What’s the secret to capitalizing on breaking news for your brand? It’s called newsjacking, and it’s a dynamic method to enhance your brand’s media footprint and engage your audience. This article cuts through the noise to explain clearly how newsjacking works, why it matters in a crowded marketplace, and how you can employ it effectively without the risk of a PR misstep.
Perfect for marketers and communicators, here’s what you need to know to navigate the trend and make it work for you.
Key Takeaways
- Newsjacking is a marketing strategy that involves injecting brand ideas into breaking news stories, which can increase content visibility and audience engagement, but may not contribute to long-term brand building.
- It requires quick action, relevance to brand values, and a respectful approach to news events; missteps or insensitive content can lead to backlash and harm the brand’s reputation.
- Integrating newsjacking with an overall marketing strategy ensures consistency with brand values and messaging, and should be complemented with traditional marketing efforts and real-time engagement analysis.
Unlocking the Power of Newsjacking
Newsjacking, an ingenious marketing approach, involves the art of injecting your brand’s ideas into a breaking news story and spinning the media coverage in your favor. It offers a myriad of benefits, from increasing content visibility to positioning your brand as an expert, thereby enhancing audience reach and engagement.
Whether it’s through social media, blogging, web content, or videos, the possibilities of newsjacking are as diverse as the news itself.
However, bear in mind that while newsjacking can generate buzz and bolster your visibility, its perks may not contribute to long-term brand building or customer loyalty due to the ephemeral nature of news trends.
The Mechanics of Newsjacking
In newsjacking, striking while the iron is hot is paramount. The core concept revolves around syncing your content with emerging news, which in turn secures media attention amidst the initial excitement. Being prepared is equally important – ensuring you have suitable content, whether a post, blog, or tweet, primed for publishing during newsjacking.
When done right, newsjacked content can be instantly shared across various platforms and resonate with a wide audience, spreading like wildfire across the internet. However, it’s not without its challenges, such as the high time investment required to monitor news and create timely reactions. Newsjacking entails a creative and sensitive approach, where you ensure your actions are respectful and non-exploitative of the news story context.
Identifying Your Newsjacking Moment
The success of newsjacking hinges on the right news event, which must align with your brand’s values to ensure authenticity and relevance. For instance, consider how Calm newsjacked during the 2020 US presidential election. Their alignment with the audience sentiment on a relevant event led to significant increases in engagement and app downloads.
For optimal impact, your brand and the news trend should connect seamlessly, taking advantage of internet trends that naturally associate with your brand’s products and contribute to your brand’s reputation, while keeping your target audience in mind.
Crafting Your Newsjacking Strategy
Crafting a successful newsjacking strategy involves:
- Pinpointing relevant news stories
- Identifying the correct angle and keywords for your brand
- Verifying factual accuracy
- Selecting the most suitable channels for distributing the content
- Supplementing your strategy with a compelling pitch
- Including potential quotes from clients that are in sync with prevailing trends
The importance of swift action in creating content for newsjacking cannot be emphasized enough. It enables brands to make an impact in a timely manner and draw links to their content while the story trends. However, ineffective newsjacking or misalignment with the news can result in a backlash and potentially harm the brand’s reputation, underlining the need for a well-considered approach.
Executed swiftly and relevantly amidst the news cycle, newsjacking can dramatically elevate brand visibility and nurture audience engagement by sharing the brand’s unique perspective in ongoing discussions.
Timing is Everything: Seizing the News Cycle
In newsjacking, time is of the essence. Swift action is vital to leverage the freshness of the topic in people’s minds and to capitalize on prevailing public interest. Moreover, by identifying and preparing for predictable news events, such as major sports events or anniversaries, you can preemptively create content, ready to engage as soon as these events occur.
These major events offer a valuable opportunity for newsjacking due to their widespread public interest and media coverage, allowing brands to enhance their relevance and connect with a larger audience.
Preparation and foresight, including regular team discussions about potential major news events, can enable a rapid response to real-time opportunities, increasing the chances of your brand’s newsjacking attempt going viral.
Creating Compelling Content
Creating engaging content for newsjacking is an art. It necessitates brainstorming pitch angles with your team to effectively synchronize with emerging news stories. Using multimedia formats such as videos and infographics can make it easier to convey complex information in a captivating manner.
This can enhance the shareability of your newsjacking content. Moreover, content related to trending stories should incorporate keywords to enhance searchability. However, beware of the overuse of hashtags, which can decrease engagement.
Offering insightful views on current events can position your brand as an authority, leading to increased visibility and engagement, especially when the relevant content is also relatable.
