Reimagining Newsjacking for a New Era of Journalism and Media Relations
By Paolo Ramos and Charlie O’Toole for PRNews
As you may have observed over the last few years, the media landscape is evolving quickly, which requires public relations pros to rethink earned media strategies to continue providing value to journalists. With editorial teams shrinking across the board, opportunities to land news coverage—let alone thought leadership pieces—are fewer and further between.
When considering ways to pivot your strategy, “newsjacking” is an excellent way to develop relationships with reporters and contribute to media market share. Investing time in this process increases opportunities for relevant, high-quality earned media results. This is because newsjacking helps create a real-time, mutually beneficial relationship between yourself and the reporter, as you’re providing them with a credible third-party resource or commentary that they can use right away, not something they have to take time investigating.
Additionally, it helps build your spokesperson or organization as a go-to resource for the media, which means a reporter may be more receptive to reviewing future, proactive topics from your organization.
Implementing a Newsjacking Strategy: A Step-by-Step Guide
- When developing a successful newsjacking strategy, it’s crucial to identify and align your brand with relevant, larger news cycles. For example, if you are in the adtech space, you may want to follow developments from major advertising platforms like Meta, Google, and, increasingly, TikTok.
- From there, you should work with your agency to align on key industry terms and set up various alerts to stay ahead of breaking news.
- Once a relevant story breaks, work with your communications team to discuss your organization’s point of view and how this POV contributes a unique position or perspective to the narrative.
- Oh, and by the way, you’ll need to ensure all of this happens before lunch ;).
- Once you have established the narrative, quickly identify a target list of reporters who may be planning to cover the news.
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