Content marketing can be a great way to gain exposure for your company, but getting the media to care about your brand's news is difficult. Unless you're a Fortune 500 company, mainstream media, and even industry publications, probably won't cover your news.

You can try newsjacking—inserting your ideas and commentary into breaking news in the hopes of being quoted. Journalists get a ton of such press releases, though, and yours is usually just another needle in the haystack.

So how can you use content marketing to break into popular news stories?

We recently got in on a story that generated a massive amount of exposure and valuable citations for my company, WordStream. Our blog post on the effect that Google's Panda 4.0 algorithm had on eBay's organic search rankings ended up earning...

• Over 400 views a minute on our website at the height of its popularity
• Front page, top-spot placement on Hacker News (see image below) and an Editor's Pick mention on ArsTechnica

• Over 50,000 views within a couple of days of the story breaking, and over a quarter of a million across sites in total, to date
• Citations and valuable links from over 50 publications, including the Guardian, Ecommerce Bytes, MediaPost, and Business Insider.

When news media talked about why eBay's stock price plunged, they cited our branded research:

You may not have the resources to do this on a weekly or monthly basis, but every company could have at least a few content marketing wins a year using the following tips. Imagine what that could do for your Web presence and reputation!

1. Seek out content opportunities

Pick stories that matter to you, and follow them closely.

We had been keeping an eye on eBay's online marketing tactics for over a year, ever since it published a highly critical report on AdWords. It was plain to see that in addition to its paid search troubles, its organic strategy—with thin content and millions of spammy pages—was going to get the company in trouble.

These industry stories can become opportunities for you to generate awesome content, if you keep your eyes open.

Takeaway: Use Google Alerts for news and subscribe to the company blogs of brands you're interested in. Stay current and news and be prepared to take action quickly.

2. Know your value offering

What makes your take on the story any different from the next guy's?

As soon as we heard about the eBay story, we started running our own research so we could offer original data to publications interested in covering the news.

Come up with something unique and tangible that no one else has, and you'll win the interest of journalists.

Takeaway: Come up with three or four angles for your story, and then ask people in your journalist network: What kind of information are you looking for? What would be most valuable to you as you cover this issue?

3. Answer this: 'So what?'

So this thing is happening, whatever it may be... so what?

If you want journalists to take an interest in your branded content, you need to tell them why it matters to their readers.

We figured out the "so what" factor for investors, eBay sellers, marketers, and the general public, and then pitched to different publications based on what mattered to their audience.