What is Newsjacking?
‘Newsjacking’ refers to the marketing tactic of abusing the interest of the consumers in trending news in order to promote their own content. It is done to create an immediate impact and draw attention to the company or its products and services by creating and sharing content that aligns with the trending news.
A recent example is how every company boarded the bandwagon of memes when the ‘Evergreen’ container ship was stuck in the Suez Canal. Every company was posting on their social media details as well as memes about the incident and Twitter was flooded with the hashtag ‘#evergreen’
The term ‘newsjacking’ was coined and popularized by American strategist David Meerman Scott with the publishing of his book, ‘ Newsjacking: How to Inject Your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage