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Newsjacking: When Does it Makes Sense for Your Brand?

In the immediacy of the digital age, brands need to decide when it’s right for them to ‘hang-10’ and catch the wave of a hot news story. But it’s just as easy to get caught in a rip tide when newsjacking topical content.

Newsjacking, a term first coined by David Meerman Scott, is the practice of capitalizing on the popularity of a news story to amplify a brand’s sales and marketing success via generating media coverage, sales leads and growing brand reputation. But how do you do it well?

Trending stories from the entertainment, political, and sports industries (and even the national weather service) might have relevant tie-ins for the company and products or services you are marketing. Remember the Brad Pitt-Jennifer Aniston “break-up vacation” on Anguilla? A savvy travel marketer might use a connection like that as a hook for an article about “getting away from it all” in Anguilla (or another exotic destination).

According to Stephen Murphy of Red Bamboo Marketing, “newsjacking can be wildly successful (just look at Buzzfeed) when done right, driving incredible amounts of traffic to your website in a short time span.”

Some of the many benefits of newsjacking include:

  • Boosting SEO
  • Timely engagement/commentary with your audience
  • Sharing a new, relevant angle for branded content
  • Showing a creative, fun or daring side to your brand—in good taste.

Stay Tuned-in to Spot Brand-Relevant News

For newsjacking to benefit your brand, you have to stay tuned into the news of the day--locally and globally. Choose trusted news sources to follow, one of which should be industry-specific to your products and services. Additionally, your content needs to be well-written, focused on the right demographic, and make logical use of the news item as a lead-in. If you can achieve that, plus optimize on timing, you could generate a substantial increase in potential customers that your business might not have been able to attract using other marketing methods.

Caveats of Newsjacking

There are drawbacks to newsjacking, including the short shelf life and ultra-specificity of topics. Also, if your newsjacking a topic that is not relevant to your site’s core content, you risk hurting your overall domain authority.

You need to be highly discerning and sensitive to how the public will view the connection you’re making. From a brand point-of-view, you might see something as a lighthearted play-on-words (or circumstances), but it could come across as being in poor-taste, or worse, exploitative.

That’s exactly what happened with Gap and American Apparel after they released campaigns following Hurricane Sandy. No one was “bored during the storm” and thinking about shopping for clothes. And let’s not forget Kenneth Cole’s disastrous tweet, back in 2011, linking the Cairo protests to the release of their new spring collection.

Even if the connection you’re making between a trending story and the brand isn’t a strong one, if you do it right, your audience will be intrigued and you might give them the feel-good chuckle of the day. While there’s not much of a connection between baby-naming and the NFL, the Sidelines blog successfully tied into the birth of Prince William and Kate Middletown’s new baby by posting the NFL’s most royal baby names.

The bottom line: if you are going to incorporate newsjacking as part of your marketing and brand strategy, make sure you are informed about the events and how they may relate to your brand--and be sure the moment is right.

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