Back in 2014 when I was first putting together the social media marketing
specialization, one of the topics I wanted to include was newsjacking.
It's fairly new at the time.
It was kind of a hot idea, and it's one though that stood the test of time.
And it's really something you might want to consider when
building an engagement strategy.
And so newsjacking is basically engaging your audiences using breaking news.
For a definition, this is a good one.
Newsjacking is the process of injecting your brand into the day's news,
creating a twist that grabs eyes when they're open widest.
And so what you going to do is basically, if there's a breaking of piece of news and
you can relate it to your product in a clever way,
you're going to put that out while that news is hot.
While people are searching for the hashtags related to the story, or
the individuals related to the story that gets you injected into that
topic of conversation with your bit of newsjacking content, if you will.
But there's also another type, for example, if a major star is
going to have a baby, you can pre-prepare all of your content, so
that when the baby comes into the world, you're ready to go.
So there's two types,
you can basically be reacting to current news that's happening right now.
Or you can be looking for things that you could prepare content, so
that you can react to them when they happen.
Why do you do this?
Well first off, it boosts your SEO because you're using hashtags and
keywords that are related to a breaking topic.
It gives a whole lot of search,
which improves the SEO of your entire organization.
Second, it engages the readers in ultra-timely commentary.
If you do it really cleverly, it really gets them going, and it goes viral.
It's sharing a new angle for branded content.
In other words, it's not the traditional advertising.
It's using a news story to do something that's clever.
And it's leading your market in thought leadership.
The key though is that you're walking a fine line between being relevant and
being intrusive.
And so, you don't want to do that.
So what I've done is we'll go through and
we'll look a little bit at some tips about how to do newsjacking.
Then what I'll do is I'm going to show you some really great examples of it.
And I'll also show you some epic fails, so you'll see where that
fine line is between being that relevant or being intrusive to the individual.
So here's some tips.
First, keep a close eye on the news.
What you do, or
what most experts recommend, is that you set up Google Alerts
to notify you of any news stories that are relevant to your business.
Now you can actually set it up very broadly to give you
all the breaking news if you will, or you can put in some key terms,
key words if you will, to really restrict it down a little bit.
But one of the things they recommend is to cast a broad net.
In other words, don't be too restrictive on your searches,
as you might miss an opportunity to do something that's really fun.
Third, be very discerning.
Don't attempt to engage with extremely tragic events.
And I'm going to show you some examples of those here in a bit.
Newsjacking requires enhanced sensitivity, and so one of the things you
want to do is to not be too wrong in an extremely tragic event that's happening.
And so some care brands really don't do that, and that's been to their detriment.
Fourth, take a constructive approach.
Don't go negative on an event or the individuals who are involved in the event.
The key is you're trying to become a part of the conversation,
not going negative on the situation.
Include key words to enhance your ability to engage your high value markets.
And so when you're putting out your content, be sure to put the key words in
there, so that it'll help your SEO activity around the entire topic area.
And finally, be creative.
Make your message focus on the event, and soft sell your products and services.
So you're not trying to make this a sales call,
you're trying to have some fun with a news event and position your brand as something
that the individual might want to purchase in the future.
So as David Muir Mascott talks about,
the best place to do a bit of newsjacking is between the breaking of the news and
a journalist beginning to publish articles on it.
If you can get into that gap, you'll have the most effective
newsjacking strategy for the particular venture targeting.
So here is some great examples of newsjacking.
One of the classics is Oreo in the 2011 Super Bowl.
If you recall during that time, the power went out, and so
they actually then immediately sent out an Oreo cookie thing, saying power out?
No problem, you can still eat, still dunk in the dark, and it went viral.
I mean there were 15,000 plus retweets and 6,200 favorites that went on.
Also when Kate Middleton gave birth, they had the royal towel with the bottle and
the Oreo cookie, and long live the cream, okay, was their message.
And that, too, had a huge impact.