Read all about it! Newsjacking is essential for brand content.

There’s a whole strand of content marketing strategy that focuses on answering customer questions and queries. And it makes complete sense, right? After all, the questions that your current clients and customers ask frequently are invaluable sources of content topics. Answer them on your website and you’re not only helping your customers out, but you’re also helping potential customers out and getting traffic to your website too. 

Let’s put a double underline there – and maybe a bit of fluorescent highlighter, too. Answering customer questions, and creating non-time sensitive content, is a great foundation for your content program. 

And that sort of approach to content is a pretty easy one for brands to get their heads around. It’s planned, it’s strategic. It can go through layers of approvals if need be. And it’ll deliver a long-tail benefit over months and years. 

However, there’s another approach to content that complements that planned and strategic approach so well, but it needs brands to be thinking 24/7 about everyday content opportunities, ways of injecting their brand into conversations and how to demonstrate your expertise in line with world events. 

It’s less planning, more newsroom. Some call it newsjacking. We just call it bloody smart. 

The recent COVID pandemic has been a global event that brands could comment on. The vast, vast, vast (sorry, can we say VAST again?) majority of brands have done it terribly. Brands we’ve not heard of for seven years but once gave our email addresses to have suddenly become concerned about our welfare? Nope, we’re not buying it. 

A handful of others have done it really, really well. And one of them is a remote work website called Search Remotely. Now, we’ve got no affiliation with Search Remotely, we just love how they approached their COVID content. 

Content has always been a key part in their plans, however, even the business’s founder, Christian Carella, couldn’t have imagined just how important content would be to his business during 2020. 

“I think content's invaluable for any business when it comes to brand awareness and attracting people to you. It's vital,” Christian told By Wanless. 

“Of course, recently there’s been more and more interest in remote working, so we’ve been publishing every few days to really capitalise on the thirst for knowledge that exists now.” 

The site, which posts remote work opportunities as well as resources to help businesses get the most out of remote workers, uses freelance writers – remote, of course – to create its content. And suddenly, earlier this year, a huge opportunity presented itself in the form of COVID. 

“We saw an opportunity to really add something to the conversation about COVID and the impact it will have on the future of work, so we produced a long piece on remote working and the impact of COVID. We promoted it through our social channels – including paid social – and we’ve seen a real increase in traffic to the site.” 

Christian believes – just as we do – that when you start thinking about creating content for your business, it’s important to not churn out the same old same old. You need a new spin, your own personality and a fresh approach. A bit of Bruce Springsteen or Kate Bush every now and again, perhaps. 

“You’ve got to strike that balance between creating something of genuine use and interest for your audience, and stamping your own voice on it, too,” says Christian. 

“There’s so much content out there, it’s got to have a point of difference.” As at least one half of the By Wanless team is prone to say – and we’ll leave you to guess which one that is – “Oath.”