Last week your social media feed probably looked like a big bag of confetti exploded all over it. With the ruling of same-sex marriage as a legal right, America hoorahed both on the street and online. On June 26, over 10 million tweets had been posted about the Supreme Court case. And it wasn’t just your friends posting pictures at parades in L.A. or New York City, but also over 350 companies across the nation joining the virtual party.
You saw tweets like...
We’re on board. Diversity strengthens us all & today we celebrate #MarriageEquality & the landmark #SCOTUS decision. pic.twitter.com/gqej2xMzIU
— American Airlines (@AmericanAir) June 26, 2015
and
And now, no one can tell you otherwise. #LoveWins pic.twitter.com/769Rz8DO7C
— Cheerios (@cheerios) June 26, 2015
This has probably been one of the largest displays of what inbound marketers call 'newsjacking' in the past few years. What is newsjacking? you may wonder. Corey Eridon of HubSpot defines it as “the practice of capitalizing on the popularity of a news story to amplify your sales and marketing success.” While the term newsjacking may carry a negative aura with it, it’s in fact a great practice for companies big and small to stay up-to-date with current news and show support for particular causes. It is not only a way to improve your SEO, but also to define your brand and identify with your customers all at once.
For those unfamiliar with this real-time marketing strategy, here are a few pointers.
1) Timing
Waiting for the Right Event
While many brands like Honda and Charmin have successfully mastered this art, other brands have failed because of their capitalistic-driven motives. Don’t just pounce on every piece of popular news that you see; instead, wait until you find one that aligns with your company’s mission. Customers will see right through the slightest effort to stretch a current event so that it is relevant to your company’s vision and values. The key word here is vision. Tide and Oreos have little to do with football, but they managed to sympathize with fans when a blackout occurred at Super Bowl XLVII.
Power out? No problem. pic.twitter.com/dnQ7pOgC
— Oreo Cookie (@Oreo) February 4, 2013
Being Timely
Of course these tweets and Instagram posts don’t mean much if they aren’t posted in a timely manner. “The popularity dies down pretty quickly—perhaps in hours, usually in days, if you're lucky, in weeks,” says Eridon. Make sure you stay up-to-date with news. An easy way to do this is to follow news sources on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, or use a news source’s app on your smartphone. Once you have the app downloaded you can opt to get alerts or push notifications on your screen for major events. HubSpot suggests setting up an RSS feed for specific news sources and has a social media monitoring tool of their own as well.
2) Content
Above all, even timeliness, accuracy of content is the most important. While you want to post before the hype dies down, sharing false or unoriginal content can backfire. Your company can lose credibility and look messy or inattentive to detail. Conduct thorough research beforehand by tracking down the original source and seeing what others have posted about the matter. Make sure your content is fresh and shareable. Remember that hundreds of thousands of people, even millions can see this one short post. Once you post something online, there’s no taking it back. Don’t be the Urban Outfitters of an event who posted during Hurricane Sandy, “This storm blows, (but free shipping doesn’t!)”
3) Sharing
Once you have your content prepared it’s all about spreading it. Utilize all social media platforms and integrate relevant and specific hashtags; for example, #LoveWins seemed to be the prevailing hashtag of last week’s ruling. You can find trending hashtags on Twitter on the left hand side of the home page.
Newsjacking is a great strategy for your company to gain visibility, but remember to plan thoroughly before throwing together a post and sending it out to the millions of web users out there!
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