But is it worth your resources, and how can you benefit from it?

What are Instant Articles?

According to Facebook, Instant Articles are “a new way for publishers to create, fast interactive articles on Facebook.” Leveraging the same technology used to display photos and videos in the Facebook iPhone app, Facebook wants your content to live on its native app, versus linking to your website.

When you break it down, Facebook Instant Articles bring its established user experience to long-form content, with high-resolution photos, interactive maps, and embedded audio captions. With Instant Articles, your audience is immersed in every element of the story. Imagine holding a photograph in your hand, while being able to tilt it back and forth. Now imagine experiencing that with an image in a Facebook Instant Article.

But What About My Ads Revenue?

When you post a link to your website on Facebook, it’s a simple way to track conversion through click-through rates and ad impressions. At a first glance, Instant Articles come across as another way for Facebook to gain revenue from content you’ve created. However, according to the model they’ve set up, there are two ways to earn revenue from Instant Articles published on Facebook:

• Content creators can fill display ad inventory themselves and keep all of the revenue; or
• Let Facebook handle placement at the expense of 30 percent of your ad revenue.

Publishers who choose the first option of selling their own ads are free to insert those ads into the Facebook pages using any “ad serving” tool they wish. Of course, Facebook being Facebook, there are some guidelines in place for your self-serving advertisements:

• One large banner ad—or two small banners—for every 500 words of content.
• A maximum of four ads per article, and a maximum of two small banners per article.
• All articles are allowed to have at least one ad, regardless of the length.
• Publishers may include no more than one house ad per article.
• No ads may be placed “above the fold” on the first view of the article.
• Publishers may not include ads in autoplay videos embedded in their articles, although ads in third-party video players are allowed.

Jon Handschin, co-founder and chief creative officer of Moviepilot, says Facebook gives “publishers room to put in other types of advertisements because it’s the profit model for us. Native advertising is a play in that market as well, and Facebook understands it.”

Whether you choose the self-serve option, or let Facebook handle your placement for a small price, Facebook is trying to make one thing obvious: They want to support your business models by encouraging you to use their platform without taking away your ad revenue.

Well…at least not by much.

Technical Brass Tacks

Will your content team have to learn yet another content management system to use Instant Articles? Yet another dashboard to add to their bookmarks list?

The short answer: No.

One of the biggest appeals of Facebook Instant Articles is its ability to publish directly from your existing system. You want a single tool to publish articles to the web, and Facebook heard you. All you need is a simple RSS feed of your articles.

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According to the Facebook Developers’ blog post, once you’ve set up your RSS feed, Instant Articles “automatically loads new stories as soon as they are published to the publisher’s website and apps. Updates and corrections are also automatically captured via the RSS feed so that breaking news remains up to date.”

And for the interactive images and videos? Well, lucky for developers everywhere, Instant Articles are created with HTML5, and it allows publishers to reuse the code from their website. So once the code is written, you’re set to go.

Is it Worth Your Time?

Currently, the early adopters of Instant Articles include publications such as The New York Times, Buzzfeed, National Geographic, MTV and Vox Media—all of whom include extensive creative elements in their content, including videos, voice recordings and interactive maps.

But will it benefit you as a content creator? The short answer is “yes.”

Is it worth your time? That depends on how you want your audience to interact with your content.

If your goal is to share the information with as many people as possible, Facebook Instant Articles provide an easy to way to help you reach more eyes via a simple syndication model. With comScore integration, Instant Article views count as traffic to your original content.

If your goal is ad revenue, you need to evaluate the time to takes to set up the revenue stream on Facebook in addition to what’s already created on your website.

Bottom Line

As you plan your content strategy this year, Facebook Instant Articles could be an easy win for content publishers who are hoping to get more traction with mobile users because they’re currently only available to iPhone app users.

This is just one more step for Facebook to retain its users on the platform for as long as possible, creating a fully immersive experience from the way we connect with friends to the way we get our news.

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The post Facebook Instant Articles: Buzzworthy or Evergreen? appeared first on Relevance.

