Everybody Writes, 2nd Edition



61Memes, Trends, Newsjacking

When the world's second-largest software company, Oracle, acquired content management company Compendium, I first heard about it when Jesse Noyes emailed me an hour after the news broke, asking me for commentary on the acquisition for a piece he was putting together.

Jesse, a former journalist, headed up content at Kapost—then a competitor of Compendium.* That morning, he also took the opportunity to let me know that his boss, CEO Toby Murdock, had already formulated and published his early thoughts on the acquisition on the Kapost blog.

See what happened there?

Kapost broke the story to me and to others less than an hour after it happened. Understanding that this news was a big deal in the content marketing world, Kapost mobilized to …

• Use news of a competitor to insert itself into the heart of a story that it essentially had nothing to do with.
• Use the news to be a thought leader literally: to lead people's thoughts by expanding the immediate news story into a larger trends piece with broader appeal.
• Capture early social love from influencers by connecting with them and with industry analysts and offering them an opportunity for further commentary.
• Potentially earn attention from mainstream media looking for perspectives on the news.

There's a great lesson in there for all of us in marketing: Content moments are everywhere. You just have to train your eyes and ears to look for them.

That means watching for ...