Ethical Considerations in Newsjacking
Although newsjacking can serve as a potent marketing strategy, it carries its own ethical implications. It’s vital to uphold a positive brand sentiment and steer clear of exploiting delicate situations. Newsjacking sensitive topics, such as natural disasters or tragedies, can lead to a backlash and harm your brand’s reputation due to perceived insensitivity.
Therefore, successful newsjacking must align with your brand’s values, ensuring accurate representation and culturally sensitive engagement without perpetuating negative stereotypes.
Newsjacking in Action: Case Studies
To truly understand the power and potential of newsjacking, let’s delve into some real-world examples. Successful newsjacking campaigns have showcased the potency of timely and creative content in enhancing brand visibility and fostering audience engagement. Let’s explore how brands like Virgin Atlantic, Oreo, and Aviation Gin capitalized on the art of newsjacking and turned trending news into a marketing goldmine.
How Brands Became Thought Leaders Through Newsjacking
Brands like Oreo and Calm have used newsjacking to position themselves as thought leaders, displaying relevance and creativity in engaging with current events. For instance, consider Oreo’s quick response during the Super Bowl XLVII power outage. Their witty social media reaction turned an unexpected event into a widely acclaimed marketing win, maintaining their relevance and increasing attention to their products.
Similarly, Calm capitalized on the heightened public attention during the 2020 US presidential election by sponsoring spots on CNN’s coverage, leveraging the moment to enhance its brand’s prominence. These brands show that real-time reactivity in newsjacking allows you to display your relevance and creativity by engaging with current events as they unfold.
When Newsjacking Goes Viral: A Close Look at Standout Campaigns
Let’s take a closer look at standout newsjacking campaigns that demonstrate the potential for viral success when executed correctly. For instance, Oreo seized the moment during the Super Bowl power outage with a witty social media response, which became a viral sensation with thousands of retweets and likes.
On the other hand, Virgin Atlantic quickly responded to the legalization of same-sex marriage with a targeted advertisement, leveraging the news to its advantage.
Another great example is Wendy’s, which crafted a satirical social media post that effectively poked fun at McDonald’s, garnering significant consumer interaction. These examples show that success in newsjacking can catapult your brand into viral fame, dramatically increasing its exposure and engagement with the audience.
Learning from Mistakes: Newsjacking Missteps to Avoid
While successful newsjacking campaigns can provide valuable insights, it’s equally important to learn from the missteps to avoid damaging your brand’s reputation. For instance, DiGiorno mistakenly used the sensitive #WhyIStayed hashtag to promote their pizza, leading to backlash and a public apology.
Similarly, Urban Outfitters used a devastating storm to promote online shopping with free shipping, which was perceived as profiting from a disaster, causing public outrage.
These examples highlight the importance of practicing newsjacking with a sense of ethics and respect for the emotional impact of news coverage, as emphasized by David Meerman Scott.
Building Relationships Through Newsjacking
Newsjacking extends beyond just leveraging trending news; it’s also about fostering relationships.
Engaging with social media platforms, partnering with influencers, and responding to feedback can enhance your brand visibility and foster audience engagement. Plus, it can pave the way for establishing your brand as a thought leader, enhancing relationships with media entities, and maintaining robust relations with clients.
Let’s dive deeper into these strategies.
Engaging with Social Media Platforms
In the digital age, social media platforms are a goldmine for newsjacking opportunities. Engaging with trending topics on Twitter, for instance, allows brands access to a wide audience, particularly during major events where engagement is high. Additionally, by utilizing trending hashtags alongside their own branded hashtags, brands can enhance the visibility of their newsjacked stories.
Tying current events into brand content can significantly drive social media shares by tapping into the audience’s interest in trending topics, thus reaching a larger number of social media users.
Plus, brands can pitch their newsjacked content to journalists on Twitter, using features like #journorequests, to gain amplified media coverage.
Partnering with Influencers
Partnering with influencers can take your newsjacking efforts to the next level. Influencers and other media outlets can increase the visibility and reach of newsjacked posts, leading to enhanced engagement and a wider distribution of content. Newsjacking also provides opportunities for collaboration with influencers, leading to them sharing your brand’s content with their followers.
Moreover, businesses can use PR and media outreach platforms, such as Prowly, to identify and contact journalists suitable for their newsjacking campaigns.
Responding to Feedback
Responding effectively to social media feedback is crucial for maintaining high engagement rates following newsjacking efforts. The internet’s long memory means inappropriate or poorly judged content can have a lasting negative effect on your brand’s reputation. Thus, real-time media coverage tracking tools enable organizations to monitor their reputation and to address feedback and potential crises proactively.
