We recently talked about newsjacking as an alternative to getting your story listed on Google News. Newsjacking, or playing off of a hot news topic in your own content, can do more for your content than snag the attention of Google News.
Marketing strategist and author David Meerman Scott, who coined the term newsjacking, describes it as: “the process by which you inject ideas or angles into breaking news, in real-time, in order to generate media coverage for yourself or your business.”
Newsjacking improves brand reputation, drives traffic, generates sales leads, and yields tremendous SEO benefits.
The trend took off in 2013 when Oreo published one little Tweet during a blackout at the 2013 SuperBowl. “Power out? No problem. You can still dunk in the dark.” They spun professional sports snafu into a clever promotion that landed Oreo more than 15,880 retweets.
Now, marketers consider newsjacking a useful tool in their SEO arsenal. Here are a few tips to make the technique work for you.
Make sure the story relates to your business.
A company in the health and fitness sector could tie an article around the upcoming Summer Olympic Games. A construction company could build a story around a regional storm. Avoid natural disasters other tragic events, however. You don’t want your business to be seen as taking advantage of a tragedy.
Assess the data.
Use analytics tools from Google and Hubspot to check keyword search volume for words and phrases related to a hot topic. The newsjacked story may rank highly with Google if published quickly, but if you include keyword variations with the highest search volume, you get an easy SEO boost. As Hubspot explains, “what is the Google Panda update” yielded a global monthly search of 14,800, while “Google Panda update explanation” yielded a big fat zero. This is the kind of information you need to know when writing your news article.
Act fast.
Think like a daily news reporter. Publish your content as quickly as possible so that news organizations can find it. In our information-saturated market, today it will be clever. Tomorrow it will be old news.
Use multiple online marketing channels.
For especially newsworthy events, such as the Olympics, you can put a snippet of your content on the home page. You could also create a landing page where viewers would provide an email address to learn more. For fleeting events, such as a fire or sensational celebrity news, you can publish on your blog.
Share liberally.
Share liberally and often on social media using trending hashtags. Promote frequently when a news story first breaks. Join conversations related to the topic and respond to comments. Also, don’t forget to send a copy of your article to local journalists and bloggers. They might be looking for your very story, which will build exposure for your brand and bring SEO benefits galore.
Staying on top of breaking news (Google Alerts, RSS feeds, and Twitter can help with this) and creating content around that news—fast—gives you one more way to boost SEO as well as attract attention (aka leads and sales) from a new audience.
How has newsjacking helped your SEO?