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Content Generation Idea: Newsjacking



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Content Generation Idea: Newsjacking

Content Generation Idea: Newsjacking
Newsjacking what's that? Basically, it's the art of taking a hot and popular news story as and when it's released, and then jumping on the "proverbial bandwagon" if you will, and creating your own version of that news story. The only catch is that you have to be quick about it if you want to be one of the first websites picked up by Google for talking about that news story.

However, this can also even be done for really old news stories too. Since things change in the real world, those old news stories can usually be taken and rewritten in a much more up to date way, containing things about the person the story is about that have changed since. And that can make for some great content for your site and some great content for people to read too.

The best thing to do is to find news stories that are related to what your site or blog is about. You can find old or new news stories and do this with them. The new news stories are a bit harder to do as you might not have that much to go on. Although if you look around you can find out a little more about that story from other news sites and the the like (research).

Where as the older news stories are easier to do since there will likely be a lot of them and while they might all mostly say roughly the same thing, they may contain tidbits of information that are different here and there. And that's what you can "collate" which you can use to forge your own news story from them all that is much more informative in nature.

How to Do News Jacking?

  1. Search for a popular keyword in your niche.
  2. Sort by "News" to find only news results
  3. Find a popular/trending news story.
  4. Rewrite that story in your own words
  5. Publish to your site.
  6. Rinse and repeat steps 1-5.
Some Tips to Know when Newsjacking

Now, when it comes to rewriting stories, you can't just go changing the story. We're not creating fake news here! But you can't just copy and paste some news article either! So you'll have to rewrite it in your own words so that the content is unique. You can do that without having to change the story. Think of the 4 Gospels, Mathew, Mark, Luke & John. They all basically tell the same story, but from different perspectives. Sure, some of them have their own unique account of what actually happened. Hey, that's whey they are called "Testaments". But each of them tell the story in their own unique way.

And if you need these "alternative angles" for your news story, simply research and dig a little deeper on that particular news story to find out more about it. And then, you can use all of these together in your news story but in your own words. Content Generation Idea: Newsjacking

And that's basically that for this content generation idea: Newsjacking.

It's simple, it's ethical and it works!

Do you do newsjacking for content generation?

What other ways do you do newsjacking?

Comments

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fishmonk
I have not tried this before. This is because I have a full-time job and my freelancing usually revolves around doing articles for SEO content. I think this method works but may depend on your targeted niche. I find that there's potential in putting our own views on it as well for additional content. On a more local level, I think media sites give faster information as there will be people who post as soon as an unexpected event happens.



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Baburra
You're right. For the most part, I think this method is mostly only beneficial when you can be one of the first on the scene, because it's more like reporting rather than actual editorializing. However, I guess it can be helpful as a supplemental form of content in that you can use it to just boost your visibility in the public and from there hopefully they click on your other content and with that you can maybe get some new audiences that you otherwise may have never gotten if not using this strategy. I agree that it depends on your niche though as not all sites can benefit from people just looking to get the news from a source.



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jpk0007
I think that this is really a very smart and practical idea of generating content which has the potential of becoming a big success if you are able to do it on time. There are so many breaking news stories that are regularly coming out on the daily news that there is an enormous possibility of generating very good ideas for generating quality content from them. if one is quick and smart to pick up the best topic and create a narrative around it then the chances of getting success are very high



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iamawriter
I know exactly what you imply by this. It comes under breaking news that one writes at a place where readers or viewers have no access to the information that is published in the first place. I have done that many a time and have been rewarded with hundreds of views as my post features on the first page of Google Search.



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TheArticulate
One of my friends, who is an administrator for a very popular, locally-focused Facebook page did something that reminds me of newsjacking recently. Maybe not exactly what you mean by this post, but I was really impressed with the speed at which he turned his idea around.

Last week, a university in our town unveiled their newly painted campus water tower, and the city painters had mixed up the letters "E" on "State" and "Y" on "University", so the water tower read: "X Staty Universite". I think the ordeal went onto national news as well, but my friend caught onto the opportunity and developed branded merchandise to sell online the very next day. He had hats, mugs, shirts and socks ready to go that had the misspelled university name on it.

Fantastic work on his part, and he donated 100% of the proceeds to a local organization that needed some financial help.



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Baburra
I agree this is a great way not only on generating ideas and content but also a good amount of traffic. If you are first to report on something, a lot of people will share your link because for the first few minutes you will be one of the only sources of the report. A lot of the time people don't even really care anymore if the site is well known or not as long as they themselves are able to break the news to their own followers or friends, so even if you are not that established yet, you can still take advantage of this strategy.



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Corzhens
Writing about news may not be relevant but is current so it can be interesting to anyone. And if the news is about the niche then that would be doubly relevant to the reader. Like my niche of pets, if I would see a blog about a new technology in spaying or neutering a pet then I would surely read it because it is current and directly related to the niche. News is more for added knowledge.



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Martinsx1
The importance of getting such breaking news is that you get to be assigned to byline in the news, at least that the way a newspaper company I worked for in the past used to operate. It means that you are likely to get assigned some credible locations to cover and gather news as they break. Although I don't work in the newspaper house any more but I enjoyed the working time and experience I got from there because it made me know where to look for when I'm trying to get breaking news.



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Martinsx1
During my days in the university studying mass communication, we were given lost of tasks which news jacking was part of it. Even though we weren't doing anything like posting such news as it breaks on websites, we are tasked with getting a timeline of when we got the new to determine who got the information first.



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jaymish3
I think this is an excellent way or route of content generation. I'm looking for ways as I write this of making money writing content this way. The advantage you have with this is that people are already looking/searching for content using this route. It is easy to jump on the bandwagon without thinking too hard about originality.The biggest worry when you are looking to write content of any type is if you will get an audience. This helps you, because the audience is already there, looking for your information.



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