Brands often follow the latest trends that allow them to keep up with what the audience is looking for. One of the ways that brands could make use of trends is Newsjacking.

What is Newsjacking?

Remember when Friends had their reunion show and many brands created posts related to the show? That is a great example of how brands trend jacks the latest news. Newsjacking involves capitalizing on the latest trending topic and creating a campaign centered around a major, well-discussed news item.

Brands often choose to newsjack as compared to creating a new storyline for their campaigns as this strategy allows the brand to piggyback off larger conversations happening online. Based on our experience, the optimal time period to post a News Jacking content is as quickly as possible, preferably within 12 hours of the news being posted.

The scope of newsjacking has evolved tremendously over the years, as taboo marketing topics such as politics are now commonly used in newsjacking – such as The East Coast Plan and the Fly on Mike Pence during Vice-Presidential Debate 2020. With a broader scope for newsjacking, many brands are more willing to hop onto this trend which amplified the volume of the phenomenon.

Now you must be thinking, “How do I get started” or “Let me hop onto Newsjacking”. But before you decide on anything, you must evaluate whether newsjacking would benefit your brand.

How do you decide if newsjacking is beneficial for your brand?

Firstly, consider whether your industry is receptive towards the trend of Newsjacking and the news that you might be using. Is your audience very trend-driven? If they are not, then maybe Newsjacking isn’t the way to go.

Secondly, consider how long trends stay in your industry. For you to put in resources to put out the new trends only for your audiences to be interested in a very short period, it might indicate that you may put these resources better in use elsewhere.

Lastly, you have to think about your audience. Does the content of the trend appeal to them? There are many times that marketers hop onto a trend for short-term successes, such as a rise in search engine optimization results and a higher number of clicks. But these results are temporary. Eventually, the hype of the trend will die down and the real results of the newsjacking will be revealed. Will your audience learn useful information from it, or will they find it creative in relating industry information with a popular piece of content?

After evaluating, hop onto the Newsjacking bandwagon!

Be ready to capitalize on the latest trends and news through social media listening. Within hours of the latest newsjacking trend, most brands would have pushed out content relating to it. Your brand wants to be at the forefront of this trend to capitalize on a larger group of audience.

One of our brands, Watsons, has been actively newsjacking and creating content from it. Just last month, Spotify launched their personalized playlist for their users. The launch of this playlist generated plenty of buzz surrounding it, which led to many media outlets such as Mothership and 9gag capitalizing on it to create content. As a lifestyle brand, Watson’s audiences are highly receptive to newsjacking content, leading to them adapting this strategy and proving successful. They posted their very own Watson’s Artist “Hair” Pair adopting the same template as the Spotify playlist and their audience is generally very receptive to the post. Also, they caught on the Tennessee-Singapore news and their post did exceptionally well among their audiences.

At Mashwire, we help our clients with the latest newsjack trends. Want to hop onto the bandwagon? Contact us now!