Today our series is featuring Elena Braykova of United Partners, GlobalCom PR Network’s partner agency in Bulgaria, who provided us with some insights regarding their local PR practices and regional trends.*

1. What status do social and digital media have in your daily PR work?

As PR professionals we at United Partners use social media every single day to get the word out about clients, to communicate with customers and to respond to questions or problems. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social sites have quickly become important tools in our professional toolkit. There are so many uses — conversational marketing, reaching influencers — that PR is able to participate in conversations and answer questions, be a support system for clients and companies, as well as empowering customers and power users to be a resource for the company and someone who’d use our own services and products.

2. Do you use social networking in your PR and communications work?

Yes, constantly. Traditionally, brands pursued the media to gain exposure. Things are different for nowadays PR people. Sure, there is a lot more competition but yet, it is easier to find and connect with news sources. Facebook has been ‘around’ for some time now but businesspeople have really just began engaging the platform in the last couple of years, especially after introducing  brand pages. News sources are ready to make online impacts and the industry is trying very hard to integrate into the digital age so the brands and the companies are using social media platforms. Our role is to help our clients understand where they are, the topics and issues of interest. Then we develop the strategy that creates an emotional digital relationship with consumers. So, generally said, we help our clients through every step of the process – from hitting “Create a Page” on Facebook to welcoming their millionth fan. Some examples of social media sites that we have developed jointly with our partners are Pampers, Nescafé Bulgaria or Gillette Bulgaria.

3. What would you see as most recent innovation in the field of PR?

Well, I think that businesses that are growing fast are probably doing so because they’re intrinsically innovative in some way already. Innovation is indisputably key to fast growth because it sets you out from the crowd. It’s all about: Be clever, be different, but above all be interesting!

*The series is based on phone or face-to-face interviews and written input, therefore please excuse language mistakes which might reflect foreign language influences.


GlobalCom is an award-winning worldwide alliance of Public Relations specialists and agencies that offers international PR services to organisations looking to launch their products and services simultaneously in multiple countries.