Newsjacking during COVID-19

Oreo introduced the concept of Newsjacking at the 2013 Superbowl, where they piggy-backed their brand on a trending power outage news story.

The pandemic is probably one news event where this tactic went mainstream.

Nearly every brand has written about it, although the difference is that several didn't do it necessarily for commercial gain.

To do it right, you need to put a timely and meaningful message out that has some purpose and adds to the conversation somehow, otherwise, it backfires.

The side-effect of the lockdowns is that there are several keyword categories that are now picking up search volume as per this Search Engine Journal article.

I wouldn't be surprised if content creators start riding those waves too.

The rule of thumb is to pursue topics that have a strong intersection between your target audience and the keyword category. Chasing tangential topics for the sake of traffic might result in flash page views, terrible conversions and high bounce rates.