SUCCESSFUL

NEWSJACKING

HOW-TO GUIDE
 Successful Newsjacking
HOW-TO GUIDE

Have you ever watched or heard breaking news and within hours it seems that every business
you’ve heard of is Tweeting or posting about it in some clever way? This activity, piggy-backing
on a news event to self-promote, is known as a newsjack, and it often is a very effective way to
generate a buzz.

The way it works is quite simple: when a news story breaks, many people turn to the Internet to
learn more. As people search online for more information about the story of interest, if you have
“jacked” the story, your newsjack is now part of the search results.

When done effectively, a newsjack not only promotes your business locally and worldwide, but
also garners admiration for a successful and clever piece of promotion.

This How-To Guide will explain what newsjacking is, how newsjacking can help promote your busi-
ness, give examples of how newsjacking has been done in the past and provide a detailed action
plan on how to create clever, memorable and appropriate newsjacks that promote your business.

What Is “Newsjacking”?
Newsjacking is the act of exploiting breaking news by injecting your ideas or commentary, usually
in a clever way, into a related social media post. It is ideally done in real-time and when done well,
gets attention that increases the awareness of your brand.

With newsjacking, marketers are making a specific effort to benefit from the popularity of a
specific news item while it is in circulation and getting a lot of attention.

This type of news is less important than your ability to exploit it, as long as the news generates
sufficient interest within your target market. When you execute a newsjack, your target market has
a good chance of seeing it when they take to the Internet to find out more.

2 SUCCESSFUL NEWSJACKING HOW-TO GUIDE

The Benefits
There are many benefits to newsjacking. When executed well, a good jack can even win you
awards. It’s also important to recognize that when done poorly, it can do short- and even long-term
damage to your brand or reputation. This reality isn’t meant to discourage, but as a reminder to
give full consideration to the potential risks and rewards.

Newsjacking is a fun and creative form of promotion. Because newsjacks tend toward the spontan-
eous, clever, humorous or even irreverent, they tend to get noticed when more traditional promo-
tional communications are ignored. They represent a welcome creative challenge for the marketing
team to react quickly and produce something of value.

The idea of newsjacking is not new; however, its popularity has increased over the past decade
thanks to social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. In fact, sometimes a company’s best
response to a rising issue is a newsjack. Showing that your business appreciates the lighter side
will help your customers see you as relatable, instead of part of the “machine.”

Clever newsjacking builds your reputation and recognition, and increases your SEO and traffic
to your website. A successful newsjack requires you to quickly circulate something that is clever
and relatable.

How’s It Has Been Done

Here are some great examples of successful newsjacks that resulted from the 34-minute power
outage that occurred during Super Bowl XLVII:

Oreo cookies
During the Super Bowl blackout, Oreo sent out a Tweet saying “Power out? No problem” and
attached a picture of an Oreo in half a spotlight and the caption “You can still dunk in the dark.”
This was re-tweeted more than 15,000 times by the next day and represents a brilliant news-
jack by Oreo. Because the game was paused for such a long time, people watching the game
naturally took to the Internet to see what was happening. Oreo saw this as an opportunity to
create a clever, memorable brand impression.

3 SUCCESSFUL NEWSJACKING HOW-TO GUIDE

Walgreens
Right after the blackout, Walgreens began tweeting “We sell candles” and “We also sell flashlights.”
These Tweets included the hashtag #SuperBowl, which was a brilliant idea on the part of Walgreens.
Every person who took to Twitter during the 34-minute blackout and searched the #SuperBowl
(looking for answers for the reasons for the darkness) would have seen this Tweet. Walgreens
wasn’t selling anything new, nor were they promoting anything directly related to the Super Bowl,
but in those brief 34 minutes, they were connected to the world’s most popular sporting event. By
taking advantage of the blackout episode, Walgreens received some great visibility.

Audi
Audi produced another Super Bowl favourite. When the lights went out at the Superdome, the
German carmaker seized the opportunity to make a jab at competitor Mercedes-Benz, owner of
the naming rights to the Superdome, and whose logo was frequently pictured during the broad-
cast. Audi’s Tweet “Sending some LED’s to the @MBUSA Superdome right now…” not only was
a successful newsjack, but Audi also tagged Mercedes-Benz USA in the Tweet, ensuring more
followers would see it. In reality, the lights in the Superdome were not provided by Mercedes-
Benz, but Audi saw this as a unique opportunity to make light fun of their competitor and it
worked brilliantly, as it was re-tweeted over 10,000 times in the first 6 hours.

