There is much to like about the newsjacking definition for any content creator. The newsjacking, coined by marketer David Meerman Scott, gives everyone helpful insight on the breaking news, as it receives widely dispersed media and public interest.
When well implemented, a brand that springs to trend topics will benefit from comprehensive press coverage and increased social media engagement. A timely blog post or media placement will drive your website traffic and positively affect your brand perception. But an attempt to produce timely information will drop flat if performed incorrectly.
As tenting as it is to hop on a trend, especially one which gains momentum fast, efficient newsjacking demands incredible patience and selectivity. Monitor the subjects that matter most to your brand and make sure that you have the resources to move quickly. While you cannot prepare for a theme pattern, you can set up your team to build if the right opportunity arises.
Fail to prepare and prepare to fail
As cliché as the term is, such processes help ensure that you can comment on trending subjects before they flicker away.
First of all, have you the instruments and systems in place to track trend topics over time? You can keep an eye on real-time developments and dive deeper into online discussions using resources such as Google Trends and social listening. With Google Trends, for instance, you’ll be able to discover what people around the world are looking for and the top search words.
The issue of what you do next once you recognize the pattern your company will like to use as an inspiration for content. Make sure you answer the following questions before you begin creating and that every newsjacking opportunity goes smoothly:
- What is your specific point of view about this subject concerning your brand?
- Who needs to be looped into the conversation?
- Which projects can you pause or prioritize to start with a timely subject?
- Who will lead in building a blog or social media content and have the ability to do so?
- If you’re pitching media, do you have a thought leader who can provide commentary?
One of the worst feelings is that you have a timely chance to fall off as you could not prioritize a new project or get the creative assets you needed in time. When your brand’s right trend to newsjack appears and threats to your daily workflows can only be minimized with answers to these questions.
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Wait for the “right fit.”
I stated before, but it is worth it to be careful and look for topics that make sense for your brand. It can make you the most prominent trends of the time.
While in Sprout, we do not often speak, we have succeeded with a trend with a business you have recently seen in the news: GameStop.
A few weeks ago, when its shares rose in 24 hours, the electronics dealer made headlines. The marketing team from Sprout Social saw this as an opportunity to comment on the social events that we saw in the wake of the growing conversation around GameStop. In Sprout, our senior marketing and communications manager developed a listening GameStop theme and focused on GME inventory patterns and social conversations with our investor relations manager.
The resulting report released one day after GameStop’s stock price went up to three numbers and received a 3.456% increase in page views than a standard 24-hour update. After it was threaded on a viral tweet that explained GameStop’s phenomenon, the article got a further boost and has since continued to gain momentum. We saw a bump in social views and many media opportunities in addition to the rise in blog traffic.
We chose to follow the GameStop story and why it succeeded for our brand for two key reasons:
- The GameStop news started on social: While Sprout does not deal with video games or financial markets, our social media experience lies at the start of the GameStop saga. Also, much talk on Twitter and Reddit, two sites that can be analyzed using Sprout’s Advanced Listening product, surrounding GameStop’s meteoric rise has taken place. With additional input from our investor relations managers, we will appreciate our readers’ social listening importance in the investment community and show how they can use social data.
- Sprout had unique data to share: Offer us advanced listening by Sprout to get more insights such as message volume and feeling to add color to our commentary. The discussion with GameStop began socially. We monitored the debate’s evolution over time and gave the brands and financial institutions who wanted to use social data to make their predictions. We shared data that the average person had no access to and distinguished our content from other blog posts written during the same timeframe.
It’s a good indication that this trending subject might not be for you if you are hitting an angle or trying to figure out where your brand suits the more comprehensive discussion. Remember, it’s just the things that make more sense for your brand. You shouldn’t think you need every chance to get news.
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Ready to move at a moment’s notice
Timely content is a lot to like. If it is handled properly, a trendsetting issue will raise awareness of your brand, increase web traffic and even affect your brand’s public image.
However, it would help if you had an attack strategy like any other marketing technique to ensure that your newsjacking attempt does succeed and does not undermine your other job goals. Be patient, choose what themes you need to jump on, and be prepared to act at the moment. You can transform any trending subject into a news jacket for your brand with the right tools and processes.