Many museums and other larger arts institutions have press, PR, and promotion separated into their own departments, however many mid-size and small museums, independent art spaces, or galleries do not.
Here are some rules of thumb:
Press releases: Need to be received by a press contact a MINIMUM of 6 weeks before the opening of an exhibit, or the beginning of an event. One-off events or programs need even more lead time, if you actually want any sort of feature. Institutions that advertise with these press outlets often have some latitude, and so do pre-existing relationships with those press contacts, however neither should be exploited on a regular basis.
Research: All research should be done a minimum of 2 months prior to sending the press release, giving you 2 weeks to process the info into Press Releases and other Promotional and Printed Materials.
Editors and Non-Content Providing contributors: Add another 2-4 weeks depending on contractual obligation.
Social Media and Other Web Outreach: Should be updated 4 weeks prior, and should be maintained and reposted a minimum of once a week in the weeks prior, and ideally posted/cross-posted by multiple users. Its very hard to orchestrate such incentives, or promotional strategies without sufficient lead time. The more it gets posted, the more it gets re-posted, the more it gets re-posted, the more serendipity to reach new constituents. THIS IS COUNTER-INTUITIVE to all other PR strategies, and in fact is usually the thing that is THE MOST DIFFICULT for by-the-book experienced events marketers. Get over it.
Twitter: should have at least one update every 3 days, there are statistics on which time of day, and the frequency depending on the market. This isn’t expressly necessary, however consider this: Is your audience primarily professional? Then assume in a rapidly updating stream of information like twitter that your audience won’t see something posted between 9am and 11:30 am and 1pm-5pm in your time zone. Also, the frequency of posts has a strong effect on the position that those posts and your posts in general appear in searches, which increases your followers, which in turn increases the position of your search results, and so and and so forth. Also, the frequency of posts that include links dramatically decreases your position in searches, and in fact may exclude them as they try to limit advertisements….So you need a diverse and frequent stream of posting for maximum bang for your buck.
