The below posting is a cross-post of my recent article on Acquisition Engine (with just a few changes). You can check out the original version: Newsjacking: Real-Time Content Marketing Tactics For Your Blog and Social Media Campaigns.
As a content strategist and inbound marketer, at some point you may need to find new audiences, topics, or a fresh angle for your content strategy and community building. For this, some marketers publish more blog posts; others upload more pictures; some of my friends produce more video interviews… but often in vain.
Newsjacking, also known as culture-jacking, is the process of injecting your ideas or angles into breaking news, in real-time, to generate media coverage for your brand. Done effectively, it can validate your brand as a thought leader in your industry, drive traffic to your site and increase interest in your brand. ~ Barb Schmitz.
In this post, I’d like to share just a set of tools and ideas I use for niche newsjacking. I’m not trying to compete with big brands on big news – quite often you don’t need to create yet another posting telling your community that Marissa Mayer is the new CEO of Yahoo – Business Insider, Venture Beat, Mashable, TechCrunch, Search Engine Land, Webmaster World – all of them did a great job in a matter of hours. Maybe you can be creative and offer your own twist, that second paragraph, – well, then good for you. But most likely you will able to do it just once for a headline like that – it’s the major league newsjacking.
Newsjacking is a quite difficult and a time consuming activity
I first heard the newsjacking term about a year ago but I immediately understood that I was actually doing it for ages. My way of implementing newsjacking is to find stories – which not exactly will become popular – but rather have a strong potential to go viral (at least to some extent) for a particular niche or community.
Niche newsjacking is a part of the content curation efforts
Over time you can become a subject matter expert or a though leader in the areas you use newsjacking. Take, for example, some topics, like social commerce, mobile analytics, trading software, social media monitoring tools, or lead management – they all are very specific areas, but with huge opportunities to dig deeper and find hidden interdependencies, build your network, and, ultimately, capitalize on the masses of uncategorized, segmental, research-based, and sometimes fun content.
Adding newsjacking to your content marketing arsenal
The speed in which the newsjacked content is being created is super important – we’re talking about relevant and compelling content development in real time. Blog posts, Facebook updates, tweets, LinkedIn and Google+ are all good channels to practice newsjacking. Later, the content you create might become a part of your next premium research reports, infographics or case studies.
To spot newsjacking opportunities, I’m using the following tools:
Google Alerts
Track keywords – you can put quotes around the search terms
Track important conferences and events (think hashtags) – very often good content is published a few weeks or even months after the end of an event
Track industry-specific lingo and new terms, say like newsjacking
Track your competition
Track your website URL
Track yourself
Google News
I’ve created custom sections for the niches/terms/companies I follow, all with selected keywords. You can also personalize your feed, adjust sources
Monitor news on a daily basis
Twitter
Follow experts, product managers, companies and writers
Create and follow lists
Create and monitor Searches (use “save search” and “People you follow” options; or go Advanced)
Check Trends – visible on the left sidebar
RSS Feed
Follow industry blogs and publications, as well as major news outlets
Follow niche bloggers
You can also use your RSS reader to subscribe to some important YouTube, Quora, LinkedIn, Facebook feeds
Facebook
Follow pages and experts
YouTube Channels
Find and subscribe to the channels in your niche
Follow conferences and speakers
LinkedIn
Participate in relevant groups
Follow and answer questions
Read updates on your feed
Quora
Subscribe to relevant topics and boards
Newsjacking University – Useful Resources
A couple of good resources for you:
In his book Newsjacking: How to Inject your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage David Meerman Scott suggests that “newsjacking is about taking advantage of opportunities that pop up for a fleeting moment and then disappear.”
Mitch Joel suggests that the concept of newsjacking is “to interject your businesses’ story into breaking news to generate media coverage for what you’re doing.” And further “the concept of newsjacking is not a new or novel way to get media attention. Smart companies have been doing it forever.”
On BBC you can find a quite famous newsjacking example with Kate Winslet and The London Fire Brigade.
Newsjacking in the Marketing Over Coffee podcast.
And, of course, we cannot go anywhere without a complete guide … to newsjacking.
4 Simple Newsjacking Formulas for Content Teams of Any Size, by Hubspot. “It’s about being first — as long as you’re accurate, you just need to get a story out the door to make the most of it”. And then “the Delayed Recap gives a detailed overview of what happened in the news as well as a few takeaways for your readers.”
Newsjacking: a fad or the future for marketing? by Richard Gruner Research Fellow at University of Melbourne. “And newsjacking — though potentially somersaulting a brand into the collective conscious — is but one of the latest fads in marketing; a fad that likely fails to engender true consumer loyalty.”
Newsjacking with a B2B infographic and blog post, by David Meerman Scott. ”Newsjacking involves more than issuing a timely blog post, product placement, or press release,” Joe says. “It also requires actively engaging with journalists and other influencers who are discussing the topic you wish to judo to your advantage.”
7 Steps to Becoming a World-Class Real-Time Marketer. ”As tools and techniques improve, most all of marketing will, in essence, be real-time marketing.”
Is newsjacking the ultimate use of media for companies? by Henriette Weber. “You need to have a fast-paced organization for sure, that leaves the final say in decision making to the actual team instead of a team of managers. You need to opt your game and plan ahead.”
Newsjacking For Email Marketers
Creating Headlines: Why “Newsjacking” Helps Your Brand
How to Create Brand Interest and Value with Newsjacking
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