Integrating Newsjacking with Overall Marketing Strategy
Newsjacking is not a standalone strategy; it must be woven into your overarching marketing strategy. By aligning brand content with current events and trending news, you can maintain consistency and relevance, enhancing your visibility and engagement with audiences.
Let’s explore how to align newsjacking with your brand values, balance it with traditional marketing efforts, and measure its impact.
Aligning Newsjacking with Brand Values
Newsjacking is a powerful tool, but it must align with your brand values to ensure authenticity and consistency in your messaging. When selecting news stories for newsjacking, it’s crucial to evaluate whether the news event or topic resonates with your brand’s identity and values to avoid exploitative appearances and ensure an authentic brand connection.
Remember, effective newsjacking should provide unique value and perspectives to the audience, aligning with your brand’s mission and purpose rather than solely promoting your brand.
Balancing Newsjacking with Traditional Marketing
While newsjacking can provide your brand with a swift popularity surge, it’s important to counterbalance it with conventional marketing endeavors. When used together, newsjacking and traditional marketing can enhance your brand’s visibility, awareness, and engagement on social platforms, and drive more traffic to your website.
Therefore, a successful marketing mix should include newsjacking alongside traditional marketing efforts so that each supports and amplifies the other.
Measuring the Impact of Your Newsjacking
Assessing the impact of newsjacking is key to comprehending its effectiveness, how the public perceives it, and the return on investment it provides. This involves:
- Monitoring the engagement and responses to newsjacked content
- Assessing social media engagement
- Tracking website traffic growth
- Measuring the search engine optimization (SEO) benefits of newsjacking, such as the increase in the generation of backlinks and features on media sites
These indicators are key to understanding the strategy’s long-term value.
Tools like web analytics platforms, social media management tools, and content management systems provide valuable insights for tracking owned media coverage and are instrumental in measuring the real-time impact of newsjacking efforts.
Tools and Resources for Effective Newsjacking
To optimize newsjacking, it’s necessary to utilize appropriate tools and resources. Media monitoring services and internet applications like Google News can provide alerts for programmed keywords, aiding in the rapid response to potential newsjacking opportunities.
Let’s delve into some of these tools and resources.
Staying Informed with Google Alerts and Trends
Staying abreast of the latest news is winning half the battle in newsjacking. Tools like Google Alerts and Google Trends are crucial for keeping you updated on news and topics of interest, facilitating timely newsjacking efforts. They assist in monitoring the popularity and relevance of specific search terms over time, allowing you to identify and act on trending news for newsjacking.
Alerts from a mix of major news outlets and specialized niche publications are essential to pinpoint the optimal moment for a successful newsjacking initiative.
Leveraging Real-time Monitoring Tools
Real-time tracking tools such as Google Trends and social media hashtags facilitate swift identification of trending topics suitable for newsjacking. In the midst of this, a trending story can be easily spotted. Platforms such as National Today and Event Guide help you stay informed about current observances and trending hashtags for opportune newsjacking. Tools like BuzzSumo and Feedly are instrumental in identifying newsjacking opportunities by keeping track of popular content and news.
Also, sentiment analysis and social media trend monitoring, provided by tools like Zoho Social, Falcon.io, Awario, and Brand24, are critical for shaping and refining your newsjacking strategies.
Summary
In a world where news travels fast, newsjacking offers a potent tool for brands to ride the wave of trending news for maximum brand impact. From unlocking the power of newsjacking to crafting a successful newsjacking strategy, to learning from real-world case studies, this blog post has explored all facets of newsjacking.
Remember, the key to successful newsjacking lies in speed, relevance, creativity, and ethics. So why wait? Harness the power of newsjacking today and make your brand a part of the conversation.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is newsjacking?
Newsjacking is a marketing approach that helps brands gain visibility by leveraging current news stories.
How does newsjacking work?
Newsjacking works by injecting a brand’s ideas into a breaking news story and spinning the media coverage in the brand’s favor. It’s a way to leverage current events for promotional purposes.
What are the benefits of newsjacking?
Newsjacking can bring numerous benefits, including increased content visibility, positioning your brand as an expert, and enhancing audience reach and engagement. It also helps foster relationships with media entities. Consider integrating newsjacking into your content strategy for these advantages.
What are some examples of successful newsjacking?
Some successful newsjacking examples are Oreo’s response to the Super Bowl power outage and Calm’s sponsorship spots during the 2020 US presidential election. These instances demonstrate effective real-time marketing.
How can I measure the impact of my newsjacking efforts?
To measure the impact of your newsjacking efforts, monitor engagement and responses to your newsjacked content, assess social media engagement, and track website traffic growth. This will help you gauge the effectiveness of your newsjacking strategy.
