Creating a media kit is a great way to stand out to potential blog sponsors and companies looking to work with new bloggers. You need to convince them that your blog is the right place for them to invest their advertising dollars and a killer media kit is a great place to start!
It can take a little while to pull all your information together but it’s a great opportunity to have a good think about your blog and define your main message, image and goals. Once it’s done, it’s easy to update as your numbers and focus changes and evolves over time.
So what is a media kit?
Simply put, it’s a tool you use to sell your brand and your blog. It is your promotional vehicle written for prospective blog sponsors that contains everything they need to know about working with you. It is a chance to show off your blog and inject your personality and style and showcase what makes your blog unique.
> VISIT THE MEDIA KIT GALLERY
Here is what you will need to get started –
1 DESCRIBE YOU BLOG & ITS MAIN FEATURES
Write an introduction that clearly outlines the theme of your blog.
Give some personal information about yourself so your reader can connect on a more personal level with you.
Mention the regular features you write about, special projects, link-ups that you hold or any other key features that draw your readers in.
You can briefly mention some of your key press coverage and outline what kind of readership your blog has so potential sponsors know who their main audience will be.
Include an inviting profile image.
2 BLOG STATISTICS & REACH
– Monthly Unique Visitors
– Monthly Page views
– Subscribers (Email, RSS, Social Media Subscribers)
Keep your statistics up to date and mention what date your statistics were taken – Eg ‘Updated August 2013’
Don’t include statistics that are not very impressive. If you are a new blogger with low numbers, tell potential sponsors about your growth. Eg – ‘Blog readership has doubled since last month. Email subscribers grew by 70% this month.
(Google Analytics is the place to start. If you don’t have an account head over and sign up and install analytics on your blog so you can start tracking your audience).
3 IMAGES
Add interest by sprinkling your media kit with photos from your blog.
You want to give potential sponsors a feel for your site so use images that portray your blog theme, style and personality.
You want to make your media kit visually appealing as a reader can get a little lost in a sea of words and statistics.
A great example is the Busy Budgeting Mumma’s Media Kit. Check it out below. She uses a range of images from her blog, and blog screenshots coupled with a variety of fonts and colours to create a very engaging media kit.
4 SPONSORSHIP BRIEF / ADVERTISING RATES
You need to paint a clear picture of just what a prospective sponsor will be getting when they work with you.
These could include –
Advertising: include sizes, rates and placement areas of ads. Provide details about how readers will view these ads, such as in readers, emails or online only. You may want to charge a little more for ads appearing at the top or have a system where ads change frequently and all ads receive the same exposure in the top position.
Complimentary products & product reviews: If people send you items or approach you to review their products, outline your fees and your policies for disclosure of free items. You may want to add in that only things that you feel fit the demographic and interest of your readers will be mentioned on the blog and that this is at your own discretion.
Giveaways: outline the guidelines for running a giveaway. These could be a minimal prize amount, a number of months as an advertiser before running a giveaway, a fee or products provided to you in exchange for a giveaway.
Payment and image guidelines: provide details about the timeframe in which payment is required, which is usually best to collect before the sponsorship begins. Give details of the images that you need, the size and quality and the type of files that you can work with.
5 TESTIMONIALS & PRESS COVERAGE
Testimonials add authenticity and an unbiased voice to your blog. Adding in testimonials from past blog sponsors or people who have worked with you in some form can help establish the trust of prospective blog sponsors because testimonials come across in a more believable voice and promote your product in a convincing fashion.
Having a few great testimonials can help get people over the line in making a decision about whether to work with you or not.
The key to using testimonials is to choose the ones that work the best for what it is you want to achieve. So if you are wanting to sell advertising for example, seek out some testimonials from past / current sponsors that specifically detail how your blog worked for them. General testimonials are good but ones that are specific and provide information about the results achieved can be more effective.
It can seem a little daunting asking for testimonials but more often than not, people will be happy to write something for you. To make it a little easier for them you could ask them a few specific questions about how your products / advertising worked for them so that you get a more tailored answer. Or just keep it short a sweet and ask for a few nice words and let them know that you will link back to their blog.
Has your blog been featured in any notable places that you feel prospective blog sponsors might like to know about or you think they should?
Add in a few lines about where you have been featured, keeping it simple and brief.
6 CALL TO ACTION & CONTACT DETAILS
After your prospective sponsor has read through your media kit, you want to give a call to action and make it very easy for them to get in touch with you. Provide details about how they can begin their sponsorship by simply emailing you and provide a link to a page where they can purchase their ads if you have set something like this up.
Include your social media network details so your sponsor can reach you through their preferred method.
7 PROOFREAD / PDF / MARKET
Proofread, proofread and proofread. You want to put your very best foot forward with this media kit as it is what represents you and your brand. Make it perfect and don’t rush it. Spelling mistakes and a poor layout aren’t going to win over a whole lot of people. You want to show people that you are serious about working with them and a polished media kit is just the place to start.
Save as a PDF! This looks far more professional than someone downloading a Microsoft Word document. If you are unable to save as a PDF on your computer, there are free programs you can use such as PDFForge and doPDF.
The other option is to create a ‘media kit page’ on your blog and you could then email people a link to this page. Here is an example of one.
Now for the fun part!
Send it out to companies and people that you would like to work with and add it to your blog as a direct download or tell people that they can email you for a copy.
8 KEEP YOUR KIT UP TO DATE
Make sure that you keep your media kit up to date by updating your blog statistics every few months and maybe adding in some different testimonials. You can freshen things up with some new images or by modifying the layout but once you have done all the hard work to put it together, these minor changes will take far less time and give you a resource that you can use for many years.
> VISIT THE MEDIA KIT GALLERY
Here is the concise version of my media kit to give you some ideas.