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· 18 Jun 2021

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What is newsjacking and how to apply it?

If you want to succeed with your marketing strategy, you cannot be left behind. You have to stay up to date, find out what is happening around you and translate it into your actions.

Has something important happened in your sector? Or in a related sector? Or perhaps in any sector, and anywhere. Take advantage of it to create content! That's what newsjacking is all about. Doesn't it ring a bell? Do you want to know how it can benefit your brand? Well, keep reading ...

The keys to newsjacking

Hubspot defines newsjacking as the practice of capitalizing on the popularity of a news item to amplify its sales and marketing success. Apparently, the term became popular thanks to a book written by David Meerman Scott, in which he wrote about this very effective technique for brands.

The world where you can buy app reviews android, is full of news, constantly emerging in all areas. According to Hubspot, marketers have unique opportunities to benefit your business. If something is popular, take advantage of it to gain popularity for your brand. That is what this technique is all about.

Now, when applying newsjacking you must bear in mind that fame is sometimes momentary and that something that is popular today may stop being so tomorrow. It may happen that the effort you invest in reaching certain popularity does not correspond to how long that popularity remains.

That is why it is important to take advantage of the exact moment when people talk about the event in question and not miss the opportunity, because when it is too late, it will not have the same effect.

Newsjacking can be translated as “news hijacking”. It is about taking advantage of news events outside your brand (and not necessarily related to it) to increase popularity with actions related to or based on that news that causes a stir.

Hubspot gives as an example one of the actions of the London fire brigade. When the news broke that Kate Winslet had saved her mother-in-law from a fire that started in the house where they were staying, London firefighters took the opportunity to invite Kate to their training center to become one of them. Thus, simply by taking advantage of the opportune moment, they managed to considerably increase the traffic to their website and for a multitude of media to echo the news. That performance was an example of good use of newsjacking.

How to benefit from newsjacking?
To be able to carry out one of these newsjacking strategies and, above all, to do it effectively, you must take into account the keys to the process:

Stay tuned
Hubspot recommends constantly monitoring the news. Now, doing it manually could become an eternal process, so he recommends automating this monitoring through a FEED RSS (a tool that allows you to sort information from a multitude of websites and blogs that publish content daily).

You should remain attentive to news related to the sector in which your brand operates, in sectors related to it, and in the rest of the world, in case a profitable opportunity could arise. Of course, you cannot forget about social networks and all the stories that are created around them through influencers, trends, and viral content.

         2. Check the keywords and their searches
It will not be enough to find a story from which to start writing something. Before that you will have to dedicate time and effort to investigate what the search volume has been around that story and the keywords that identify it. Google will positively value the use of keywords and will position your brand better in search engines if you use the words that users have used to find information related to the story that interests you.

         3. Find out about the topic you want to write about
First and foremost: feed your information with reliable sources. Go to the main source and investigate the content generated around it. According to Hubspot, this is important to maintain originality and credibility.

Make sure you are not doing something that someone else just did. You will stop being original and not only that, it will appear that you are copying. Don't jump into creating content without testing the waters first.

         4. Be the first, but doing things right
It is essential in the practice of newsjacking to arrive first. Probably, if it is big news that you want to take advantage of, there will be many other brands trying to do something similar. The speed of your actions is essential. Now, doing things quickly and badly leads to guaranteed failure.

Think of it this way: we don't have time to get overly perfectionists, but we need to focus on reviewing what we post and getting it right. Balances the balance between speed and quality.

         5. Make a difference
Perhaps when you want to take advantage of a news item, it has already been exploited in various ways. This does not mean that there is not a profitable opportunity left for your brand. Have they already told the story you wanted to tell? Flip it over, add something different, or just make things better. Many ideas arise from improving the ideas of others. Differentiate yourself from the rest and, above all, do something that makes users prefer your story.

         6. Get them to see and talk about your story
Once the content is released, we need the public to see it. Post it on your social networks, launch press releases, contact journalists directly, and try to adjust the content so that it is easy to share and can go viral.
Remember that the news you have used is on everyone's lips, so it will be easy to generate interest around it if you do it correctly. If your story is good, the media and other users will echo it.

Tips for applying newsjacking correctly
So that you can apply newsjacking effectively, here are some tips that you can take into account:

> Timing is of the essence
David Meerman Scott was in charge of developing a graph that established the perfect time to apply newsjacking and bring to light that story and ideas from a news item. Doing it when the news is no longer current loses its meaning and will not have the desired effect.

> Try to adjust to your buyer persona
When choosing news of interest, you must make sure that your buyer persona is also interested in them. At the end of the day, it is that target audience that you want to approach and with whom you hope your story will triumph.

> Do not choose topics that can generate controversy
Before choosing a news item and writing a story, ask yourself some questions: is it a sensitive topic? Can it harm any group? Avoid, for example, that the choice of your topic positions you politically or ideologically. In this sense, the more neutral the object to be treated, the better.

You already know what it is and what its advantages are. Now, start putting your efforts into staying on top of what's going on around you, look for the hot topics, and start creating content from them. What are you waiting for to start succeeding from newsjacking?



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