Leveraging trending news (sometimes called newsjacking) is a solution that allows a content producer the opportunity to capitalize on the momentum of a story or event. Incorporating your perspective or unique angle into the over-arching theme of a story can broaden your reach, encourage sharing outside your immediate network and strengthen your business’ brand recognition.

There is great value in researching trending topics and identifying opportunities to get ahead of your competition with fairly minimal time and effort. Knowing what stories and content matter to your audience – now and in the near future – will lead to a more significant level of engagement. Focusing content around trending news topics is not only an effective way to build credibility, but it may also:

• Enhance SEO efforts
• Improve brand recognition and authority
• Drive additional traffic to your site and generate leads

Effective newsjacking requires the ability to be quick and imaginative. Once you identify a story, sometimes it takes a touch of creativity to uncover ways that it relates to your business. And you have to do it quickly; otherwise, the buzz behind the story passes or becomes irrelevant before you have the chance to share your content.

Here are a few easy ways to use trending news-inspired content to create relevant and high impact content.

How To: Identify Topical / Industry News

As a content producer, you often need to think like both a reporter and a marketer when determining topics that are useful and entertaining. Spending 15 minutes each day to view the latest headlines and stay up on happenings in your community and the world can generate numerous opportunities to align trending topics with business principles. Here are a few tools beyond Twitter that will help you identify the most popular news stories by day, week, month and topic category.

Google Alerts / Trends

Google alerts and trends are two resources that can help you stay on top of the most prevalent searches and news stories on a particular topic. For example, Google Trends can give you a glimpse at what Google search users are looking for online. The trends can be sorted by type of search (web, image, news, etc.), geographical areas, time span and categories. Other functions of the trends feature include “hot searches” and “top charts.” Hot searches list the top searches by day. Top charts list the most popular searches in Google by categories and are updated monthly.

Google Alerts allows users to generate automated search results based on criteria provided by you and delivers daily or weekly results to your inbox. This is a great way to monitor the web for the latest information that has been posted about you, your company, your competitors and the content topics of interest.

BuzzSumo

If you are a content creator and do not yet know about BuzzSumo – it’s definitely a valuable resource worth checking out. BuzzSumo allows you to track content shared on all social networking sites and ranks them based on the number of shares on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest. This tool is great for monitoring specific topics, trends, and competitors’ content.

One of the best features of BuzzSumo is the function that identifies topic influencers. With this, you can see who the top influencers are and what content they are sharing across various platforms, industries, and topics. You can be alerted via email based on a number of criteria including keyword mentions, articles published by specific authors and competitor posts.

TrendSpottr

Timing can be the biggest challenge for an individual or company tasked with putting out the latest and greatest information. Just like reporters want to break a story, thought leaders want to position themselves as experts, and the time it takes to create a valuable content piece often puts a writer behind the curve. Today, reacting is not enough; waiting until a trend becomes noticeable to start making moves is already too late to gain an advantage.

TrendSpotter can help a content producer identify emerging trends before they gain significant momentum. With this resource, you can create alerts for keywords, hashtags, topics and phrases that have the potential to go viral. The resource also works with Salesforce and HootSuite functionality.

Quora

In the world of content writers, Quora is an underutilized resource made up of a community of people who specialize in specific fields and industries. These knowledgeable individuals provide insight to others who want to learn about anything and everything from travel to sports to entrepreneurship.

Quora can be the perfect online tool for inspiration and may help identify your next big content piece. Topics that become popular in offline and online discussions often become topics of focus on Quora. Use this resource by subscribing to specific feeds that interest you, follow certain questions or topics that people post and stay updated on how the community responds.

LinkedIn Pulse

Many business professionals use LinkedIn to connect with colleagues, prospects and more. One of LinkedIn’s other great benefits is its Pulse platform that allows an individual to view highly targeted news content based on professional interests.

Creating valuable content requires research, knowledge and sometimes even a connection with other industry experts. You can follow specific influencers in your professional network or chose categories such as banking, healthcare, restaurants, etc. Another great advantage of LinkedIn Pulse is having the ability to share your own content and articles. All you have to do is click “Publish Post” on your LinkedIn home page to share content using the writing tool.

Reddit

As the self-proclaimed “front page of the internet,” Reddit users can submit content that gets voted up or down by readers, pushing the most popular content to the top of its front page. The content is then sorted into categories such as Hot, Controversial, Rising and Top. This categorization allows readers to get a quick glance at what topics are trending right now.

How To: Leverage Influencers & Relationships When Publishing Trending News

It’s not uncommon for content producers to miss out on newsjacking opportunities. It typically takes a very robust team to actively identify news trends and spin them in a way that keeps prospects and customers informed. If you don’t have a large content team, consider what connections you do have that could be of value for a trending news piece. For example, do you have a high-profile client or a strong affiliation with an influencer who could lend his or her expertise to your content?

