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Newsjacking

Payday Loans Newsjacking Wonga to feel the Wrath of God

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The Church of England is going to crush the Payday Loans industry, well not quite.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23446228
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2013/jul/25/church-england-wonga

Hi Holiness the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby says the church will “compete” with Wonga. It has the infrastructure and cash to invoke a mighty credit union to lend money to the needy.

One snag though, the Church of England already invests in Wonga, according the the FT.com

The Church of England’s pension fund invests in one of Wonga’s key financial backers, in a hugely embarrassing revelation for the Archbishop of Canterbury who has described the payday lender as “morally wrong”

If you want to have a play with some tasty Newsjacked content poking a bit of fun at the Church of England’s investment strategy, now is the time.

You may have God on your side because I have heard that he hates hypocrites.

Update
This is now the top news on the BBC

Killer Royal Baby Headline Ideas

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Image source

You may be sick of Royal Baby news, some were sick before the first media pundit uttered that the “atmosphere was palpable”.

A linkbaiter is indifferent to the emotion (or tries to be) of such news events as they are dealers, not users. They see news events as opportunities to squeeze out a few more links, craft some killer headlines.

The linkbaiter goes where the conversation goes and yesterday we know where the conversation was. Even the haters were talking about it, talking about how much they hated it sure, but that still adds to the conversation and the heat of the story.

A healthy baby being born is good news, and lets not forget that 2,200 other babies were born yesterday. Although individually not such a media news event.

With that in mind lets look at some headlines around those who were not so happy yesterday.

Note: where I write “10” you can insert any number that works.

10 Best Baby Hater Quotes from Twitter
10 Top mental Royal baby fans
10 Stupid things said by media pundits
10 Stupid things said by Twitter
Spot the media pundit who really doesn’t want to be covering Royal Baby news

We could go on as tapping this mindset is easy. It’s important to note the negative aspect is in the minority. A scan of #RoyalBabyBoy on Twitter is overwhelmingly positive, not that it’s a scientific indicator.

What is interesting about going negative is that this group will be more eager to vent their spleen and so more likely to link. Tapping the negativity may seem cynical, but it is only reflecting a view prevalent in society.

The linkbaiter goes where the conversation is, it does not create something that is not already on someones mind.

But lets go positive, which I am sure will annoy any haters.

10 Happiest Royal Baby fans around the world
10 Best Royal Baby names
10 Most loyal Royal baby Celebrities
10 Rappers and the cool things they say about the Royal Baby
How lucky are the other babies born yesterday? 2,200 in the UK
Will Royal Baby boost UK economy?

And so on, we could go on and this is easy stuff to do. You can pretty much create a headline for any niche on this topic. Want to test me, just for today

headlines

Others are creating some really good content around this content though. Checkout the Where in line to the throne are you? from Mike Overthrow

I am sure there will be more to come.

Newsjacking a Royal Baby

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ImperialStateCrown

Writing the headline made me think that I may get put in the Tower for suggesting.

This is a no brainer and if you are in the baby niche, you’ve probably been covering this for sometime or have content ready to go for todays birth.

You don’t need me to tell you this is happening so lets go straight to ideas:

How much does a Royal Baby cost?
Common words the media use to describe baby
How many Terrabytes will Royal Baby create on day one
10 Royal baby fans and their medication
10 Reasons American media goes nuts for a Royal baby

Alternatives

News mashup, take the news of the day that the baby was born on and mash it up. Superman Batman movie, Tour de France.

Comment on how the media and internet are talking about it, Twitter, Facebook etc. for example loves to talk about itself and their impact on the world.

Creating an infographic is of course obvious, but on what? You will have a lot of competition, I am sure there will be one detailing other baby information that will be happening that day. But this is the stuff that journalists love, because you are helping them write their story. Putting all the facts together in an easily digestible package.

We don’t know what we don’t know

As the story progresses new information will be produced. If you are poised, prepared, ready to take advantage of new developments you may get the edge. Although there is big competition to create content around this story, there is also a big desire for information that engages. So it definitely worth investing time.

To all Mothers and new born babies, may your happiness be huge and may your sorrow be small.

This is an article from the forthcoming Newsjacking Alerts service

Source

Batman Superman Newsjacking ideas

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So now we now it’s going to be happening.

Batman and Superman to team up in new film

Those who are into comic superheroes control some very tasty, online real estate. You absolutely want to get linked, mentioned, social shared, by these people.

It’s something I do for clients all the time, tap into the content sweetspot of the fan. Usually it’s a group that lives in a sub-pop culture as the success ratio to Google juice given is much higher than with mainstream blogs and websites.

But the Superman/Batman thing is interesting, as it’s more mainstream and we want to tap into the narrative a little differently, possibly a little more broad.

