Top 12 Public Relations Manager Skills to Put on Your Resume

Landing a role as a Public Relations Manager demands a nimble mix of clarity, persuasion, and strategy. In a crowded market, the right skills spotlight your judgment and your grip on reputation, measurement, and momentum. Put them forward with purpose; hiring managers notice.

Public Relations Manager Skills

1. Cision
2. Meltwater
3. Hootsuite
4. Google Analytics
5. SEO
6. Semrush
7. Canva
8. Adobe Creative Cloud
9. Mailchimp
10. WordPress
11. Salesforce
12. Crisis Management

1. Cision

Cision is a comprehensive PR and earned media platform for media list building, distribution, monitoring, and performance measurement across channels.

Why It's Important

Cision centralizes media intelligence and outreach, helping PR managers track impact, shape narratives, and engage the right journalists and influencers with speed and precision.

How to Improve Cision Skills

1. Strengthen media lists: Clean and segment contacts, tag beats and regions, and track interactions so pitches land where they should.

2. Refine targeting: Use performance insights to time distributions, tailor angles, and prioritize outlets that actually convert to coverage.

3. Monitor and engage: Set alerts for brand, execs, and industry topics; acknowledge positives, address risks, and route issues internally fast.

4. Report with intent: Build dashboards aligned to KPIs such as reach, sentiment, and share of voice; compare by campaign and timeframe.

5. Use rich assets: Embed visuals and video in releases to lift pickup and time-on-page.

6. Keep learning: Track product updates and attend trainings to uncover features you’re not using yet.

Small tweaks compound—targeting, timing, and better lists will level up results.

How to Display Cision Skills on Your Resume

2. Meltwater

Meltwater is a media intelligence and social analytics platform that helps PR teams monitor coverage, track competitors, gauge sentiment, and measure the reach and resonance of communications.

Why It's Important

It surfaces the stories shaping perception—who’s talking, where, and how—so strategy can move with the news cycle, not behind it.

How to Improve Meltwater Skills

1. Dial in your queries: Use precise keywords, Boolean operators, language and region filters, and exclusions to cut noise and reduce duplicates.

2. Measure what matters: Align dashboards to PR outcomes—share of voice, sentiment, domain authority of coverage, backlink counts, and referral traffic.

3. Work your influencer list: Build and segment journalist/influencer profiles; personalize outreach and track responses over time.

4. Listen for signals: Set early-warning alerts for negative spikes, sensitive topics, or executive mentions; prepare holding lines in advance.

5. Review and refine: Quarterly audits of searches, tags, and reports keep insights relevant as narratives shift.

How to Display Meltwater Skills on Your Resume

3. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a social media management platform that lets PR teams plan content, monitor conversations, collaborate, and analyze performance across networks from one place.

Why It's Important

It compresses workload—coordination, listening, and reporting—into a single workflow, enabling timely engagement and a steady, on-brand presence.

How to Improve Hootsuite Skills

• Plan with intent: Use the Planner and content library to map campaigns, approvals, and asset reuse across markets.

• Track what you tag: Standardize UTM parameters and post tagging to connect social activity to traffic, sign-ups, or coverage.

• Listen deeply: Build streams for keywords, executive names, and competitors; save searches and route sensitive posts fast.

• Tighten teamwork: Set roles, approvals, and assignments so nothing goes live without the right eyes on it.

• Prepare for crises: Create pause-all protocols, escalation paths, and templated replies; monitor in real time during high-risk moments.

• Automate reporting: Schedule stakeholder-ready reports that highlight trends and exceptions, not just vanity metrics.

How to Display Hootsuite Skills on Your Resume

4. Google Analytics

Google Analytics (GA4) tracks website and app behavior, revealing how audiences arrive, act, and convert—vital context for PR impact and content decisions.

Why It's Important

It turns anecdotes into evidence. You see which stories moved people, which referrals mattered, and where attention fell off.

How to Improve Google Analytics Skills

1. Set clear outcomes: Define conversion events (downloads, sign-ups, media kit views) and mark key pages tied to PR efforts.

2. Use UTMs everywhere: Tag links in releases, pitches, and social posts to attribute traffic and engagement to specific campaigns.

3. Build PR-focused views: Create Explorations and dashboards for referral surges from earned media, landing page engagement, and assisted conversions.

