PR specialist - how to become one?

The PR specialist is responsible for building and maintaining a positive image of the company in the eyes of the media, clients, and other groups in the environment. His/her tasks include contacting journalists, preparing press materials, supporting the spokesperson in conversations with the media, and responding to crisis situations before they turn into a serious image problem.

What does a PR specialist do?

A company that wants to operate effectively in the market needs a well-thought-out public relations strategy that is tailored to the company’s profile, industry, and target groups that are important to it. The PR specialist is responsible for creating and implementing such a strategy.

This is the person who monitors how the company perceives its external environment. She maintains constant contact with opinion-forming groups – journalists, local authorities, industry organizations – prepares press releases regarding the company’s current affairs, supports the preparation of interviews on its behalf, and also creates procedures. Crisis PR in case of situations that could threaten the reputation.

Daily tasks of the PR specialist

The scope of responsibilities varies depending on the size of the company. In a small organization, the PR specialist often handles all these areas at once – he/she writes the press releases, contacts the media himself/herself, and analyses the results. In a large company or agency, the tasks are usually divided among several people – one handles media relations, another handles content, yet another analyses the results, and the whole thing is coordinated by a person in the position of PR manager or director of communications.

How to become a public relations specialist?

The PR specialist should excel in high communication skills, creativity, and flexibility. He or she should possess extensive knowledge of sales and marketing and should be well-versed in the market in which the company operates and its mechanisms.

Among the requirements most frequently encountered in recruitment ads for this position we find:

• fluency in the use of the English language,
• experience in a similar position or in a related field (marketing, journalism, communication),
• knowledge of the mechanisms used by the mass media – newspapers, radio, television, online media,
• higher education in the field of marketing, journalism or social sciences,
• high organizational abilities and the ability to work under pressure,
• the ability to work in a team and coordinate activities with other departments of the company.

What does the career path in PR look like?

The typical path starts with a position as a junior specialist or PR assistant, where the person learns to write communications, manage the media database, and perform basic monitoring tasks. After gaining experience, one can advance to a specialist position and then to the PR manager position, which combines operational work with responsibility for the strategy and budget of communication activities. You can find more about this position in the article who is a PR manager.

Where to look for a job as a PR specialist? The most frequently chosen place is a public relations agency. Working in an agency offers the opportunity for multifaceted development – one person can handle several clients from different industries in a short time, which allows you to gain broad experience faster than working for a single brand. If you’re wondering what such a job looks like from the inside, check out this video:, What does the PR agency do.

Tools used by a PR specialist

The daily work of a PR specialist today is based on several groups of tools that facilitate managing media relations and measuring results.

• Media bases and journalistic contacts – allow you to quickly find the newsrooms and journalists writing about a given topic, instead of sending press releases „blindly”.
• Tools for monitoring media and social media – they inform about new publications about the company, competitors, or the industry before the topic has grown too big.
• Press office on its own website – a place where press releases are published with a permanent address, date and contact information for the media, to which journalists can be referred.
• Tools for planning and reporting work – allow you to track the stage of a given campaign or press release, and show the client or management specific progress, not just general assurances.
• Artificial intelligence as a support, not a substitute for humans – it is useful for a quick review of a large number of publications or for preparing the first version of a text, but every number, name and quote must be verified by a human before the material reaches the media.

What does a typical day of work of a PR specialist look like?

The day of a PR specialist rarely looks the same for two consecutive days, but several elements repeat almost always. The morning usually starts with a media review – checking whether new publications about the company, clients, or the competition have appeared, and whether something needs to be reacted to quickly. Then comes work on current materials: preparing press releases, correcting an expert article, or social media materials.

Conversations are also an important part of the day – with journalists asking for comments on the current topic, with clients or management regarding planned activities, or with other departments of the company that need communication support for their projects. A PR specialist must be able to switch fluently between writing, phone conversations, and analyzing results – in this profession it is rarely possible to work on one thing continuously throughout the day.

How to measure the performance of a PR specialist?

The effectiveness of a PR specialist cannot be reduced to the sheer number of press releases sent or the number of media publications. The AMEC industry standard (an international association that measures communication) recommends dividing the effect into several levels: how many materials were prepared, how many of them were actually published and in what tone, how the recipients reacted (e.g., website visits or the number of inquiries), and finally – whether this translated into the company’s business results.

It is worth avoiding converting publications into so-called advertising equivalents (AVE), which is the cost that the same-sized advertisement would have cost – this is an outdated metric that the AMEC standard does not recommend and Commplace does not use because it does not say anything about whether the publication actually influenced customer decisions. A better approach is to set a specific goal before the campaign – for example, the number of customer inquiries within 30 days – and verify it after the campaign ends by comparing it to the period before the publication, rather than judging the result „by feel.”.

PR specialist and press spokesperson – what are the differences?

These two roles are often confused, although they perform different functions. The PR specialist works mainly „behind the scenes” – he/she prepares the strategy, content and materials, monitors the media and coordinates the activities. The press spokesperson is the person who officially speaks on behalf of the company – he/she gives interviews, answers journalists’ questions publicly and brands the communications with his/her name. In many companies, especially smaller ones, both functions are performed by one person, but in larger organizations the PR specialist often prepares the materials that the separate spokesperson uses.

Specializations in the profession of PR specialist

Over time, many PR specialists narrow their scope of work to a specific area where they build deeper expertise. The table below shows the most common areas of specialization.

The choice of specialization usually depends on the size of the company and the stage of the career. People at the beginning of their career more often combine several areas at once, and specialization only appears after several years of experience when it becomes clear in which direction a person wants to develop – towards managing media relations, crisis communication, or working on the employer brand.

How does the PR specialist collaborate with other departments of the company?

PR rarely operates in isolation from the rest of the organization. The PR specialist for marketing determines how to coherently conduct product communication in media and advertising so that both messages complement each other rather than competing with each other. The sales department exchanges information about what questions and objections most often arise from customers – this is often a good source of topics for expert materials. The management consults on important business decisions before they are made public to prepare the appropriate narrative in advance, rather than in a rush just before the announcement.

Such cooperation requires a PR specialist not only the ability to write and communicate with the media, but also the ability to translate the language of business into a language that is understandable to journalists and external audiences – and vice versa, translating signals from the market into specific recommendations for the management. A person who specializes in product communication follows similar principles as in a broader PR strategy – we wrote about this in an article about, what is product PR.

The most common mistakes made by beginners in PR

• Sending press information to all newsrooms at once. Without matching the topic to the medium profile, the article quickly ends up in spam, not in the publication.
• Lack of preparation for difficult questions. The specialist who did not anticipate the journalist's awkward questions is surprised during the conversation, which lowers the credibility of his statement.
• Treating social media as an addition. Today, this is often the first place where a reaction to a company’s actions occurs – ignoring it delays the reaction to crisis situations.
• No measurement of the effects. Without tracking, it is difficult to assess what is worth repeating and what should be changed, without knowing which actions actually resulted in publications or customer inquiries.

How Commplace helps when you need a PR specialist

Instead of hiring and training their own PR specialist from scratch, many companies use a team of agencies that already have experience in many industries and ready-made procedures. See how it works Public relations management at Commplace – from strategy, through media relations, to measuring the results.

The progress of work, tasks, and deadlines related to PR activities are visible in the platform on an ongoing basis. Commwork®AI – thanks to this, the client can see at what stage the press release or campaign is, without having to ask about the status by email. For the PR specialist himself, it is also a tool that streamlines work – he can see in one place how many tasks are pending, what is already ready, and which deadlines require attention in the coming days.

Sources: work of the Commplace blog editorial team.