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Years ago, I got my first in-house job as the communications manager at OpenDNS, one of the first cloud-based security startups. Alongside writing blog posts and talking to journalists about deeply technical topics, a key responsibility that I had was explaining to the engineers and researchers that I saw every day how best to work with a PR person.

What follows is a post that sums up the basics of how technical folks (developers, engineers, or researchers of any stripe) can most efficiently work with their own company's PR person -- no matter what the circumstances.

What PR People Do

One of the perennial struggles of communications professionals ("PR people") is explaining what you actually do on a daily basis. This is an almost universal struggle. Executives think that you spend all day talking to journalists. Journalists think that you spend all day handling crises for executives. Parents and spouses... have no clue. The have absolutely no clue what your job entails (unless they work in the industry themselves. So in the interest of getting your bearings, here is a general overview of some typical PR person responsibilities.

External communicator: This is everything that goes into creating, curating and optimizing the external appearance of your team of company. This typically includes overseeing "earned" communications activities (read: news coverage) related to your team or org, but also will include the content on one more more "owned" communications channels (press releases, the company blog, social media accounts, or even sponsored updates LinkedIn). Media relations, analyst relations, and social media marketing all fall into this category.

Communications strategist: Quick history lesson--the Public Relations Society of America's description of PR ("Public relations?helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.”) is basically just describing the concept of a feedback loop from cybernetic theory. In other words, one of the best ways for PR people to contribute to the success of your company or team is by bringing outside perspectives in. Working in PR means constantly having to monitor the conversations that are happening online and in the news. PR people are often the first people at a company to spot new trends or developments. The strategic contribution of a communications person can be as simple as sharing advice, information, or coordinating with other internal company teams on communications issues. It also include things like planning communications campaigns in support of a product launch or business event (like an acquisition or merger). It can even include something like developing a long-term plan to completely change a company's identity in response to trends and new opportunities.

Reputation manager: This includes, but goes far beyond, deciding how to respond to difficult questions and crisis situations. This can include acting as a gatekeeper and “bodyguard” for media interviews, speaking opportunities, and other external communications. Acting as an editor, approver, or "second set of eyes" for other kinds of content that are distributed by your company (and your company's partners!). If a company's reputation is the sum total of all of the impressions that it leaves on external stakeholders, then for many companies, deciding what not to do can have as much impact on the end result as deciding what to do.

Hopefully, this leaves you with a better idea of what the heck PR people actually do at your company. In a future installment, I'll talk about some of the best and most efficient ways to work with the PR people at your company.