Newsjacking may be something new to you or not, by the end of this article you’re going to start using it as a guest blogging technique for your business. You will often hear that link building as a way of boosting visibility of your website is all but dead and that Google is going to come down on anyone doing it like a ton of bricks any day now.
In reality, however, links leading to it will always be the most important (or at least in Top 3) of how relevant a website is and how reputable people consider it to be. The rules of the game will continue to change and building links will have to be more and more natural, but the way things are looking now, link building is here to stay.
Guest Blogging 101
One of the most common ways of link building has for quite some time been guest blogging, the kind of which is happening in this article (more precisely, the author’s bio section), for that matter. In order to promote one’s website, blog or any other type of online presence, you write quality content for someone else’s website and they give back by letting the author link to their website, blog, etc.
In today’s overpopulated and oversaturated world of online content, however, coming up with content that someone (important) will be interested in is easier said and done. Unless one is a top expert in their field and they have insights other people do not, it is essential to hone one’s skills and be ready to think and write outside the box in order to make one’s content alluring enough.
Which brings us to the matter of newsjacking.
The Definition
We know who made newsjacking a big thing; there can be no doubt about that. It was David Meerman Scott in his book Newsjacking: How to Inject Your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage. It’s not the shortest and the most elegant of titles, but it does more or less give us the definition of the term and the technique.
It comes down to identifying a fascinating piece of news that is just about to explode, perhaps even after the explosion has taken place if one is quick enough, and use it to promote one’s content. It does not have to be content, of course, but for the purposes of this article, we will concentrate on this type of newsjacking.
It would probably be a good idea to illustrate newsjacking with a hypothetical example. One of the biggest current stories in the startup world has for quite some time been a medical tech startup by the name of Theranos which was valued at $9 billion at one point and grew into a big company. They promised the world to its investors and the general public alike, only to end up being subjected to probes about the way in which they (mis)represented their findings and results and so on.
A law firm that works with startups could write up a detailed analysis of the Theranos case and include a link to their website. The story is a current one, they can provide a ton of insight into the story and it is a combination that very few websites would refuse. Even the biggest ones.
Sometimes content creators also use a particularly trendy piece of popular media and piggyback on it in order to make their content more interesting and shareable. This can include current movie hits, pop artists or TV shows. Most people will consider this to be newsjacking too.
How to Approach Newsjacking
There is a couple of way in which one can approach this. There is the natural way where one follows a certain industry and is in the loop. When something impactful happens in the industry, this someone knows exactly what to do with it, how to give it a new angle, a unique opinion and so on. Another way is to go scouring for trending topics and try to work in a link to their website.
Of course, there are also certain stories that are so huge one simply has to jump on the bandwagon. This year, for example, it is safe to say that the 2016 US presidential elections are such a story. People are even getting involved in the primaries, and not just Americans. They are so big, even Google got involved. The elections spawned a bottomless pit of content, sometimes great, sometimes less great, but one thing is for sure. People are reading it.
The Trickiness of Newsjacking
Newsjacking is tricky, however. For one, the person doing it needs to be very quick. Once the story gets old, the content revolving around it becomes stale and, why not say it, lame. For example, jumping on the aforementioned Theranos story in three months is going to be too late. Some news becomes stale even faster.
It can also be challenging to reel in the biggest fish simply because the biggest websites will have their own people working on the story. If this happens, the newsjacker can offer a novel opinion or insight into the stuff surrounding that particular piece of news.
Finally, there is the matter of decorum. In other words, doing newsjacking does not allow one to be a jerk. For exampling, writing something like What Plumbers can Learn from Brussels Bombings in order to promote one’s plumbing business is not cool. It is disgusting.
Oh, and also, please no more What A Particularly Popular TV Show (khmgameofthroneskhm) has Taught us About X articles. It’s been done and redone and overdone and overdone some more. Yes, there are many lessons to be learned from this particularly popular TV show.
Closing Word
While newsjacking can be difficult to do the right way, hitting that sweet spot of timely + relevant + natural + decent, it is a very democratic way to get your content published. It allows anyone who knows what they are doing to get their content on some really influential websites.
And that is a nice thing.
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