MBA1476 How To Use Newsjacking to Promote Your Business

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Hey O welcome to the Hundred Dollar RMBA Show. Because business is never usual. That's why we deliver daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online. And in today's episode you'll learn how you can use newsjacking to promote your business and your products. Newsjacking is a technique in marketing that's been around for years and what this means is having your ear to the ground to what major news events that are going on that are trending. This is really, really powerful, especially in today's day with social media. The trick is you're tying a major news event with your business or product. I'm going to give you several examples in today's episod. But for example, back in 2012 when President Obama was running for reelection on his website, he was using an opt in page, a lead capture page and a lead capture software on the market. Piggybacked on the fact that Obama's running for reelection. He's all over the news. So the software company said, hey, learn the strategies of how Obama is gaining a lot of followers for re election and apply it to your business. And they basically ran a campaign where they had a short video explaining why that page converted so well as an opt in. Now even though Obama wasn't using that software, that software allows you to do the same thing Obama did and capture leads and they were able to hashtag this campaign with Actually, Obama campaign and Obama and Obama reelection. Because the video was talking about that and explaining how you could do the same for your business. I'm going to give you more and more examples for different products, for different scenarios, for different events that you can use this newsjacking technique. It's going to take a little creativity, but it's going to give you the exposure you need. Can't wait to get into this one. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Like I mentioned, newsjacking has been around for decades, but it's even more powerful with social media. Now. A lot of people think, well, okay, there's a current event happening. I'm going to tie that current event with my product or business. Is that really going to get me the leads and sales and exposure in itself, maybe not as effective as you like it to be. But what happens is that your campaign gets picked up by other publications. They notice, hey, you're talking about this topic that's popular and you're tying it into something else that's pretty creative. So you get re syndicated, you get mentioned in major publications and websites, you get backlinks. People share this with their followers on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and everywhere else. So here's newsjacking in a step by step format. Step one is you have to make sure you choose a current event, something that's going on and is very, very hot, that's trending in today's age. Now you might be thinking, how do I plan this all out if it's just happening all right now? Well, there's a lot of events that happen in the world that are reoccurring sporting events like the World Series or the NBA Finals or the NCAA Final Four presidential elections. Like I mentioned, this happens like clockwork. We know exactly when it's going to happen. Significant holidays or anniversaries of something. And of course, there are moments where you don't know what's going to happen, but it's a choice between two options. For example, a health and fitness coach used this newsjacking technique during the first year the Golden State warriors went to the NBA Finals against the Cleveland Cavaliers. He didn't know if Cleveland's going to win or Golden State, but he knew the best players on each team. So he knew Steph Curry's at Golden State. He knew that LeBron James is in Cleveland. He also knows that they both use box jumping as a part of their conditioning technique when they conditioned themselves in the off season. So they wrote articles and Created materials. Regardless if Cleveland won or Golden State won, Golden State did win. And they ran a campaign where they said, use the same techniques that NBA champion Steph Curry uses in the off season to condition his body to be ready to be a champion. So everybody that's kind of interested in sport and health and fitness and basketball, and they're checking out Steph Curry, they're searching Steph Curry, they're seeing, you know, NBA champions trending, this article will show up, this campaign will show up. And it's ties in perfectly because, hey, people would be interested in that content. And all the person is doing here is piggybacking on a trending topic. So step by step, you're going to choose an event, you're going to build out a campaign that's relevant and something that they can consume to content, video and opt in that they will enjoy and get out of. Because you're basically leveraging that audience. The audience that would be interested in that topic would be interested in your products and services. Let's say, for example, you have an online course that teaches people how to be a standup comic, how to get into comedy, and how to learn how to put a set together. When Netflix releases a brand new comedy special, that's going to be big, whether it's a Dave Chappelle or Kevin Hart, as soon as it gets released, people are talking about it the next day. Did you watch it? Was it amazing? This is when you can newsjack and say, learn the three techniques that Dave Chappelle uses in the first five minutes of his set to guarantee laughs and have a strong start to your comedy routine. And you can even reference the special. So people are talking about that special and you're taking that juice, that momentum and saying, hey, come over here because I can show you something that is going to help you that's relevant to this news piece. The point here is that you don't have to create traffic, but you have to utilize existing traffic that people are in the middle of. You want to get inside of that and say, hey, everybody talking about this, I got something that you might be interested in. Don't be afraid to also use this. Controversial topics are very, very viral. You don't have to take a stand, but you can dissect a certain situation that's controversial and relate it back to what you can teach them. You can show, you know, love her or hate him or love her or hate her. These are some things that they did. Let me show you how it worked and how it could work for you. Another subtle newsjacking technique that I've used in the past is using holidays as topics for my blog and then using that blog post to promote a product or service. One year on Mother's Day, I wrote a blog post on the $100mba about my mother and it was titled the Ultimate Hustler. And it's basically a summary of my mom's story. Immigrating from Egypt to America, having to learn English and have to take her degree all over again because in the US they didn't recognize her degree from Egypt, doing odd jobs, going through some really rough times so that we can have a roof over our head, and how she became an absolute success, a rock star. And it was one of my favorite blog posts to write because I got to really shine a light at the greatness of my mother that no one knows about. You know, she's my mom. She's not famous, she's not popular, but in my book she deserves so much recognition. Now then I related to the fact that, hey, if you are a hustler, if you're a hard worker like my mom is and was, and you're trying to make something happen with your business, you're trying to create your first product, then check out the $100 MBA, check out my course, check out what I'm offering here, and here's a special promotion going on for Mother's Day to honor all mothers. So as you can see, it's a reoccurring event. I took advantage of the fact that it was Mother's Day to write a really meaningful post and then tied it into how it could help our readers and how they can get started with their business. This is totally doable, but it requires a bit of planning, a bit of creativity, and a bit of thought. So carve out an hour of your day to put this into place. Just think of one thing you can do. 1 a newsjacking technique that you can use that I described in today's show that would work for your business.