Does it belong to the PR pros because they are natural storytellers and are trained to craft a great story? Does it belong to advertisers because, without distribution, your content goes nowhere? What if it belong to marketers because it helps generate leads? Does it belong to a new role—the content marketer—so it can apply a very specific skill set?

The problem with this kind of thinking, of course, is it creates silos. Silos, by their very nature, are harmful to an organization and weigh it down when it really needs to be flexible to the constant change of technology. Silos also create fiefdoms that prevent colleagues from talking to one another. A concept discussed in great detail in Marketing in the Round, digital communications must exist to break those silos down and let content marketing belong to the entire organization.

The Content Marketing Role

The other problem is a good majority of organizations want to give content marketing a role instead of hiring for skill. That’s why there is the “Where does it belong?” argument.

• Do you have a really good writer? Let him create content and distribute it.
• Do you have an introvert who gets her social interaction online? Let her build relationships with all stakeholders and influencers to distribute the content.
• Do you have a receptionist who is brutal with a red pen? Let him edit all of the content for consistency and voice.
• Do you have a sales person with a really deep Rolodex? Let her discover new ways to approach new readers.

The content marketing role should be defined on skill set and not on department. Once you find where people have strengths around the myriad content roles (planning, creation, distribution, engagement), you begin to get the entire organization involved in its success. Which leads to the Golden Ticket so many can’t seem to find.

The Content Marketing Process

By sheer necessity, smaller organizations have this process down already. Everyone in the organization is responsible for content marketing because there aren’t resources for departments, let alone departments to fight about it. Larger organizations can learn a thing or two from the Davids in their industries.

A 10-person software-as-a-service company in Pennsylvania serves the education market. Their focus for business development and client retention is on content marketing.

• The CEO leads the charge by creating drip email campaigns and writing two blog posts per month. He also serves as the central hub for ideas, approvals, and distribution.
• The technology manager handles data, metrics, and analysis.
• The customer service manager writes two blog posts per month, develops long-form content (eBooks and white papers) and handles the social media (including a very effective Pinterest campaign—see #10).
• The educational specialist works with customers to create testimonials and case studies.
• The director of sales contributes content and distributes it to his deep Rolodex.

In the past three years, the results they’ve seen from having everyone involved in the content marketing process is astounding:

• Blog traffic increased 260 percent.
• The number of people who took their free trial increased 570 percent.
• The number of conversions increased 50 percent.
• They increased from one percent conversion on free trials to eight percent.
• Revenue, from these efforts alone, equals $1.5 million.

As they continue to work together to improve the content marketing process, their results continue to increase.

Plan for Success

Just like any other business initiative, you have to plan your content marketing process.

To start, if you already have an accountability chart for everyone in your organization, start there. If you don’t, create a quick spreadsheet and fill in the strengths of each team member. In some cases, you’ll want to ask every employee to fill it in—and tell you what they really love to do. In other cases, you’ll want supervisors to provide this data. However you get it, it’s important to determine where people’s skills lie and then build the content marketing process around them.

Now it’s time to start working with everyone in the organization to break down the silos and make content marketing part of the job of all.

Create a content marketing plan that follows the decision-making funnel by offering top-, middle- and bottom-of-the-funnel content:

• Top of the Funnel: The very broad content at the top that helps a prospect become educated about an issue, challenge, or solution. This should build industry awareness, attract links and reach new audiences.
• Middle of the Funnel: The discovery content is in the middle and this is where a prospect begins to trust you. This is where you create awareness of a solution you have to an industry problem, awareness of your organizations and help prospects to remember you.
• Bottom of the Funnel: The consideration content is at the bottom. They are ready to buy…and have likely narrowed down their choices to you and one or two other organizations. This is where you can begin to talk about yourself, but not from your point-of-view. You have to do it from their perspective, which is why case studies and testimonials are so powerful here. It should build product awareness and convert prospects to customers.

Every employee should be responsible for content at each level. This will create a flexible organization that can be fluid with technology changes, break down silos and improve culture because people will feel like they’re all in the organization’s success together.

The post Whose Role Does Content Marketing Belong To? appeared first on Relevance.