What Actually Happens Inside a Public Relations Team

By Sarah Mitchell, Communications Strategist Published: November 12, 2025

So here’s the thing about public relations teams that nobody really talks about – they’re not just sitting around writing press releases all day. I mean, yeah, that’s part of it, but the reality is way messier and honestly more interesting than what you see in those glossy corporate videos.

A PR team is basically the group responsible for managing how a company talks to the outside world and what people say about that company. But that definition makes it sound simpler than it is. In practice, these teams are juggling everything from crisis management at 2 AM to planning events six months out to dealing with an angry tweet that’s going viral right now.

The Actual Day-to-Day (It’s Chaos, Honestly)

Most PR teams I’ve seen have maybe 3-15 people, depending on company size. Smaller startups might have just one person handling everything – which sounds insane but happens all the time. Look at how companies like Notion started. Their early “PR team” was literally their founders tweeting and responding to users on Twitter (well, X now, but everyone still calls it Twitter anyway).

The media relations part is huge. Someone’s got to maintain relationships with journalists, and this isn’t just sending cold emails. It’s knowing that Sarah at TechCrunch covers enterprise software between 9-11 AM EST and hates phone calls. Or that the Bloomberg reporter who covers your industry just had a baby so their replacement is handling stories temporarily. This stuff matters but it’s not written down anywhere.

Then there’s content creation. Blog posts, social media, statements, executive quotes, internal communications. A decent PR person at a mid-size company is probably cranking out 20-30 pieces of content per week. That’s not sustainable long-term, which is why burnout in PR is pretty bad – some surveys show turnover rates around 30-40% annually in agency settings.

Crisis Management (AKA the Real Job)

This is where PR teams earn their money. Remember when United Airlines forcibly removed that passenger in 2017? Their initial response was terrible – CEO Oscar Munoz called the passenger “disruptive and belligerent” in an internal memo that leaked. Stock dropped $1.4 billion in value within days. That’s what happens when PR gets it wrong.

Compare that to how Johnson & Johnson handled the Tylenol crisis in 1982. They pulled 31 million bottles off shelves immediately, even though it cost them over $100 million. Their PR team worked around the clock to communicate directly with the public, held press conferences, and basically wrote the playbook for crisis management. The brand recovered because they handled it right from a communications standpoint.

These days, social media makes everything move faster. A PR team needs people monitoring mentions basically 24/7. Wendy’s turned this into an advantage with their Twitter account – being snarky and engaging directly with customers. That wasn’t some grand strategy from day one; they just had someone running their social who was good at it and they let them keep doing it.

The Tools They Actually Use

Cision is probably the biggest media database/monitoring platform – costs anywhere from $7,000 to $100,000+ annually depending on features. Most established PR teams use it or something similar like Meltwater or Muck Rack. These tools track media mentions, help find journalist contacts, and measure coverage impact.

For social listening, there’s Brandwatch, Sprout Social, Hootsuite. I’ve seen teams waste thousands on tools they barely use though. Just because Salesforce bought Slack doesn’t mean every PR team needs a complicated setup. Sometimes a shared Google Sheet works fine for smaller operations.

Press release distribution is its own thing. PR Newswire charges around $400-$1,500 per release depending on reach. Business Wire is similar. But honestly? For startups, just emailing journalists directly often works better than paying for distribution that gets your release buried with 500 others.

Measuring Success (Good Luck With That)

This is the frustrating part. How do you measure PR? Media impressions sound good – “We got 50 million impressions this quarter!” – but what does that actually mean? Did anyone read past the headline? Did it change opinions? Nobody really knows.

Some teams track AVE (advertising value equivalency), which tries to calculate what the coverage would’ve cost as paid advertising. Most PR professionals will tell you AVE is garbage methodology, but executives love it because it’s a number they can put in a spreadsheet.

Better metrics might be sentiment analysis of coverage, share of voice compared to competitors, or website traffic from media mentions. Though even that’s imperfect. When Tesla gets coverage, their stock moves – that’s measurable. When a B2B software company gets mentioned in a trade publication, the impact is murkier.

Agency vs In-House PR

PR agencies charge anywhere from $5,000 to $50,000+ per month for retainer work. Edelman, Weber Shandwick, FleishmanHillard – these big names have hundreds of employees and work with Fortune 500s. But they also have junior staff doing most of the actual work while partners manage relationships.

In-house teams know the company better and can move faster on some things. They don’t have to bill by the hour or juggle multiple clients. But they might lack the media connections or specialized crisis expertise that agencies have built over decades.

The hybrid model is getting more common – small in-house team for day-to-day stuff, agency for major launches or crisis support. Makes sense financially for companies that can’t justify 10 full-time PR people but need more than one or two.

The Skills That Actually Matter

Writing, obviously. But it’s not creative writing or even journalistic writing exactly. It’s translating complex business things into clear language that a reporter can turn into a story. Being able to write a quote that sounds like an actual human said it rather than corporate jargon.

Relationship building is probably more important than writing ability. The best PR people I’ve worked with could get calls returned because journalists trusted them not to waste their time. They pitched stories that were actually newsworthy, not just “our CEO said something obvious about AI trends.”

Staying calm under pressure matters too. When something goes wrong and everyone’s panicking, the PR team needs to think clearly about messaging and next steps. Can’t let panic lead to shooting from the hip with statements that make things worse.

Where Things Are Headed

AI is already changing PR work. Tools like ChatGPT can draft basic press releases or social posts in seconds. Some teams use AI for media monitoring and sentiment analysis – processing way more data than humans could manually review.

But the relationship piece? That’s still human-to-human. No AI is calling up a reporter to pitch a story or reading the room in a crisis meeting. At least not yet. Though who knows what happens in 5 years.

The other big shift is everyone becoming a publisher. Companies don’t need traditional media as much as they used to. They can build audiences directly through blogs, podcasts, YouTube channels, LinkedIn. Red Bull basically became a media company that happens to sell energy drinks. Their PR strategy is completely different from how Coca-Cola or PepsiCo approaches it.

What Most People Miss

Here’s what outsiders don’t get about PR teams – they’re often the ones saying “no” to bad ideas. The CEO wants to tweet something inflammatory? PR talks them down. Marketing wants to make a claim that’s technically misleading? PR flags it. They’re not just promotional; they’re protective.

Also, the best PR work is invisible. When you don’t hear about something negative, that might be because the PR team handled it before it became news. When a product launch goes smoothly and media coverage is positive, that’s not luck – that’s months of preparation, relationship building, and strategic planning.

The job has gotten more complicated, not easier. Used to be you could focus on 10-15 key journalists and a few trade publications. Now it’s influencers, podcasters, YouTubers, Reddit communities, niche newsletters. The media landscape fragmented and PR teams have to cover way more ground with often the same or fewer resources.

Look, I’m biased because this is what I do, but I think PR teams are undervalued at most companies until something goes wrong. Then suddenly everyone realizes why having smart people who know how to communicate externally actually matters. Just maybe don’t wait until the crisis to figure that out.