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To wrap up today's lesson, newsjacking is a great way to really ride the wave of trending topics. But don't fall in the trap and try to force something down people's throats. Make sure it's relevant. Make sure that whatever you're newsjacking is relevant to your business and your brand and your audience. Tie it in and make sure you're giving value with the second half of that newsjack. So you're gonna talk about the news worthy thing and how it ties into your business. And then what are they gonna get by clicking your link and checking out your campaign? Value's the name of the game. If they get value, they're gonna find your campaign to be creative and interesting. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 VA Show. Make sure you right now, if you have not done it already, whether you're on Spotify or Stitch Radio or Apple Podcast or Overcast or Himalaya or any podcast app, hit the subscribe button. By doing that, you automatically get our latest episodes. Not only that, you get access to over 1400 business lessons. All our lessons in the archives. And you can only do that by hitting subscribe. It's absolutely free. Do it right now before I go, I want to leave you with this. You don't have to do this every single day, right? But you can earmark once a quarter to think of something creative and put a campaign together. Experiment. See what works, see what doesn't. See, the thing about these things is that it takes experimentation. Some campaigns will do better than others, and I've tried several different campaigns and you know, the Mother Day one really nailed it. I did a couple others that didn't do so well, but I would never get to the point where I got to something that really worked if I didn't keep on trying. Experiment. Don't get down if it doesn't give you extreme traffic. It's a learning process. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in. Tomorrow's episode Freeride Friday. I'll see you then. Take care. Of.

We've all been there. You hold on to a coupon, hoping to cash it in at the store, but then you forget about it and suddenly you've got a mountain of useless expired coupons.

Do you think this one's still good? Free milk.

Oh mate, that expired in 1993.

Dang it.

Fortunately, there are better ways to save money. Like by switching to Geico, you could save about $900 on car insurance without ever touching a coupon.

Ooh, how about this one? Half off floppy disks.

Now, you should try a bit of spring cleaning.

It feels good to save big.

It feels good to geico.