3 Steps to Newsjack your small business that Would Make Gordon Ramsay Jealous

Newsjacking!  

Chef Gordon Ramsay might be angry, but he actually wants your restaurant to succeed.  What the heck is newsjacking and how can I grow my restaurant (or any small business) using it?  Well, it's like Joe Cocker said, "I try with a little help from my friends...."  I'm not sure why I need a Joe Cocker reference in here. Anyway, in this case, you'll use your "friends" in the media business.  You don't have any?  Well we'll borrow them.  Newsjacking is a simple concept.  When a big news story breaks that relates to or affects your industry, you write a blog article that relates to, or incorporates that news story.  Newsjacking a story into your blog is a great form of inbound marketing, a means by which you draw attention to your small business.  You should be writing a blog for your small business anyway, and with newsjacking, you are just capitalizing on the temporary hype on the internet surrounding the breaking news story.  When a news story breaks, people everywhere start searching the internet for it.  And that's where you'll get the extra traffic to your blog article.  Not to mention the fact that if you are quick to post your blog article, some of your followers will repost your article or build links pointing to it.  

Here's an example of newsjacking.  Let's say you are an Atlanta restaurateur and you hear that the President of the United States has just arrived in town on a previously unannounced visit.  This example isn't exactly related to the restaurant business, but work with me here.  You'd write a blog article that describes how the Big Cheese is in town and how traffic is going to be a nightmare on Peachtree Street during the lunch hour.  In your blog article you offer a lunch special for everyone who comes into your restaurant and says "last week I was skewered to death in traffic when the Pres was in town."

Newsjack in three simple steps

1. Start out by monitoring your industry.  Use Google Alerts to set up email alerts to you about the subject you want to cover.
2. Write your blog article.  But as you do, try to figure out what people will be searching on, and incorporate those phrases into your blog copy.  You can use Google's keyword tool to help you.
3. Use social media to spread the word about your new blog post.  Use your Facebook business page, Google+ business page, Twitter account, your email list, your mom, whatever.  Just get the word out.

So, before Gordon Ramsay pulls a surprise visit to your walk-in refrigerator and finds that month-old chicken carcass, get in there and clean it up.  And then promote your small business with a little bit of newsjacking.