The world does not stand still and everything is constantly changing. If earlier businessmen were thinking about how to make a banner and design business cards, now they are actively developing on the Internet. Especially since there are plenty of tools to popularize brands.
Today we will talk about another effective way to engage the audience and promote your services/ products – newsjacking. This is a guerrilla marketing technique that is suitable for any kind of business. It is directly related to the news. And there is a news background for absolutely every business. The main point is only to discover it and use it for your marketing campaign. The concept of newsjacking is not new. It has long been used in various companies, but many people do not even realize about such a great way to advertise their business. Let’s take a closer look at the concept of newsjacking, how it works, and its main methods.
In Simple Words on the Essence of Newsjacking
To begin with, newsjacking involves the use of breaking news to raise your own brand awareness, increase appeals for services, and, as a result, the level of sales. It is one of the basic types of guerrilla marketing, in which product promotion is fully connected to internal or external newsworthy events and current trends.
The method is based on observing the emergence of a trend before anyone else and thus planning an advertising campaign that allows you to promote your own product. In this case, the product appears as if in the shadow of the situation that caught everyone’s attention. Some people call newsjacking true parasitism in marketing. But with its help, you can greatly increase your sales over the background of another event.
On the whole, it is the easiest way to catch a wave of hype and profit from it for your business. If marketers succeed in catching the key moment of fresh news, then they can “control” the whole world and promote their business to incredible scales.
How Does Newsjacking Work?
Newsjacking, as a content marketing technology, allows you to create a new marketing campaign based on the popularity of a major event. And really, great newsjacking isn’t just about taking a breaking news story and trying to connect it to your industry.
You need to actively follow the news in your industry or subscribe to several news resources to be near the beginning of a trend. The newsworthy event must have a connection to your brand, otherwise, the idea will fail and the audience will sense something is wrong. Here there is no place for direct advertising. Users will remember your product on their own if it has a relationship to the news. That is, your brand awareness will increase in the shadow of the trend’s popularity.
Newsjacking has several benefits:
- increased brand awareness,
- the rapid growth of traffic,
- increase in the position of the website in search engines,
- good brand reputation,
- increased traffic from social networks,
- higher brand recognition,
- additional conversions.
How to Use Newsjacking?
There are several proven ways to use this technique. Among them are::
Following the news
To make this task easier, subscribe to the most popular news resources in your industry and related ones. Make sure your target audience reads the news there too because otherwise, the newsworthy event won’t be a hot topic for your customers. Keeping up with the news is essential because newsjacking will only work effectively if you can connect your product with really relevant news that everyone has heard about. That’s why you need to look at online resources that publish information about your company’s field of activity every day.
No fakes
It is also necessary to check all news before publishing, because fakes may be everywhere. And any audience is very demanding. Your followers will begin to treat you with caution, and your haters can even make a scandal out of it.
Test of popularity
While speed does matter, pay attention to search queries. Find out how popular different queries are.
An organic mix of brand and news
Use news that is truly interesting to your audience and don’t tweak it to fit your brand. The connection should be obvious, or you’ll have to come up with excuses later.
Use only good news
Hyping on something sad and bad won’t make you the king of marketing. Don’t try to profit from speculating on negative news. Forget about tragedies and disasters. Your audience comes to you for positive news.
Top 4 Newsjacking Techniques
You need to choose the best strategy in order to handle the news correctly. Nowadays, there are 4 main methods of newsjacking.
Direct stories
When you speculate on a hot topic, this is a sure way to stay first and attract more traffic. Here you just have to get the story from the source and write most of it. If you are the first one to tell the news, you will be referenced and cited.
It is also the most difficult way of newsjacking because you have to constantly monitor the Internet to find relevant material before it occurs, and then publish it ahead of others. To publish this type of news, you need to have a large and nimble team of copywriters constantly tracking what’s going on.
Delayed reporting
Appearing hours or days after an event, a delayed report gives a detailed overview of what happened, which is very convenient for readers. This type of news feed has an important feature because you can’t predict an event, but you may present it correctly, offering your perspective on the news. This marketing technique is a great way to create content quickly, but it must remain valuable and useful to your target audience.
Late analysis
You may not have enough time to analyze an issue and present it from all angles and viewpoints, but you have your own clear position on what is happening which is newsworthy. Just like the second type of newsjacking, this method of reporting is better published soon after the event. But instead of repeating new details about what happened, you analyze it.
This strategy is suitable for businesses of all sizes that can not only monitor what is going on but also provide analysis and offer something of their own.
Late in-depth analysis
If you even missed the first news wave, and the initial methods do not suit you, then do not despair, because there is an in-depth analysis.
Instead of writing about an ongoing or current event right away, you can wait a few days or even weeks to cover the issue from the desired perspective. In this type of newsjacking, you don’t have to worry about timeliness, but rather worry about content that is interesting and relevant to your target audience.
This newsjacking method is suitable for a small team that doesn’t have enough time to control everything that’s happening, but you may see what interesting news is coming out. So, you can write about it from your perspective later on, if it’s worth it.
Let’s the Bottom Line
Newsjacking is a great way to draw attention to your products, services, company, and business in general. Despite the many ways to work with it, it remains a less popular type of marketing. But if you want to make the most of it to promote your business, then it is time to start!
