Beginner’s Guide on Facebook Instant Articles in WordPress
There are a lot of methods for you to better promote your website on the popular social platform of Facebook. Among them, the most effective way is to share your published blog posts on Facebook. This way, your Facebook followers can be informed of your new updates and check your website content potentially. To achieve this, you typically have two options – share the posts manually or use the automatic content sharing tool. This time, we’d like to tell you a new way of how to use Facebook Instant Articles in WordPress.
Haven’t heard of it as before? In the following, we will tell what Facebook Instant Articles are and how to use it for much more effective content sharing.
The Introduction of Facebook Instant Articles
In fact, the Instant Article is a special program released by Facebook since the year of 2015. The main idea of this program is to achieve the optimized versions of your shared content on Facebook. And these contents can be loaded around 10 times faster on mobile devices than normal sharing. This can greatly be appreciated by mobile users due to their excellent browsing experiences.
Here, we have summarized some benefits you can get from the Instant Articles.
- The content loading speed undergoes a significant improvement to 10 times faster.
- More people are likely to share your posts due to the fast speed.
- The showcase of advertisements is allowed for the online monetization.
- The integration of analytics is achieved for better traffic and sharing tracking.
- The traffic of the Facebook page can be furthered boosted.
However, there are also some drawbacks to this Facebook program.
- The advertisements cannot be showcased above any fold.
- Some page design elements cannot be displayed properly, such as the sidebar widgets, images, videos, custom fields and shortcode.
Frankly speaking, the Facebook Instant Article may not fit the needs of all the webmasters. However, if you care more about getting your posts shared for more eyeballs, this great program is highly recommended. At present, it has been used by many popular platforms like Mashable and BuzzFeed.
How to Use Facebook Instant Articles in WordPress
In fact, to achieve the utilization of the Facebook Instant Articles in WordPress, you need to go through multiple steps. In the following, weâd like to list them in an easy manner.
Sign Up for This Facebook Program
To begin with, you should check this official page to sign up for this Facebook Program. Here, you need to press the Sign Up button.
From the next page, you should choose a Facebook page to access this tool. After checking the box to agree to the program terms, you can hit the green button.
Claim Your URL for the Instant Articles Program
After getting access to the Instant Articles tool, you also need to finish the technical setup before publishing the web content.
For this, you need to prove the website owner from the next screen. Here, you can click the Publishing Tools button and navigate to the Claim Your URL section. And, you should hit the URL link.
This way, you can get the exclusive shortcode you should use to authorize your own WordPress site. Here, you should copy and paste this line of code into the head tag of your site.
For this, you can leverage the WordPress plugin like Insert Headers and Footers. Or, you can do it yourself by clicking the Appearance > Editor button from the dashboard. Here, you can find the header.php file to put into the code snippet.
After saving your header file, now, you can go back to the Facebook page where you get the code snippet. Below the code line, you should enter the correct domain of your site and click the Claim URL button. Once succeeded, you can get the message just like the following.
Connect the RSS Feed for the Instant Articles
Upon the website verification, you need to connect your RSS feed for this Facebook program. To achieve this, you need help from the Instant Articles for WP plugin. After the installation, your RSS feed can be generated automatically.
In this case, you simply need to go to the Production RSS Feed section of the previous Facebook page and enter the feed URL just like the following example. Here, what you need to do is to replace the “yourwebsite.com” with your true domain name.
Now, you simply need to click the Save button and the RSS feed is added successfully.
Change the Branding and Display Styles for the Instant Articles
From the Publishing Tools section, you actually can also customize the feel and overall look of your instant articles using some unique templates and style. For this, you simply need to move to the Instant Articles > Configuration part and click the Style button. Here, you can press the Add Style button.
Now, you have the freedom to upload your preferred logo, change the accent color, choose the background color and make some other changes. These modifications can ensure the proper showcase of your instant articles the way you like.
Connect the Instant Articles for WP Plugin with Your Site
Now, all the settings you should do on the Facebook page are finished already. Next, you need to go back to your WordPress admin page to configure the Instant Articles for WP plugin.
Here, you firstly need to enable the function of this plugin with the ID and the secret of a Facebook APP. Note that you can hit the “Here”link to generate the Facebook application for your page.
After clicking the Add a New App button from the next page, you need to make a choice among these 4 options. This time, you should click the last option of “Website”
Next, you need to enter the name for this new Facebook app and click the Create link. From the next screen, you should provide your email address and choose the option of “Apps for Pages” as the Category.
Then, you can move to the next page and enter your website URL. Now, there might be still many other steps you should finish. As they are not important, you can click the Skip Quick Start button directly. This way, your required APP ID and secret can be showcased successfully. Here, you need to remember to go to the APP Review section to make this new application alive.
Now, you can go to the plugin settings page to enter the ID and secret. After that, you should log in with your Facebook account. This way, you can pick up the Facebook page you have chosen previously for publishing the instant articles.
Check the Proper Working of the Instant Articles
Now, you have finished all the things already. And the last step is to test whether the Instant Articles program can work properly for your WordPress site or not.
For this, you need to go to the Facebook page and press the Publishing Tools button. And then, you should hit the Instant Articles > Configuration button. From step two, you can check the program working by hitting on the button of Submit for Review.
If there is no error message, it means the instant articles can be displayed automatically from your website update to your pointed Facebook page.