Human comms for humans? Eh?

I’m a communicator. A public relations consultant, to be precise.

That means I make sure that whatever you do, whatever your business purpose is, a bunch of other people understand and empathise with and want to act on the things that you say.

Simple.

There are obviously some complicated professional steps to take on the way to make sure that all happens, and what I do depends on who you want to talk to and what you want them to do – but that’s the gist.

Of course, there are some variations.

Different comms functions do different things.

Communicators? Who does what?

Marketers write emails and ads and social media posts so people want to buy stuff because of what you say.

Public relations specialists write news stories and blogs and thought leadership articles so people trust and respect and want to listen to what you say.

Change comms or corporate comms or government policy comms are where different kinds of comms specialists explain different kinds of things.

They talk about policy changes, or business changes, or new ideas about values so people act on what you say (even when they aren’t really sure at the beginning whether they want to).

Those are the basics.

Fellow professionals, I promise I know there’s a lot more to it – this is just a very short simplified version.

I’ve personally done all of those things professionally during my career.

SEO – I was one of the early Wales adopters, head hunted for projects way back in the early 2000s.

Websites written from start to finish so the search engines will find them – yep, done that.

Marketing and social media marketing – done that, and set up the teams to keep it going.

Agency copywriting – done that.

PR for governments, SMEs, and third sector organisations.

I’ve rolled out a lot of nationally important campaigns.

They definitely made a difference to your life and mine, even if you didn’t realise it.

Change comms, using internal and external channels to bring thousands of employees and stakeholders on a change journey. I’ve done that.

Stakeholder comms and reactive media and proactive media and community comms and freelance journalism. I’ve done all those, too.

I was even chief exec of a mental health charity in Canada looking after 17 employees for a while.

But now I’m a founder and director of my own PR and communications consultancy.

And oh my goodness – believe me, it’s much harder to explain what you do when you’re talking about yourself.

There’s already this long-standing joke that no-one really knows what comms professionals do. Traditionally communicators aren’t very good at explaining it.

I hold my hands up to that in the past.

So, here’s my founder’s explanation of what I do, as PR/ communications consultant and director:

• I listen with genuine interest and enthusiasm when you tell me stories about why you do what you want to do and what you want to do next.

• My brain works double time coming up with opportunities and risks and logical thoughts and step by step plans and creative ideas for partnering with people I know and media contacts and forthcoming news stories.

• I think hard about who you want to help or work with, and probably go and speak to them too to find out what it all means to them and how what you do helps them or makes them think differently.

• And then I translate all those busy ideas into clear plans and simple human language that make people feel happy or empowered or determined, and that they want to act on.

• And then I create it all.

Got it now?

Excellent.

Let’s chat