If You Want to Revive Media Coverage for Your Business or Personal Brand, You can have It in Three Possible Ways:
- Pitch your unique ideas directly to the top-notch journalists
- Give proper response to journalists’ requests by using the #journorequesthashtag or via tools like Response Source
- Try checking newsjacking to enjoy a heap of media coverage for your brand
What is Newsjacking Supposed to Mean?
In a single sentence, if you have to describe the term newsjacking, it would simply mean the idea of piggybacking the trending stories of current news.
It all depends on what news is trending right now across the internet. Whether it’s a controversial political matter, an exciting viral video, or a nasty picture that seized the attention of the netizens, anything can be the part of newsjacking. Even if it’s not quite similar to the type of industry you are handling right now, still it could bring a bag of fortune for your business and press release distribution companies. It gives you maximum opportunity to portray a funny angle and take a share of their hard-earned success; you just have to be real quick at this game.
There’s a huge competition among thousands of publications for taking the winning prize of worthwhile news stories. Publications always look for a proper gap and within a blink of an eye, the fastest in the race gets to break a major story that can create immense buzz. It is like the chain of rhythms that never pauses. It begins with the initial impetus to break a good story and it gets carry forwarded over time with more information to add into the newsrooms. Meanwhile, the news is shared frequently over Twitter, Facebook, and other social platforms until it becomes popular. Sometimes a significant news story can promulgate with time and gets all the attention for weeks.
Here’s a small graph added below so that you can understand the different phases of a news story (at its peak and its fall).
Giving Examples of the New Thing- Newsjacking
There are a few agencies that perform splendid work with newsjacking. The marketing teams have to be very quick to pick out trending news stories as early as possible.
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Piggate:
Paddy Power is one of the pioneers of newsjacking system. Once they got the balls rolling with #piggate. Here goes the backdrop for the people who don’t know the story. According to numerous sources of media, David Cameron, the UK’s Prime Minister was held with the accusation that he had once “inserted a private part of his anatomy” into the sliced head of a roasted pig while he was at an infamous Oxford University dining club.
With the viral story, Paddy Power takes the advantage of being quick to respond by producing a number of double entendre, jokes, and funny displays through gifs and spread it all across social media.
Why Monitoring is an Important aspect of Newjacking?
With the mentioned examples you might get interested to know the formula to be spot on at newsjacking. The only thing that matters the most is to keep your eyes on the trends. Constantly monitor different sources of information that you can scuff from media and finish it before anyone. That means you have to be fast and quirky at the same time. Spot the trending stories and come up with something at its early stage. It’s even possible that the news you are reading while idly sitting on a bus is actually an old story that found popularity over time.
You must not forget one thing; you are not the only one who is digging up for piggybacking off the story. Content marketers, PR experts of a company, and some ordinary people also share the same knack. They all want to take a bite from the viral news and take advantage.
You can spot new trends with free tools. These will assist you in monitoring and make yourself ready to strike in the nick of time.
Improving your timing sense is all it takes to become skilled at newsjacking.
Tools that You can Use to Monitor Up-To-The-Minute Stories:
- If you are familiar with how Twitter works, you can find the notification tab on the Twitter dashboard. You will find a section where you can get all the latest trends in your nearby localities. Otherwise, the general public will guide you with a large pull of new stories that can come in handy. The hashtag used content is picked up by the journalists as well.
- TrendSpottr is a unique app that transforms social media buzz into a potential story from Facebook and Twitter, giving you time to time signal to ease your monitoring time consumption.
- Reddit can be an exclusive place to find the updates for your newsjacking. Most of the things you read on this platform become the trendsetting news for tomorrow.
- Google trends can be followed as well, with many tabs to choose from. Related news stories get highlighted, and you can set your own preferences as well.
How to help Yourself with Newsjack in 2020?
1. Perfect Timing:
There’s a saying- strike while the iron is hot; it is quite relevant when you are dealing with newsjacking. You have to find a news story when it is still fresh on the internet. Wait for the trending stories to come up with your bated breath so that you can get your hands on them as early as possible.
Follow as many publications as you can and be ready for your work once you spot your element of work.
2. Map Your Plans:
Newsjacking is something you can plan beforehand with some savvy tricks. You are going to hear about countless important stuff going on around you. You can try to map it out, pre-plan it by analyzing the following trends, and be the first one to execute with novel ideas.
It takes endless scrolling to find a valuable piece of content on the internet. You can use online event calendars such as Earth Calendar or Branded3’s. Subscribing such media planners will keep you ahead in the race.
Know your industry very well; the deeper you are involved in its roots, the more you will capture information from your known sources.
3. Constant Efforts:
You can’t give up once you are done with posting updates. Making simple posts on social media isn’t enough. Congratulating the newborn babies on their official pages doesn’t call newsjacking. Keep on making fresh content on the trending story with uncanny senses of humor, discovering the fun and interesting side of your brand.
