What is Social Media Newsjacking? – 2019
Has your company embraced the power of newsjacking?
It can be an extremely effective tool to grow your business. Newsjacking and social media newsjacking can increase awareness, engagement, boost traffic, leads, and sales. It’s a great way to keep up with the online trends, showing your customers you understand what is going on in your industry.
Let’s take a look at how you can get in front of potential customers and influencers through social newjacking…
What is Social Media Newsjacking?
Generally speaking, newsjacking is the practice of creating content that leverages news. News can vary from anything like the Super Bowl or Black Friday. It could be something that happened like a blackout or a celebrity story. If it’s news and people care about the news and are searching for it online, then it’s worth exploring how your brand can leverage it.
An example of newsjacking: A management coach writes a post on how to navigate Black Friday safely, sanely, and save big. He/she is leveraging an event that is known nationally and globally while getting his/her word out. This is a great way to jump onto one new story and create your own spin on it.
Social media newsjacking simply shifts the content format to social media. A commonly used example of perfect social media newsjacking is the 2013 Oreo Tweet that leveraged the #blackout to create an ad that said, “Power Out? No problem” with a darkly lit image of an Oreo and the caption, “You can still dunk in the dark.”
Simply speaking, social media newsjacking is creating social media content that leverages news. This news can be a current event, a trending topic, a controversy, or something that’s currently taking place.
Getting Started:
The first step to social media newsjacking is to set up alerts so that you are notified in real-time about what’s going on in the world.
For example: Oreo certainly didn’t plan in advance to create that ad. They saw the hashtag #blackout and jumped on it. Google alerts and social media alerts can help you stay on top of what’s happening in your industry and the world.
The second step is to make sure your profiles are being maintained constantly by a dedicated staff member. The news cycle is rapid, hence why someone attentive needs to be on the account at any given minute. Everything is changing within seconds, hours, and minutes. Finally, make sure your social media newsjacking efforts have a goal and that they fit within the marketing values and goals you’ve created. They need to be aligned for the best results.