Leaning on an influencer or a relationship to leverage trending news could be of great value to you and your business. The topic should be featured in a way that it is relevant or complimentary to your business – rather than creating a feature that just seems like you are meddling in an area where you do not belong.

Newsjacking March Madness

Think about the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament and March Madness. How many companies, organizations and individuals jumped on board to become part of the conversation? Sports-related or not, news sources everywhere covered the tournament. Brands also got involved by focusing on brackets, teams and tournament happenings through their advertisements, posts, and social channels. If you didn’t create content pertaining to March Madness, you probably felt a bit left out.

As March Madness approached, businesses that reaped the benefits of the buzz created and shared multiple posts to create engagement. Those that were most successful highlighted a personal relationship or affiliation they had with a particular coach or team and created a story that corresponded to their business’ core principles. The results were huge upticks in blog page visits and increased social engagement.

How To: Plan For Trending News In Your Content Calendar

The best use of trending news comes from both creativity and quick timing. If a business or individual has the ability to immediately jump on a story, they’re more likely to hit readers at the height of the topic’s buzz.

One important consideration is that you do not need to focus entirely on trending content for the general public; also consider the topics and trends being discussed in your particular industry. Additionally, you don’t have to wait for trending news to happen to work it into your content calendar. Think ahead regarding what events or happenings are taking place in the future and leave space in your calendar for content that corresponds with those themes.

No matter the size of your team, there are formulas and strategies that will help you build recognition and credibility for your business. Not only will you create great content for your site and social channels, but it’s possible to have your story picked up by media outlets and digital publications looking for content their readers want to consume.

The benefits of aligning news with your brand are plenty – from increased reach and social shares to injecting your expertise in into a conversation that’s already happening.

The post Using Trending News To Create An Exciting Content Calendar appeared first on Relevance.

As an extension to many marketers’ strategies, collaborative content has been an area of consideration as a tool that reinforces inbound marketing campaigns. Like most areas of business, partnerships are key to gaining recognition, advancement, and influencing growth. The same can be said for working with influential partners to produce collaborative content.  Partnerships aid the visibility and growth of a particular site, page, product or campaign.

There are many benefits to using collaborative content for the launch of a campaign including expanded reach and relationship development. However, there are a few considerations to review before choosing a partner:

• Work with partners that understand your brand, product or service and are familiar with your key message points.

• Remember that when you are working with someone who is passionate about what they do, it will show in the content they produce. Is their passion strong enough to yield the level of quality you desire?

• Is your partner both an expert and entertaining? If so, the resulting content is practically guaranteed to be valuable.

• Don’t try to give too much direction to your partner. Point them in the right direction, but don’t pigeon hole them into your own creative thoughts and ideas.

• Thoroughly communicate the intended channel for distribution to your partner to ensure they understand who the audience is and how they will receive the content.

Does it scare you to think about tapping into your network, identifying influential prospects and taking a risk by asking them to either contribute or allow you to contribute? If it does, keep reading.

Leveraging relationships to create strong marketing partnerships can be beneficial for both parties and should be embraced in a positive way. Here are five tips to help you take the first step in identifying content collaboration opportunities to launch a successful campaign:

Identify Your 800-Pound Gorillas

Look through your LinkedIn connections, address book, Twitter followers, and Rolodex (I know, old school) to make a list of the top 10 – 15 most connected, influential and dynamic individuals with strong reach among their networks.

Next, branch out a bit and do some research on who is writing about a particular theme or topic by using advanced searches on Twitter, BuzzSumo, and other resources. Dig a little deeper to check out the number of followers or level of engagement for each of these writers.

Your list of 800-pound gorillas can be more than just individual people – business or trade organizations, clubs, publications, media reps, podcasters, and bloggers are all perfect candidates for this list. Most people recognize these people and organizations as “influencers” among their respective network, area of expertise, or industry. This is a resource that you should hold near and dear; these are your 800-pound gorillas.

The most important consideration after building the list is doing the necessary homework to learn more about their expertise and interests. Use this information to construct a personalized message requesting a content collaboration partnership.

Be clear about what you want from your 800-pound gorillas and think about what that might look like in practice. Do you want them to be contributors, promoters or both? By being a contributor, they will likely also be a promoter. In the case of a trade organization or publication, the partnership will likely be based on the value that is provided to their members and readers.

Develop strong workflows

A workflow is a sequence of automated actions that are triggered into place depending on the visitor’s reader’s behaviors or contact information. The concept of workflows was designed to allow marketers to keep their goals at the forefront of the campaign process while showing a definitive return on investment.

Once your content creation and collaboration plans are in place with your partner, consider putting solid workflows in place to take advantage of every opportunity to capture reader’s email addresses and, ultimately, get them into your sales funnel. This is especially important when implementing a collaborative content campaign because of the increased opportunity to reach prospects that are just being introduced to your brand.

