Mirabella Q&A
Opposition frontbencher Sophie Mirabella has come under fire for sitting idly as GetUp director Simon Sheikh fainted and faceplanted during a segment on the ABC’s Q&A program earlier this week. Seemingly recoiling at the sight of the unresponsive Sheikh, Mirabella’s reaction drew the ire of Q&A’s very vocal Twitter community.
Mirabella on Q&A
Check it out for yourself:
Considering our success ranking for Fairfax related terms thanks to our two previous posts, we thought we’d take the opportunity to show you guys how you can rank for newsworthy key terms like Mirabella’s reaction to Sheikh’s Q&A collapse with a idea called newsjacking.
Coined by marketing guru David Meerman Scott (full disclosure: he’s a client), newsjacking is the process of latching on to newsworthy topics with relevant content in order to become the second paragraph of a news story. For example we’ll often tie our blog posts to recent events (like Fairfax’s woes in the last few weeks) in order to not only rank for search terms surrounding the story, but to also generate new backlinks through interviews and attribution from journalists or bloggers researching the story.
So how do we do it?
- On top of following the advice we put out weekly (sign up to the newsletter here if you haven’t already!) you’ll need a to have strong authority and a solid SEO foundation to rank over the top of the news organisations you’ll be competing with.
- Secondly, relevant content will win over everything. Putting out content designed to fool Google is never a great long-term strategy. If you have something legitimate to offer to the conversation that frames the news for your particular industry or niche you’ll find a lot more success newsjacking. Remember to also tailor your content to the audience, i.e.: if people are looking for video (as in today’s Mirabella/Sheikh example) then video content would be the way to go.
- Next you’ll want to explore the types of search phrases people are using to find that type of content. Are they searching for “Sheikh Mirabella Q&A” or “Sophie Mirabella GetUp”? If you’re unsure have a crack at Google Insights to delve deeper into how people are finding these stories and alter your title, headline and content to suit.
- If you’re using video for your content like we do you’ll want to explore OneLoad, a free service that spreads your video to all your video sharing websites in one hit. OneLoad is a great tool to increase your likelihood of ranking for your search terms as there are more instances of your video online in different communities. Google’s issues with duplicate content are largely negated when it comes to video content.
- Once your content has been placed (or embedded) in an article on your blog you’ll want to spread it to interested parties outside of your searchers. When sending out to your social networks make sure you mention the relevant parties on Twitter & tag their pages on Facebook with a link to your article as well as using hashtags surrounding the news story in your Twitter & Google+ link sharing.
- From there watch your Google Analytics and see how people are finding your article. If you notice a different search term gaining more visits than the one in your headline/H1 feel free to change it appropriately. Sharing the link on social networks a few times for those who missed it the first time around is a great way to maximise your reach so long as you’re not becoming too spammy. Make adjustments or updates as the story progresses and think of it as more of a work in progress than a final product to find the sweet spot.
Hope this brief overview of newsjacking helps and you’re getting one up on Fairfax in no time! To delve deeper into the concept check out David Meerman Scott’s book ‘Newsjacking’.
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