Maximize Your PR Budget for International Communication
Colleen Pizarev, Vice President, International Distribution, PR Newswire



Given the current economic situation, it is essential to make every PR dollar count.

Here are some tips to increase your exposure and make sure your news is seen by the overseas media. 

 

• Target your message. 
  • Releases focusing on new products, enhancements and industry awards are of interest only to trade media – with the caveat that some newspapers do have robust tech and health sections and will print not-too-technical news. 
  • Newspapers are interested in the opening of offices, agreements with manufacturing representatives and basically anything else that will directly relate to employees in the target country.
  • Financial media will be interested in other corporate news: earnings, technological developments, executive management changes and other regulatory-type information  
     
• Send releases regularly. 
  • Journalists will most likely not write about you if you send releases infrequently. It takes some time for them to get to know you and the more information they see about you, the more likely they are to write about you down the line. Be patient – it can take several months before you’re well-known in the media community.
     
• Make sure your releases are posted to as many of your target market language databases as possible. 
  • Journalists in other countries use databases for research on stories just as often as journalists in the U.S. 
     
• Make sure your quotes are appropriate. 
  • Anything from a local executive of a customer/client/partner stating how your product/service/partnership is going to be of great benefit to the target audience is ideal. Failure to include a local quote will greatly reduce pickup of your news release.
     
• Always translate your news release if it’s appropriate for the target country.
  • In some countries, very few journalists speak anything other than their native languages. English-language releases are generally ignored in those cases.
  • Unless the article is destined for one of the handful of English-language publications in that country, the journalists are all writing in their own languages – it is much easier for them to copy and paste or manipulate releases written in-language than to mentally translate and create from scratch.   
     
• Always include a point of contact on the news release who speaks the language of the country in which you are sending the release and can communicate with the journalists if they have any questions. 
  • If no one on your communications staff speaks a specific language, inclusion of a local agency or local staff member within your contact information will improve your pickup.
     
• Localize your Web site. 
  • You don’t need to have your entire Web site translated.  All you really need to do is translate any product or service information on your Web site into the languages of the countries you have as highest priority, as well as the “About Us” and “Contact Us” pages. 
  • Journalists interested in writing a story from your news release will visit your Web site and if information is present in their own languages, the chances of actually getting that story written increase dramatically.