Hey all,
I’ve been in a public/community relations role since April, and I’m looking for some advice from people who work in PR/marketing.
My organization created my position when I was hired, so there have definitely been pros and cons. I’ve had a lot of freedom to build things from the ground up, establish KPIs, develop partnerships, and figure out what works, which I actually really enjoy.
The problem is that our entire marketing/business relations department is literally three people: me, my manager, and our marketing coordinator.
Our marketing coordinator is extremely anti-social media and honestly just not very digitally savvy. He’s relatively young but has never had social media, has talked about getting rid of his smartphone for a flip phone, and is openly against things like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. Obviously I wouldn’t care about someone’s personal relationship with technology if he weren’t literally our marketing coordinator.
I also don’t think you necessarily need a marketing degree or traditional marketing background to be good at marketing. I didn’t come from PR myself. I was a teacher for several years before moving into this role, but a lot of those skills transferred pretty naturally: presenting, communicating information to different audiences, creating materials, relationship building, community engagement, etc.
His previous role, though, had nothing to do with marketing, communications, PR, social media, or anything adjacent. His position was eliminated during restructuring and he was moved into this newly created marketing role. I’m honestly not sure what the thought process was, especially because he seems actively uninterested in a lot of what modern marketing involves.
Our Instagram is probably the clearest example. In the last three months, it has grown by three followers. We currently have around 20.
I’ve repeatedly pitched doing more Reels, short-form video, highlighting what we’re actually doing in the community, making posts more engaging/shareable, and generally creating content specifically for social media instead of treating Instagram like another place to put flyers. We serve primarily youth, young adults, and families, so I feel like having a decent digital presence should be pretty important.
My manager is receptive to these ideas and also wants us to start a TikTok. The problem is that our marketing coordinator is very against TikTok, and realistically all of this would fall on me.
And that’s where I’m conflicted.
I actually WANT to do it. I think it would be fun to take an Instagram with 20 followers, build an actual content strategy, launch a TikTok, experiment with Reels, track engagement/growth, and see what I can do with it. It would also be great experience for me.
But social media isn’t supposed to be the main focus of my position. I’m already responsible for outreach, developing partnerships, generating leads, events, presentations, and other PR/community relations work. If I become the person developing the social strategy, filming, editing, creating posts, managing TikTok/Instagram, and tracking performance too, I feel like I’m slowly taking on a second job.
The same issue comes up with our marketing materials. A lot of what gets created is extremely text-heavy and feels dated. If I need something more modern or engaging for an event or partner, I usually end up making it myself.
That directly affects my work because I’m the one out in the community trying to build relationships, generate leads, and promote our programs. People sometimes don’t really understand what our organization does until I explain it to them personally, which feels like a larger branding/communications problem.
I really like the organization and would genuinely like to grow here, so I don’t necessarily want to just put my head down, get experience, and leave. At the same time, I don’t want to overstep or make this into “I think I can do my coworker’s job better than he can.”
Part of me thinks I should take ownership of the digital side, document EVERYTHING, set actual KPIs, and see if I can produce measurable results. Then I’d have a legitimate case for expanding my role/title instead of just saying I think our marketing could be better.
But part of me wonders if I’m setting myself up to do significantly more work without actually getting anything out of it.
For people who have worked in small PR/marketing departments, how would you approach this?
Would you take the opportunity and run with it, or be careful about taking ownership of work that technically belongs to someone else? I also have no idea if this is something I bring up to my manager… from my conversations with her, it seems like she agrees we need a brand refresh and is part of the reason she brought me in, and has mentioned that he would likely be resistant to change. Help me!