Public Relations Careers: Options, Job Titles, Descriptions

Making the right choice when it comes to a career path is a defining moment in anyone’s life. However, not everyone has an easy time making that decision, especially since a lot of people don’t know if they’ll end up liking a certain choice as they’ve never had any experience working in such a field.

For anyone that’s interested in a job in the field of public relations, or are thinking of pursuing a career in public relations, it’s important to know that there are various different jobs that are available. Public relations involves two main responsibilities: the protection and the promotion of a brand.

When it comes to protection, it’s up to PR professionals to help clients in managing their public image and reputation, as well as defend the brand during a PR crisis. Meanwhile, on the promotional side, PR experts help brands with developing a positive public image through earned or paid forms of communication.

That’s why we’re going to break down some of the job titles on both sides of public relations and share some details of what they entail below.

Public Relations for Promotion

Spokesperson

This is the face of the client’s brand, that speaks to the general public on behalf of the business during press conferences or TV appearances.

Content Creation

This team tends to craft positive narratives about a client’s brand through writing press materials, recording brand awareness videos or writing bylined articles that are then handed over to the media relations team. 

Media Relations

This is a team that’s connected to the media outlets and has relationships with journalists. They use those relationships to pitch the brand stories that are made by the content creation team, and then track, measure and report the effectiveness of each campaign and tactic.

Social Media Community

This team manages the brand’s image on social media platforms by using social listening tools and then interacting with the audience to promote the brand.

Community Relations

This is the team that makes sure the brand is going to live up to its potential as a socially responsible company. This is done through positive community events that get media outlets talking about the brand.

Financial Communications

A team that has relationships with analysts as well as investors, whose main job is to improve the financial reputation of the client’s brand, by keeping track of all analyst, investor and media questions at meetings, and press conferences.

Public Relations for Protection

Reputation Management

This is the team that keeps track of social media, review sites and ratings for the client’s brand and uses that information to gauge the brand’s reputation. The team also addresses any complaints or negative reviews that people have through any online communication channel necessary.

Crisis Management

The main job of this team is to help the client’s brand deal with any major crises that are caused by intervention, malicious intent or simply due to human error. The team is able to ease up any of the damage that could be done by taking responsibility and crafting good responses.