Like many small business owners, you may think your pockets are not yet deep enough to afford a public relations manager. After all, it’s those bigger companies that need PR for their issues, such as when an airline mistreats a customer, a national chain restaurant makes someone ill or a driver employed by a global transportation company cusses out a customer in the back seat. Mistreating customers is decidedly uncool, and as the public spotlight sizzles and threatens to burn a business’s good name, a public relations expert is often called upon to act as a press spokesperson, calm the uproar and reassure a nervous public while the owner works to restore the company’s reputation. It’s true that a public relations manager often functions as a crisis manager. But this one responsibility is much too limiting. Once you understand the full range of a public relations manager’s duties, you may decide to accelerate your timeline to add one to your payroll.
The Public Relations Society of America describes PR as something much more expansive than answering frantic media calls and writing pithy press releases: “Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.”