Those of us that have worked in the New Zealand PR industry for a while will be confident that we know how best to reach the people we need to. We will (hopefuly!) have a good understanding of how different Kiwi audiences are best communicated with and we will be used to the various media channels. Many of us will have gathered a collection of useful contacts over the years, and will have a number of journalists, editors and producers on speed dial. But what happens when a client needs us to take their messages further afield? What do we do if they want to build a brand presence in China or Japan?
I personally think that this is where online public relations really comes into its own.
Blogging, for example, is a value for money and highly effective way of raising brand awareness on both a local and international scale. It is particularly valuable if you are wanting to break into Asia. Japan has the highest blog readership in the world, with the supremely popular tech blog, Gigazine, topping the charts. The Western world doesn't even get a look in until further down the placings, with the USA at number 4 and UK at number 5.
Other forms of Asian social networking are also lightyears ahead of the American and British founded ones. For example, China's main networking site, QQ, which is a similar model to Facebook, has 300 million active accounts and the site turns a profit. It suddenly makes Facebook's 60 million accounts, with zero profit, look pretty miserable...
Even if you are not conducting an international campaign, understanding how different cultures communicate and what tools they use to access news and information is extremely useful. New Zealand's Asian population is projected to reach 790,000 by 2026. It might be a good idea to start thinking of ways to get in touch with such a large chunk of the population!
While online communications is undeniably one of the most effective ways of communicating with Asian audiences, more traditional media should not be forgotten. There are a number of popular Asian newspapers in New Zealand, such as the NZ Chinese Mirror and the Indian paper, Auckland Times. There are also a fair few Asian radio stations out there, such as Radio Chinese and Radio Tarana (Indian). It is quite easy to track down print and radio media in the Asian countries themselves and quite often the editors are adept at speaking English, which makes communiction easier if you are not multi-lingual!
Finally, if you want to open up a dialogue with different cultures and nationalities, consider investing in the services of a good translator. This can be especially useful for translating your media releases and articles. Quite a few Asian newspapers, websites, blogs and forums are written in English but if you ignore media written in the native language of the country, you will most likely be missing a huge portion of your target audience. You can find an extensive list of translators at the New Zealand Society of Translators and Interpreters.
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