It Takes a Village: Understanding the Full Scope of Modern Communications

If you ask my kids (or even my former colleagues) what I do for work, they’ll say something vague like, “She’s on her computer a lot and scrolls through Facebook all day.”

I mean, they're not entirely wrong.

But “communications” is a big, sprawling universe that covers everything from crafting a CEO’s heartfelt speech to figuring out the perfect social media caption that makes you look both approachable and cool. It’s the art (and science) of making sure the right message hits the right people at the right time, and doesn’t sound like it was written by a robot with a head cold.

It’s also not one tidy little job. It’s dozens of moving parts, often working together and sometimes elbowing each other in the ribs, like siblings in the back seat of a road trip.

The Big Picture Stuff (a.k.a. Where Strategy Lives)

• Corporate Communications – The umbrella over the whole shebang. It’s about how the company communicates as a whole, both internally and externally, and ensuring it all connects back to the bigger business goals. For example, the messaging for a new service initiative might touch everything from a press release to an employee newsletter to a CEO's LinkedIn post.

• Brand Strategy – Deciding what your company is (and isn’t) so people can recognize it faster than they spot a Target store from the highway. This includes tone of voice, visual identity, and brand values. Brand strategy often overlaps with marketing, public relations, and design. Because your “who we are” has to shine through in every interaction.

• Strategic Communications – This is the “master plan” that ensures all messaging (internal, external, online, offline) feels consistent and intentional. Without it, PR might be shouting one thing, marketing another, and internal comms is just whispering “good luck” to everyone.

  
  

Talking to the Inside Crowd

• Internal Communications – The lifeline between leadership and employees. It’s newsletters, intranet updates, company-wide emails, Teams announcements, scripts for events. Basically, keeping everyone in the loop so they don’t hear company news from a cousin’s friend’s Facebook post. Internal comms often works closely with HR (employee engagement), PR (when internal news also goes public), and marketing (because when a new product or services launches, employees should be the first cheerleaders).

Talking to the Outside World

• Public Relations (PR) – The art of getting good stories into the world and keeping bad ones from blowing up. This includes press releases, media pitches, interview prep, crisis comms, and building relationships with journalists who may or may not return your calls.

• Product Communications – Making products sound irresistible without boring people to death. “Introducing the Series 47 Model C” isn’t as exciting as “The gadget that will save you 15 minutes every morning.” This overlaps with sales, marketing, and advertising because everyone’s trying to get the audience to want it.

• Sales Communications – Helping sales teams pitch in ways that connect, not repel. Sales decks, talking points, case studies. All designed so your salespeople don’t sound like they’re starring in a bad 1980s car commercial.

Marketing & Creative Magic

• Marketing – The game plan for how to reach your audience and convince them you’re worth their time (and money). This overlaps with just about everything: PR, advertising, brand strategy, digital comms—you name it.

• Advertising – Paying for attention. Billboards, commercials, sponsored social posts, Google ads, newspaper and magazine print ads. Advertising teams often pull from marketing strategy and brand guidelines to make sure the message matches.

• Content Creation – The making of “stuff” people actually consume: blogs, videos, newsletters, brochures, infographics, social posts. Content overlaps with everything. PR uses it, marketing promotes it, brand strategy guides it, and social media blasts it out.

• Graphic Design – The visual glue that holds the story together. Without it, you’ve just got a bunch of words floating around in a sad Word doc. Graphic design brings brand identity to life. Everything from the company logo (your business’s “face”) to the color palette, typography, and layout choices that make materials instantly recognizable. Good design isn’t just about “making things pretty”; it’s about making them clear, memorable, and aligned with the brand’s voice. It influences how people feel about your message before they’ve even read a single word. In communications, design and messaging work hand-in-hand. You can have the best copy in the world, but if it’s presented like a middle school science fair poster, no one will take it seriously.

• Social Media Communications – Running the brand’s voice on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Overlaps with PR (news announcements), marketing (campaigns), and customer service (when you’re fielding DMs about why a product hasn’t shipped yet).

Digital & Online Universe

• Digital Communications – All the online ways a brand talks to its audience: websites, emails, online campaigns, SEO content, and sometimes that chatbot that jumps in with “Hi! Can I help you?” before you’ve even clicked anything. Digital is the great connector—every other category feeds into it.

Here’s the Thing: No One Can Do It All

Some companies hear this list and think, Cool, we’ll just hire one person to handle everything. To which I say: LOL. No. Expecting one person to handle all of communications is like expecting one parent to raise a child completely alone while also holding down a full-time job, cooking three Pinterest-worthy meals a day, attending every school spirit week, and somehow keeping the mountain of laundry from taking over the house. Technically possible? Maybe. Mentally sustainable? Absolutely not.

As much as I’d love to be a professional in every single thing mentioned above, I’m not. No one is.

Does your communications person need to understand all of these areas? Yes. They should know how they work, where they overlap, and why they matter. Should you expect them to do all of them? Not unless you enjoy watching people explode.

Teamwork is essential in communications. Each specialty requires time, focus, and skill and the magic happens when these roles collaborate, not when one poor soul is duct-taping all the pieces together.

A thriving communications function is like raising a child. It takes a village. You’ve got the logical parent who keeps everyone on schedule (internal comms), the fun parent who hypes up every win (marketing), the wise grandparent who shares stories with the neighborhood (PR), the crafty aunt who makes it look good (graphic design), and the tech-savvy uncle who manages all the gadgets (digital). Try to do it all yourself and you’ll burn out faster than a toddler after birthday cake. And we all know how that ends.