These examples show how following the news and responding quickly can help your business gain
more recognition. Your strategy isn’t to promote something new, but to act quickly to send a clever
reminder that creates visibility for you.

Bottom Line
A quick and clever newsjack can help promote your brand and your business locally and world-
wide. With a team of creative and responsive marketers monitoring news and current events, the
newsjack strategy lets you promote your business at low cost while potentially reaching a very
large audience.

Remember that there is a fine line between a successful newsjack and one that blows up in your
face. By following the steps in the following action plan, you can ensure that you choose appro-
priate content and remain on the cutting edge of newsjacking as a form of promotion.

4 SUCCESSFUL NEWSJACKING HOW-TO GUIDE

 Action Plan
STEP 1 - Follow the News

Track the News to Share

1 Follow the
News the Spotlight

The most effective newsjacks

Create a piggyback on breaking news
2 Process that seizes the attention of
a large audience in a short
period of time. The bigger the
story, the greater the potential
your newsjack will share the
3 Act Quickly spotlight of that story.

Use free tools such as Twitter

and Google alerts to stay
on top of current events and
news as it breaks. Having a

4 Maintain smartphone allows you to

receive push notifications from
news websites or alerts about
news as it happens.

5 Measure

5 SUCCESSFUL NEWSJACKING HOW-TO GUIDE

 Action Plan
STEP 2 - Create a Process

Follow the Set Up a Defined Plan &

1 News Process for Your Newsjack

Have a process defined in

2 Create a
Process
advance for evaluating a story
and creating a newsjack. If
you wait until the right news
story occurs to figure out how
to execute a newsjack, you’ll
probably miss your opportunity.
3 Act Quickly
Your process should include
which creative resources you’ll
use, the channels over which
you’ll emit your newsjack and
procedures for final review and

4 Maintain approval.

Set boundaries for taste and

common sense. Avoid doing
newsjack around natural
disasters or other hard hitting
topics such as suicide, murder,
5 Measure
war, natural disasters, etc.
At the same time, recognize
that any newsjack will likely
offend some. This is why you
need a process in advance
– to consider what these
boundaries are.

6 SUCCESSFUL NEWSJACKING HOW-TO GUIDE

 Action Plan
STEP 3 - Act Quickly

Follow the Be Ready to Start the Story

1 News

When the opportunity arises,

move quickly. One of the
Create a reasons the Oreo Super Bowl
2 Process newsjack was so successful
was because Oreo had a
creative team standing by
during the event, just in case
an opportunity arose they

3 Act Quickly could exploit.

Even though newsjacks are by

definition reactive, it’s possible
to plan proactively, particularly
around certain events that are
known for creating news.
4 Maintain
Move fast. Newsjacks are
successful because occur
while breaking news is still
fresh. There is great value
to being one of the first
5 Measure newsjacks to follow breaking
news. The opportunities
breaking news presents for a
newsjack go stale very quickly.
One goal for your newsjack is
to start the trend, not follow it.

7 SUCCESSFUL NEWSJACKING HOW-TO GUIDE

 Action Plan
STEP 4 - Maintain

Follow the Leverage the Content

1 News Marketing Plan Playbook

Use Demand Metric’s Content

Create a Marketing Plan Playbook to
2 Process build a content marketing plan
that will help you to promote
your content vigorously. This
doesn’t mean sending out one
Tweet.

3 Act Quickly It means communicating across

all social media outlets. Put your
newsjack on your company’s
blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

After you’ve created your news-

4 Maintain jack, the most important thing is
that you follow up with it.

CONTENT MARKETING PLAN

Playbook & Toolkit

5 Measure

Follow this simple step-by-step playbook to develop a content marketing plan

that supports your company’s goals & objectives.

Content Marketing Plan Playbook

VIEW RESOURCE

8 SUCCESSFUL NEWSJACKING HOW-TO GUIDE

 Action Plan
STEP 5 - Measure

Follow the Study Your Metrics to

1 News Adjust According to Your
Audience

Create a Track your content using one of

2 Process our Dashboard Templates. It’s
important to monitor the reac-
tions of the public to determine
if something is being taken out
of context.

3 Act Quickly Monitor your website analytics

before and after the newsjack
to know if your newsjack was
successful. Learn from your
experience producing news-
jacks to have even greater
4 Maintain
success in the future.

5 Measure

Metrics Dashboards

VIEW WEBSITE

9 SUCCESSFUL NEWSJACKING HOW-TO GUIDE

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