Local business, global publicity: It’s possible.

Many companies look at reaching overseas markets when sending their press releases in order to expand their influence and success beyond their home borders.

Distributing your press release globally can be valuable for any company, not just for multinational brands – and should be something that all companies explore in their PR strategies. By sharing news about your product developments, brands, corporate news or anything else in the overseas markets, businesses can reach a much more diverse audience of international media and potential consumers.

Key benefits of distributing press releases internationally:

• Increase brand exposure: By taking your news overseas, you will automatically create international awareness of your brand.

• Exploit more financial opportunities: Attract new business globally will inevitably increase your market share.

• Globalisation of visitors: Thousands of people travel around the world each day. With distributing your news in the overseas market, not only will you capture the potential consumers of the target company, you will reach a more diverse audience from all around the world.

• Use as business analytics to write the strategy: When expansion in the overseas market is part of your business plan, you have to start somewhere to benchmark your response. Sending media releases internationally and measuring their success will be invaluable to your business.

To get the best outcome when sending releases to the overseas market, you need to ensure you have exercised three key points:

• Know your overseas audience: Do your research about the country and audience you’re distributing your news to.  Ensure you are aware of the media restrictions and sensitivities in the countries you are planning to target. For example, the Chinese government will not allow press releases with words or topics around “human rights”, “freedom”, “imprisonment” etc.

• Time your send: Yes, the news is 24/7, however when sending your news internationally it’s key to ensure you give attention to the time zones, holidays, local work schedule, and what is the breaking news of your destination. For example, in the US, most people are viewing the news (and keeping your news visible for the entire business day) generally at 8:00am to 10:00am local time which is at the opening or shortly after the local exchange. So you would aim to send your release to the US during this time for the best chance of coverage.

• Translating is vital: Choose your words carefully. This is the ‘be-all or end-all’ of your press release in the overseas market. Just like any other document, you need to be careful to pinpoint potential miscommunication in different languages. For example, Braniff International Airways once released a campaign to highlight customer’s “Fly in Leather” which translates in Spanish to “Fly Naked”...

Using an expert translator will also ensure your release will use industry terminology and will be received better in the overseas market.

Find out more about how Medianet can help you get global pick-up on your story.