Public Relations and Communications Coordinator
Anna is a Public Relations (PR) and Communications Coordinator at an arts and culture organisation where she manages anything words and media-related.
“As we want the public to see everything we put out to ideally instantly know that it’s from our organisation, when my colleagues want to produce something, they’ll ask me if fits within our branding guidelines and standards. There’s several departments within the organisation who have very different needs and audiences so I make sure everything is cohesive for the public.“
What a Public Relations (PR) and Communications Coordinator does
It depends on the type of organisation you’re working for but where I’m working at, a PR and Communications Coordinator handles all writing (including copywriting), social media, media release distribution and enquiries from media outlets or the general public.
I answer questions that come in or direct people to the appropriate contacts. I run the official website and handle all the updates and maintenance. In my communications role which encompasses any type of material that the organisation produces and is public facing, I ensure all content meets our branding guidelines and style. I want to maintain the best standards for the organisation so I proofread, copyedit and check that documents and designs such as pamphlets and posters meet our guidelines to the highest detail like ensuring the logo is the right size and shade of colour. As we want the public to see everything we put out to ideally instantly know that it’s from our organisation, when my colleagues want to produce something, they’ll ask me if fits within our branding guidelines and standards. There’s several departments within the organisation who have very different needs and audiences so I make sure everything is cohesive for the public.
Sometimes I’ll get media outlets doing research for a media feature they’re working on. I got an enquiry recently asking if I knew an expert or academic so ideally I would know an organisation or contact who would be best to reach out to and I’d direct the person to more information. Sometimes university students enquire about a project or PhD research they’re working on looking for information about current issues. I manage a directory of artists and cultural experts so I have information on how to contact them. I guess you could say my job is like being a connector.
I also do website checks and updates which means that I do some of the backend so since I’ve been doing my own website for a while, I know how to use Wordpress which is another bonus. I have to look into what’s going wrong and sometimes there are some very weird things like something on the website breaking but I’ll do some Googling and figure it out so I’m learning on the fly. If I can’t figure it out, as a last resort, we do have tech support who helped build the website but I definitely do a lot of day- to-day website maintenance.
What keeps her going
I get a lot of fulfillment out of being interested in the subject matter. I get to help promote my organisation’s exhibitions and events so it’s always exciting for me when people come to our space and are able to discover new resources. It’s nice to see the public enjoying and learning from the resources and experiences we create and it’s always nice to get positive feedback from people.
Someone who would thrive in PR and Communications
Creativity and an interest with words would be a plus as you’d be producing a lot of content and media releases which means you’d be writing a lot and you’re going to be communicating with people either via email or doing interviews over the phone. You have to come up with multiple, interesting ways to talk about the same thing. If you’re promoting exhibitions for example, you can’t have the same two sentence explanation that you just use over and over again, especially if it’s a long campaign period.
Technological savviness or at the very least a willingness to constantly learn is also a bonus. When I applied for my job, InDesign skill was something that was desired and I hadn’t really had any experience with InDesign but luckily I had an Adobe Creative Cloud membership already because I use Photoshop and Illustrator on my own so downloaded it and took a crash course and figured out how to use it.
The ability to keep up with trends is important, researching and anticipating what might be the next big platform or trends are so you can get in on that and help your organisation grow.
“You may think you’re going to do something or feel unsure about what you’re going to do but you’ll end up somewhere you didn’t even expect.”
The thing that you’re going to do, you may not even know it exists yet
I started as a researcher mostly and wanted to get into academia. I have a PhD in Japanese culture and even before I was studying, I’d been very active online running my own website for Japanese popular culture and film and game reviews so through that I got really interested in promotions mostly in the digital space and because I’d experienced running my own website and managing social media accounts. It developed a bit of a following so I started helping small companies that were publishing Japanese games in English to promote their games and got exposed to PR that way.
Working in PR and communications wasn’t something that I ever seeked out though. When I graduated and was looking for jobs I was aware of my skills so it wasn’t completely out of my realm of possibilities that I would have a job in this area but it wasn’t something that I set out to do straight out of university. My interests are in writing, languages, culture and communicating my interests to people and getting people interested in what I’m interested in so it ended up being something that fit my interests.
Communications is something where the intersections of my abilities come together but I never really knew it was an area that would be good for me, definitely not when I was still studying. You may think you’re going to do something or feel unsure about what you’re going to do but you’ll end up somewhere you didn’t even expect.
Future plans
My long-term goal is to publish a book that is solely authored by me, that’s my career bucket list item. If I continued in PR and communications, ideally I’d want to work in-house for a company. I’ve done freelance work before but that hustle is tough so I think it’s more like seeing if opportunities come along and just assessing it from there.