4. Segment smartly: Compare new vs. returning visitors, media-driven sessions, and geography to tailor follow-on content.

5. Watch in real time: During launches or crises, monitor live traffic and top content; pivot quickly if behavior deviates.

6. Analyze acquisition: Use traffic acquisition and source/medium to evaluate social, search, and referral performance tied to PR.

How to Display Google Analytics Skills on Your Resume

5. SEO

SEO is the craft of improving how content is discovered and ranked, so your organization’s stories surface when people search.

Why It's Important

Positive coverage and authoritative pages shouldn’t hide in the third results page. SEO pushes reputation to the front row.

How to Improve SEO Skills

1. Keyword research: Identify relevant queries and weave them naturally into press releases, blogs, and newsroom pages.

2. Follow search principles: Align with Google Search Essentials; prioritize helpful, people-first content and clear E‑E-A-T signals.

3. Optimize metadata: Strong titles, meta descriptions, headers, and structured data make context obvious to crawlers.

4. Mobile-first: Ensure responsive design and smooth core web vitals on phones; test and fix what drags.

5. Speed counts: Compress images, minimize scripts, and reduce redirects to keep pages quick.

6. HTTPS everywhere: Secure the site—trust and rankings both benefit.

7. Earn better links: Turn coverage into backlinks; provide media assets, data, and executive quotes that merit citation.

8. Amplify socially: While not a direct ranking factor, social distribution increases discovery and linking opportunities.

9. Measure and iterate: Track performance in analytics and search consoles; adjust content and internal links accordingly.

10. Local when needed: Maintain a complete Google Business Profile and consistent NAP if location matters.

How to Display SEO Skills on Your Resume

6. Semrush

Semrush is a digital marketing suite for SEO, competitive research, content, PPC, and PR-oriented monitoring. For PR, it shines in tracking brand mentions, uncovering link opportunities, and sizing up the landscape.

Why It's Important

It connects the dots between coverage, visibility, and traffic—so you can prove impact and find the next opening.

How to Improve Semrush Skills

1. Monitor the brand: Use brand mention tracking to spot coverage, missed backlinks, and sentiment shifts.

2. Turn coverage into authority: With backlink tools, identify unlinked mentions and pitch quick fixes; prioritize high-authority domains.

3. Track positions: Monitor rankings for newsroom pages and key announcements to see how they hold after launch.

4. Map topics: Use topic and keyword gap insights to build an editorial calendar that supports PR narratives.

5. Watch competitors: Track rivals’ media mentions, backlinks, and topical focus to counterprogram smartly.

6. Set alerts and report: Schedule alerts for spikes or drops; automate KPI reports for stakeholders.

7. Tie to outcomes: Apply UTMs and track assisted conversions so earned media influence shows up in analytics.

How to Display Semrush Skills on Your Resume

7. Canva

Canva is an approachable design tool for creating presentations, social graphics, one-pagers, and press assets—fast, consistent, on-brand.

Why It's Important

Visuals travel farther. Clean, cohesive materials make your story easier to publish and harder to ignore.

How to Improve Canva Skills

1. Build a Brand Kit: Lock logos, colors, and type to keep every asset unmistakably yours.

2. Speed with templates: Create PR-ready templates for press releases, media alerts, fact sheets, and recap decks.

3. Go dynamic: Use animations, short video, and infographics; export appropriately for each platform.

4. Collaborate live: Comment, assign, and version assets so approvals move, not stall.

5. Bulk and AI helpers: Try bulk create and text-to-image where appropriate; keep human review tight.

6. Prepare press kits: Package logos, headshots, bios, product shots, and usage guidelines in neat, shareable formats.

7. Review performance: When scheduling from Canva, track engagement and fold insights into your next round of creative.

How to Display Canva Skills on Your Resume

8. Adobe Creative Cloud

Adobe Creative Cloud (formerly Creative Suite) is a set of professional tools—Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro, After Effects, and more—for building polished visuals, motion, and layouts.

Why It's Important

When the story needs craft and nuance, these tools deliver—brand-right, press-ready, and built to scale across formats.

How to Improve Adobe Creative Cloud Skills

1. Use Libraries: Centralize logos, colors, and components so every team output looks consistent.

2. Template everything: Create InDesign and Photoshop templates for media kits, reports, and social sets to speed delivery.

