It sounds violent and potentially dangerous, but all it really is, is using a big news story to draw attention and visibility to your brand. “Newsjacking” is a portmanteau of “news” and “hijacking,” and just like hijacking a train, you would take control of a story in order to direct clicks towards your website. Many brands already try to use news outlets to garner attention, but newsjacking is something completely separate from trying to get outlets to publish a press release or to write a story specifically about your business. Instead, you use a story that is already buzzworthy.

One of the best ways to do this? Get a journalist to use your name, in association with your brand name, as a source in an article about the topic. Of course, this means you can only newsjack stories that are actually relevant to your industry and about which you have something useful to say. Keep in mind that journalists are usually working on a strict deadlines and their jobs have become more and more about trying to get as many eyes on their pieces as possible.

Another way to effectively hijack and story and use it in your favor is to post about that story on your brand’s social media accounts. Not only will searches on those social media include your post and whatever links you have included in that post, it can also help to make your brand more relevant in search engine results about that story. The key is, no matter which method you want to use, is to act quickly. Stories come into the limelight and leave at a rapid pace. In order to use this technique successfully, you have to be tuned into industry news and ready to act when you see or read something you can use.

Is newsjacking really worth your time and effort? Here are just a few of the ways that this technique can help your brand:

Helps to Demonstrate Authority 

A huge part of your online presence should be directed towards building your authority. Not only is this extremely important for search engine optimization, it is also integral to converting visitors into customers or clients. When you add your own insight to a story, either by being quoted by a journalist or by posting about that story on a social media account, your knowledge about that subject becomes evident. Your clients and customers want to work with brands that know their stuff. They will be looking for clues of it and this is a great way to prove that you’re worth their time.

Gives You Serious Visibility

Probably the biggest and most important reason to use this technique is that is quickly and effectively gets your name in front of people who are interested in a story relevant to your brand and would therefore also likely be interested in your brand. If you use the right hashtag, you’ll show up in feeds about this story. Your brand name and the comment you have made about the story will be very easy to find, both on the social media themselves and on search engines, which have put more and more focus on results on social media.

Builds Your Brand Personality

Whether your brand personality is your personality or whether the brand has a personality all its own, it is important to take very opportunity to build on and develop that personality. Newsjacking is a great way to show your followers, customers, and interested parties exactly what you believe and what you are interested in. This is as true of dealing with positive and neutral stories as it is of dealing with negative stories. How you respond to a negative story (not necessarily about your brand, but about some aspect of your industry) will be especially telling.

Shows That You Are Tuned In

Have you ever found a website for a business that obviously has not been updated for years? In this day and age, that should turn you off from doing business with that brand. Even if they are still alive and kicking, most consumers want to do business only with brands that are tuned into what is happening in the industry right now. They want to give their money to brands that are paying attention to the shifts and trends in the industry. Newsjacking is a great way to prove that not only are you paying attention to what’s happening, but that you are involved in it and have an opinion about it, too. All of this helps to attract more and more attention to your brand.

Is Free and Easy

Lots of marketing, especially digital marketing, strategies are difficult and expensive. Newsjacking, on the other hand, is completely free and is pretty easy, whether you do reach out to a journalist or whether you create and post your own content about the story. Considering how effective it can be, it is probably one of the most profitable marketing tactics, when done correctly—and it can be done incorrectly. It’s important to keep in mind that people are going to be reading what you wrote and people love to be offended. And while offense can sometimes be useful, it is probably not the emotion you want to generate when people are first getting acquainted with your brand.