Newsjacking - What you need to know before chasing
Newsjacking is when news breaks in your industry, you have the opportunity to capitalise on the interest that those stories create.
Newsjacking is a smart way to achieve this and it can be utilised to attract qualified leads through social media posts, press coverage and blog posts.
What is Newsjacking?
Newsjacking is something that takes place all the time.
Essentially, it involves creating content that relates to the large news stories of the day in your industry.
So, when a story breaks, you can harness the reach of media and attention and use it to drive brand awareness and generate leads.
Your business will have a chance to take advantage of the media coverage of a story in order to enhance your marketing strategy.
This is a fast cycle and it requires fast action to take advantage of the story before it reaches its peak and is quickly forgotten about.
The good thing about newsjacking is that it doesn’t have to be difficult.
With the right content strategy, social channels and knowledge, you can create high-quality content that can help to drive traffic through the use of keywords and search queries.
What Are The Marketing Benefits of Newsjacking?
Through newsjacking, you can drive qualified traffic to your website, providing you choose the right topic.
You can enhance your presence and reach by creating industry authority through relevant content.
When your brand is linked to trending topics, you’ll receive more exposure and it proves that you are credible within your industry.
People show an interest in big news stories, so it pays to newsjack them.
People like discussing the latest topics, so creating relevant content will capture that audience.
Once you do this, your content will be shared and engaged with and that is where your business can benefit.
How Do You Newsjack a Story?
To begin newsjacking, you need to act fast, so you need to make sure you set up news alerts.
Once a story has broken, you need to publish content whilst interest and search volume is increasing.
It begins by ensuring you understand the breaking story and that the facts are correct.
Getting this stage wrong could actually damage your reputation, so make sure the new source is trusted.
Then you can begin to create content that is relevant and credible while you monitor the keyword search volume to determine if it is worth producing content.
Once you have recognised that the topic is of use to you, it’s time to create content quickly.
The aim is to publish as fast as possible to ride the wave of interest. You should also make sure that the content is relevant and informative.
What’s more, you should make sure that you are adding value to the conversation.
Therefore, adding your insight and knowledge to the content will help to make it unique and more attractive to readers.
With your content created, it’s time to publish and promote it.
Use your social media channels and make sure that your content can be found when people search.
You can use hashtags too, as this will enable your content to be linked to the right audience as opposed to it disappearing for good
We newsjacked the proposed European football superleague and twisted it with us being a superleague influencer agency, with a quickfire blog and it ranked 3rd at the time for that search query.
Our site was hit with over 15k visits in 2 days.
Are There Any Risks With Newsjacking?
There is no denying that newsjacking can add value to your business and brand but you have to use it the right way.
You must take advantage of the right topic and it has to be relevant to your business, otherwise, you won’t be targeting the right audience.
The news story must be relevant to your industry and even if it is only slightly relevant it can work for you.
Despite this, there is a possibility that you could target the wrong topic and that becomes a risk.
Your brand awareness could be negatively affected if you target people who have no interest in your content.
It is recommended that you avoid creating content around sensitive topics such as politics. If you choose to do this then you could remove certain people from your audience as some customers might have different opinions or views.
Therefore, taking a neutral stance that is present and unbiased is the best way to take advantage of a certain situation.
Furthermore, if you create content that lacks information or is factually incorrect it will do significant damage while content that is rushed will only give your business an unprofessional appearance and that will have a negative impact on your reputation.
However, adopting this kind of strategy also comes with risks if you don’t publish content as quickly as possible.
If you lack speed when reacting to news and you publish content that is behind the news cycle, it can make your business look as though it is irresponsible and behind trends and so you should consider using a professional digital marketing agency to take care of this for you.
Is Newsjacking Right For Your Business?
The circumstances and objectives of your business will determine whether or not newsjacking is the right fit for your business.
Marketers have to have their finger on the pulse when new items emerge and they have to spot them and then create content based on these stories. Here are some Hubspot newsjacking global examples.
This can be handled effectively using the right tools, it still takes time to create content.
It also has to be completed rapidly to ensure it rides the wave of interest surrounding a trending topic.
It might be a strategy that doesn’t fit every business but if you can access it and you do implement it correctly, then it will bring with it a huge number of benefits.
However, proactive monitoring and reacting quickly will ensure you maximise the potential of this strategy.
So, it can pay to use a social media agency that has a lot of experience working in this area as this will enable you to capture those moments that could give your business the chance of attracting a wider audience.
With the right content schedule and support, there is no doubt that this simple, yet effective strategy could really make a difference.