3. Master the essentials: Layers, masks, smart objects, and styles in Photoshop/Illustrator save hours in revisions.

4. Edit collaboratively: Set shared projects and comment workflows in Premiere Pro to streamline feedback cycles.

5. Automate routine work: Actions, scripts, and batch processing handle repetitive resizing and exports.

6. Motion matters: Use After Effects for quick lower-thirds, logo stings, and explainer snippets that punch above their weight.

7. Stay current: New features arrive often; a quarterly learning sprint keeps your toolkit sharp.

How to Display Adobe Creative Suite Skills on Your Resume

9. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is a marketing automation and email platform for building lists, segmenting audiences, sending campaigns, and analyzing engagement.

Why It's Important

Email still converts. For PR, it’s a direct line to media lists, stakeholders, and communities that care about updates.

How to Improve Mailchimp Skills

1. Segment with intent: Group by beat, engagement, geography, or lifecycle to keep messages razor-relevant.

2. Personalize: Use dynamic content and merge fields to tailor intros, subject lines, and CTAs.

3. Integrate your CRM: Sync contacts and activity so context follows the conversation.

4. Automate journeys: Triggers for sign-ups, event reminders, follow-ups, and post-coverage roundups keep momentum without handholding.

5. Test and learn: A/B subject lines, send times, and formats; keep a living playbook of what wins.

6. Read the data: Monitor opens, clicks, and conversions; prune stale lists and re-engage thoughtfully.

How to Display Mailchimp Skills on Your Resume

10. WordPress

WordPress is a flexible content management system for building newsrooms, blogs, landing pages, and full sites with themes and plugins.

Why It's Important

It gets content live quickly, keeps it editable, and supports the integrations PR teams lean on.

How to Improve WordPress Skills

1. SEO foundations: Add a reputable SEO plugin, craft search-friendly titles and meta, and use clean URL structures.

2. Responsive, accessible themes: Choose performance-minded themes and test across devices and assistive tech.

3. Speed wins: Caching, image compression, and a CDN cut load times—rankings and readers both benefit.

4. Content calendar: Use an editorial calendar plugin to plan launches, embargoes, and handoffs.

5. Social integration: Embed feeds and add share controls to extend reach.

6. Analytics: Connect GA4 to track PR-driven traffic and conversions; set goals aligned to comms objectives.

7. Security: Harden logins, keep plugins updated, and run security monitoring; protect the brand’s home base.

8. Feedback loops: Forms and surveys capture media requests, speaking interest, and story ideas.

How to Display WordPress Skills on Your Resume

11. Salesforce

Salesforce is a cloud CRM that centralizes contacts, activities, and communications—useful for tracking media relationships, outreach, and outcomes.

Why It's Important

Visibility. It brings order to interactions, prevents dropped threads, and makes personalized follow-up easy at scale.

How to Improve Salesforce Skills

1. Customize for PR: Create custom objects and fields for journalists, outlets, pitches, and coverage; standardize picklists and tags.

2. Integrate: Connect email, calendar, social, and monitoring tools so activity and context sync automatically.

3. Automate with Flow: Use Salesforce Flow to trigger tasks, alerts, and follow-ups based on events and timelines.

4. Report what leaders want: Build dashboards for pipeline of stories, response rates, coverage secured, and ROI indicators.

5. Drive adoption: Short, role-based training and clear processes keep data clean and the system trusted.

How to Display Salesforce Skills on Your Resume

12. Crisis Management

Crisis management is the structured, swift response to unexpected events that threaten reputation—planning, communication, and recovery working in concert.

Why It's Important

Trust evaporates quickly. A disciplined approach contains damage, steadies stakeholders, and accelerates the return to normal.

How to Improve Crisis Management Skills

1. Prepare deeply: Build scenario playbooks, define roles, draft holding statements, and run simulations.

2. Monitor relentlessly: Track signals across news, social, and communities; set alerts for unusual volume or negative swings.

3. Communicate clearly: Be timely, factual, and empathetic; update as facts evolve and close the loop afterward.

4. Act fast: Control the narrative early; unify spokespeople and channels to avoid mixed messages.

5. Debrief and improve: After-action reviews turn lessons into updated plans, training, and decision trees.

How to Display Crisis Management Skills on Your Resume