When mapping out your process, first decide your overall workflow goal. Is it to further engage current leads? Are you trying to re-engage past customers? Are you working toward acquiring new leads? After your goals are established, you’ll have a better understanding of the process needed to convert more leads into customers because workflows give you the powerful ability to segment.

Do you send mass emails without personalized content to an entire, un-segmented database? If so, you may find that your success rates are not what they could be. The benefit of workflows is that you can chuck the old philosophy of sending mass emails out the window and begin providing more relevant information to your prospects based on their wants and needs. Here are a few workflow and marketing automation stats that are hard to ignore:

• Triggered email messages get 119 percent higher click-through rates than “business as usual” messages. (Source: Epsilon )

• Nurtured leads produce, on average, a 20 percent increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads. (DemandGen Report)

• A quarter of all B2B Fortune 500 companies are already using marketing automation, along with 76 percent of the world’s largest SaaS companies. (Pardot)

• Businesses that use marketing automation to nurture prospects experience a 451 percent increase in qualified leads. (The Annuitas Group)

Use tracking and retargeting

A customer’s path to purchase is not always as direct as we expect. Your intention may be to create a campaign with collaborative content and persuade a prospect to fill out a form, download a valuable offer like an ebook or tip sheet, and become interested in purchasing all in their first visit to your site. While possible, this scenario is not likely.

Marketers should be ready to help their prospective buyers along a path that may have a few more twists and turns. This is where the use of retargeting comes in. There are a few common ways to employ this strategy, depending on the goals of your campaign.

Tracking URLs

Campaign tracking is a tactic that allows you to add a tracking code to your content’s URL so that visits to the link can be tracked. The tracking URL allows you to see referrals from a web source, an email campaign, online ad or more – thus measuring the success of each channel.

One easy tool for creating tracking URLs is the Google URL builder. It’s as simple as adding the link you want to track, adding parameters for tracking, and then using the URL that Google supplies in your campaign.

Tracking Pixels

Pixel-based retargeting is an incredible way to share your information again with any of your site visitors. While this strategy has been questioned in the past in regard to privacy, today it is one of the most common types of retargeting.

The concept is simply this: when someone visits your website or content page, an unobtrusive piece of JavaScript (the pixel) is placed in their browser – often referred to as a “cookie.”  When they leave your site, the cookie notifies retargeting platforms to serve specific ads based on the pages they visited on your website.

There are a number of options available when considering retargeting as an element of your campaign (including third-party platforms that provide web and social retargeting) such as PerfectAudience, AdRoll, Retargeter,and many more. You can also incorporate retargeting through specific social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Sponsored content and native advertising

Sponsored content and native advertising have been a hot topic among marketers and online publishers over the past few years. Companies and publishers alike have expanded their teams and divisions to broaden the production of ads that impersonate editorial content.

Whether you are on the side that views this concept as deceitful to consumers, or the side that views it as an effective way of getting the attention of prospects – the reality is that it’s not likely to go away soon.

As discussed earlier, certain types of advertising should supplement your inbound content efforts. This can be done through retargeting, promoted posts, PPC and even sponsored content. It should be done in an effort to promote your content, not your product.

When incorporated into a campaign and collaborative content strategy, sponsored content and native advertising will cast a wider net to strengthen your efforts. Inbound marketing will take a campaign a long way, but if you have the minimal funds needed to broaden your reach, then sponsored and native content methods are worth considering.

Common collaboration mistakes

Brandscaping is a concept coined by Andrew Davis, author of Brandscaping: Unleashing the Power of Partnerships. Andrew explains Brandscaping as a way of leveraging the audiences of others for the benefit of both partners. In his book, he shares some valuable insight in regard to common collaboration mistakes to avoid:

• Don’t think short term. Embark on your partnerships with the mindset that you’re in for the long haul and not just short-term campaign launch. Communicate your commitment to the partnership and its long-term benefit.

• Don’t think about sponsorships. Rather than focusing on buying access to a particular audience, think about collaboration. This is an extension of the previous point regarding focusing on the long-term rather than short-term.

• Collaboration should be about more than an individual agreeing to partner on a particular content piece. There should be a mutual understanding of the other’s level of passion and commitment to promoting, sharing and engaging with their network.

• Avoid poor communication between both parties by setting up clear expectations, due dates, responsibilities and more – right from the beginning.

• Avoid weak calls-to-action and offerings. Even with a solid campaign, a weak offering will result in failure to convert leads to customers.

The incorporation of collaborative content has been a hot topic for those who have fully adopted various online and social channels as a means to share information about their expertise and brand. Not unlike the partnerships in our personal lives, collaborating with someone on something – an influential product, service or brand – can help you reach a new audience and level of success.

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