10 DAVID MEERMAN SCOTT SPRING 2018 platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and other tools to quickly get its message out to a large audience, Scott says. A firm’ s social media agenda should be as broad based as possible, meaning that it covers numerous topics that relate to its product or service.
The more content you are creating, the easier it will be to identify angles to news events that could potentially go viral. Scott recommends that you go a step further than simply using appropriate keywords or hashtags and research journalists who may be covering each particular story topic. Then you can approach them directly by emailing them a link to your post, image or video that they can click for more information.
THE EVOLUTION OF NEWSJACKING
Asked how he became interested in the concept of newsjacking back in 2011 during the rapid growth era of social media, Scott lets out a laugh.“ I think I was one of the few people on the planet that could have made the connections necessary to launch the newsjacking movement,” he says.
From early in his career working at a bond trading desk at Dean Witter Reynolds, Scott has keenly observed how the movement toward real-time interactivity has affected everything from financial markets to Google indexing to the news cycle. Other than a multi-year stint as a part-time male model in Japan( yes, really), Scott was mainly involved in the news business for more than a decade, working as product development manager and then marketing director at Knight-Ridder Financial in Asia. He then made a return to the States to become marketing vice president for NewsEdge, a NASDAQtraded online news distributor, where he managed a multi-million-dollar marketing budget as well as a team of employees.
Against the advice of his PR firm at the time, Scott drew on his publishing background at Knight-Ridder to create his own content-rich marketing and PR programs, which leveraged the power and ubiquity of the internet in its earliest days. As he puts it,“ the homegrown, do-ityourself programs we created at virtually no cost consistently generated more interest from qualified buyers than the big-bucks programs that the professionals were running for us— and resulted in millions of dollars in sales. People we never heard of were finding us through search engines.”
At the time, most marketing and PR professionals were advocating against putting proprietary information online, available to competitors who could steal or build upon valuable content. But Scott disagreed.“ Each time we sent a release, it appeared on dozens of online services … resulting in hundreds of sales leads,” he said.
Scott has followed his time-tested philosophy in developing his own materials to support newsjacking. While he did manage to secure the“ newsjacking. com” web space, he chose to neither trademark the term nor the substance of his website’ s content. He believes that this decision was the right one, helping the concept of newsjacking to really catch on throughout the marketing community, across industries and across geography.
These days, Scott can be found writing— he is currently working on an 11th book— and traveling the world, dispensing wisdom about newsjacking and other marketing strategies. His goal, he says, is for audiences to walk away knowing how to use a variety of tools to engage the media, initiate crowd-sourced product development, increase sales and build brand and company awareness.
A Deadhead, Scott explored ways in which the legendary band capitalized on the social capital of its fans to build a following into cult-like status in another of his books, Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead, co-authored with Hubspot founder and CEO Brian Halligan. As Halligan said in an Amazon. com Q & A,
“ making fans an equal partner in a mutual journey, the Grateful Dead teaches us that our community defines who we are.”
Today, there are even more opportunities for creative marketing than when the late Jerry Garcia was touring. Scott encourages companies to embrace the concept of newsjacking.“ Many executives dread having to deal with marketing issues, but newsjacking can actually be a lot of fun,” he says“ It’ s an opportunity for your team to really get creative— and provides great exposure for your company to boot.”
MEET DAVID MEERMAN SCOTT
Our always-on, Web-driven world has new rules for competing and growing business. Advance planning is out – agile is IN! Those who embrace new ways will be far more successful than those who stay who stay stuck and afraid to change. No one knows more about using the new Real- Time tools and strategies to spread ideas, influencae minds and build business than David Meerman Scott. It’ s his specialty.
He’ s a sales and marketing strategist who has spoken on all seven continents and in 40 countries to audiences of the most respected firms, organizations and associations. Scott frequently speaks to groups of entrepreneurs including at Tony Robbins Business Mastery events around the world including London. Sydney, Las Vegas and Palm Beach in the past few years. At Tony Robbins Business Mastery Scott is the lead marketing speaker.