After all, there is already a massive amount of excellent content already around this two chaps. So we need to look at a different angle.

Lets play around with some ideas, feel free to join in.

10 Reasons Superman and Batman Running a Shoe Shop is not a good idea
Yes it’s absurd, but that’s the point. It gets attention, it has high humour potential. If you ran an online shop shop and you had a blog this is a headline that would get attention and get your keyword in. You could of course change “shoe shop” for any other regular, everyday kinda thing.

It’s the concept of holding up something from one world (a man who wears his underpants outside of his clothes and a fitness freak with a bat complex) against something from another world that we see everyday. We all wear shoes (OK, footwear) so we all have a connection to this.

It creates a narrative friction that people have to resolve by clicking through and ingesting the content. This is why it is attractive. It’s wrong and we need to resolve it.

Here are more in that theme:

10 Reasons why Superman and Batman should run a hotel
Why Superman is a cat person and Batman is a dog person
Pizza Delivery, who is faster? Batman or Superman
Would Superman ever drive a Bugatti Veyron? Batman would

You could quite easily intergrate most niches, however boring into this narrative structure, in fact the more boing the better, for example:

You would expect to see Superman at an Accounting Software convention, but not Batman

As I said, you can have a lot of fun with this.
This will be a subject that will be hot for a number of months, so it’s worth opening a file on the subject and start researching it.

This is an article from the forthcoming Newsjacking Alerts service

Cosmetic Surgery SEO Newsjacking Alert Example from the Apprentice

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drleah

We know how competitive “cosmetic surgery” SEO is and so that anything that can give us the edge is useful.

If you have a cosmetic surgery client you have probably already created a piece of content about Dr Leah Totton winning this years Apprentice. If you haven’t there is still time, the story is still warm but chilling as fast as a Polar Bears toenail.

But here is the bit to get your teeth into:

Thousands of viewers have called into the BBC asking for cosmetic surgery help as a result of watching the final of ‘The Apprentice’.

From Huffington Post

The thing to note is the Dr Leah Totton story is still in the popular section. As any linbkaiter wielding a large sharpened news hook knows, you target that which is in the public’s focus.

Andrea is probably joking BBC viewers suddenly realising they want to be injected with gallons of Botox (surely thousands of treatments would be over a gallon of Botox juice), but it’s a good gag and it engages you with the content.

I know I always bang on about headlines being crucial, but in the 3 step formula of linkbait it’s Attract, Engage and get a reaction. Once you have the attention of the reader through a killer headline you have to engage. A juicy line, an interesting first paragraph is what will be needed to engage the reader with the rest of the content.

The reaction that this piece of content wants is probably a social signal (note how low the Google+ social signal is).

Where to now?

Having identified that this is still a story, I would recommend a reaction post to the anti- Dr Leah Totton sentiment, which was to be expected. Reacting to this post would be an obvious one and attempting to engage the writer of the piece over social media is always a way to continue the engaging narrative.

This story is going to have long term viability in the cosmetic space because a real, well funded business backed by Lord Sugar will be happening and is going to be of interest.

Oh and ranking form “Dr Leah”, which is the name of the business, should be added to your targeted keywords if in the cosmetic surgery space.

Stories or narratives, are the bread and butter of the Newsjacker. I will in a future post tell you more about how telling stories is crucial in getting a website ranked in Google.

This is an article from the forthcoming Newsjacking Alerts service

Truro, Cornwall Christmas Shop opens on Hottest day of the year

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On what seems to be the hottest day in the year and has driven me from the oven that is my home office to the air conditioned coolness that is the Truro Starbucks, the Cathedral has decided to open a Christmas shop.

christmas-shop

I first saw this story about 20 minutes ago on the BBC Website where it is the 4th most read story. A local newsjacking moment I thought. So quick walk in the City (more of a village really) took a few photos and spoke to the shop keep

truro-christmas-shop

The shop was a Whittards 6 weeks ago and the Church of England bought the shop as it’s so close to the Cathedral and thought lets have a shop that celebrates the birth of Christ all year long. I’m not sure they had devine advanced knowledge of the current heatwave the UK is under, but it’s perfect buzz marketing.

And of course raises the issue of local newsjacking. The Sun newspaper has already visited as have a number of other outlets, so for a day or two this will be national news.

What this has to do with an SEO site, well it’s helping focusing on the concept of newsjacking and the news alert service I am launching. If you happen to have a local business that has a blog, you should be looking at blogging about this story, it’s possible you could add another angle to it and get some publicity yourself.

Most of the time, doing a bit of newsjacking is free and usually folds in to your current process. It takes little effort to spot a bit of news, add your own twist and then push it out into the world via your blog.

Anyway, happy Christmas and pass the suntan lotion

Note: I own copyright on the pictures and only ask you to give a web link back if you use them. Or they can be puchased for £200 each