When you are a growing artist or organisation and you struggle with gaining visibility, it can be a good idea to start your Public Relations (PR) journey earlier on in your processes. 

What I come across often is a project coming near to conclusion and a PR is asked to sell or promote it in line with the marketing campaign. This means you not only lose out on crucial long lead press targets but also hit the press cold with your project at the last minute.

Laying the groundwork by placing PR at the heart of your organisational and marketing strategy and retaining a PR throughout the year create a few great things:

• You build a strong relationship with your PR
• Your PR learns your organisation’s ethos and projects in depth
• You can promote everything you do to the right press targets as you go along
• Journalists and writers get to know you because they are hearing from you consistently
• You gain fans and supporters who start to come to you for news

Laying the groundwork means that you might not get any hits or responses immediately, but over time as you integrate PR into your strategic planning, the opportunities for more newsworthy stories increases and you will start to find that people want to write about your work.