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PR in Western Media: Making It Accessible

American PR agencies are conservative - they have annual contracts, large budgets, and a lack of specifics. These were the challenges I faced when I was appointed Kiton's director of marketing for the United States market. As part of my responsibilities, I had to figure out how to do PR quickly and easily. Because doing something well often requires doing it yourself, I opened my own PR agency in the U.S.

Greetings! My name is Irina Proskurina and I am the founder of E-PR Online. I reside and work in New York for over 10 years now. Today, I would like to share how my PR service and experience led me to become who I am today; the head of a technological PR firm. Contrary to what many believe, public relations in the U.S. is not as terrible as it seems. Throughout my own marketing adventures, I was able to understand how to publish content in Western media publications.

An Idea Sparked by Challenge
In the last 10 years, I held the role of the Director of my own modeling agency while solving many of the marketing tasks of the brand Kiton in the American market. During the course of my career, I have come in contact with a rather conservative approach of American PR agencies. In America, any publication is considered to be PR whether it is paid content or not.

What is particularly interesting about American PR practices is that having the necessary funds for publishing content doesn’t always guarantee a quick and easy publication. For instance, you may be asked to sign a contract worth somewhere around $60,000 that promises a certain number of publications per month. It will then be up to your PR agency to negotiate with various publications each month to get your content featured. You won’t know what publication your content will be featured in until it is published. This is what I call “blind PR”. This, however, isn’t the scariest part of it all. After all, you will get the publication you need.

But what happens when your revenue isn’t able to pay for PR? What if the agency’s promotion is no longer relevant because you took a different direction in your business? That annual contract will still require you to pay for the PR agency’s services until its expiration date. But it is even more difficult for small businesses and start-ups, since not all agencies are willing to work with them due to their small revenue and lack of reputation.

The Birth of E-PR Online
In the course of my MBA in Marketing, I gained invaluable experience studying the laws of the market. As I saw these PR challenges many companies face through the lens of my education, I decided to take matters into my own hands and start my own project. I began to forge relationships with all of the various media outlets, negotiate affordable rates with them, and hire the best copywriters in New York.

Thus, the E-PR Online Platform was born, which my clients fondly call the Amazon of PR. This is because our platform is all about adaptable technology, a user-friendly interface, and speed. Now a few years later, we have established relationships and contacts with over 10,000 media publications and are able to offer publication services for fair and affordable fees to all of our clients.

Bilingual Copywriters
E-PR Online has a great competitive advantage of having over 50 bilingual copywriters who are fluent in English and Russian. As part of our recruitment process, we assess the individual's literacy skills as well as their interpersonal skills and ability to communicate effectively with clients.

To date, I’ve interviewed over 500 candidates to choose the best of the best copywriters. The team that we have not is able to work with many business tasks while obtaining the necessary information to create compelling content.

Media Catalog: Choice and Accessibility
The goal of E-PR Online Platform is to provide the simplest PR solutions as possible. In our media directory, you get to choose three options:

Which country you would like to receive publications
The language in which you would like the publications to be written
Focus of your industry
Top media prices can be hefty for startups and smaller companies, so I recommend checking out the entire list of available media catalogs. The cost of publishing with our partners starts from $500.

When you partner with E-PR Online Platform, you get access to the following media platforms to publish your PR materials. We work with over 10,000 publications and among them are:

CBSN New York
Forbes
ABC 13
NBC
Inc.
The New York Times
Vogue
Le Monde
Mirror
Der Spiegel
And many others
Thanks to the numerous relationships we have established with various media publications, you will be able to gain the visibility you need to move your business forward.

• Increase visibility and awareness of your products and services
• Establish industry expertise
• Build relationships with stakeholders, customers, investors, etc.
• Manage a crisis or negative publicity with an effective communication plan
• Build a positive reputation for your business