The Critical Importance of PR for the PR Department

One thing communicators should be doing more of is PR for the PR department.

At a conference last week, I reminded communicators to develop this as a regular practice. We communications pros spend our careers promoting everyone else’s work, and when it comes to our own – crickets!

If people in our organization don’t understand what we do, sometimes the reason is that we never told the story.

The communications office should never be the least understood department in the organization. Ever. (I am so serious).

Often in your meetings with leadership you are given a laundry list of issues to address, problems to solve, touchy areas, worries. We take it in and march off to fix/conquer/correct/proact. But we also need to frame our work correctly so we can be as effective as possible.

Where to start?

Ideas:

-Monthly “communications impact” summaries to leadership; board; other target audiences that matter to you.

-Outline what you did AND why it matters. Talk about effort, sure, but more importantly, discuss outcomes. Results are sexy!

-Take credit for issues you prevented or resolved or made go away. Talk a reporter out of a silly story? Report it. Prevent the spread of a rumor? Report it. Problems we solved before they turned into issues? Report it.

Create a comms department annual report – then share it!

My darlings, this is not vanity at all. It’s visibility.

The better others understand the communications role, the stronger your outcomes and decisions will be.