I love a good media kit. I love going deeper into the world of a blogger, seeing what makes them tick, where their readers are loving them and how they are tapping into their community. It’s breathtaking, really.
But, there’s a problem. Most media kits stop short of really taking my breath away because they let these very common mistakes get in the way of their WOW factor. If a media kit makes it harder for me to do my job then, as much as I love them, the sad reality is that they’ll get glossed over.
Today I want to take you through the most common mistakes I see bloggers making when it comes to their media kits and show you what I think is a better way of doing things.
Let’s get started…
1. Your media kit is too long
Without even looking at your personal media kit I’m going to make a guess that you could cull at least half of what’s in there. I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings but here’s the truth – the media kit is not the place for you to include your back story. While I know you’re trying to convey the special essence of you, your story and your blog it’s not where I’ll go to get that information. In fact, if I’m reading your media kit it’s because I already know your back story and what I am now looking for is some more info about how your blog, and you work. I’m already loving your style, your engagement and your brand – what I’m after now is some of the nitty gritty and it’s not all about stats, it’s about how you and your community work!
TIP: Your media kit should be 1 -2 pages at max. If you have a 2 page MK it should contain a LOT of white space and some images.
2. It’s hard to read
Lots of text, no white space and no images can make it hard to read. We’ll go into details about well, the details of a MK next up but for now I’d love you to start thinking about keeping things simple, making sure there’s lots of white space on the page and using images or photos wherever you can.
- Keep it short and punchy
- Images are good – use them to break up text, include dot points instead of long sentences. Canva is a fantastic tool for creating appealing, sharable images and it’s free!
- Make it a PDF. If your word program doesn’t have a “convert to PDF” option when you save then there are plenty of free ones online that let you do this. This is especially important if you have included images.
3. Key information is hidden or hard to find
I get why you go for the long form option, bloggers are writers and you want to make me fall in love with you and what you have to offer. I know I’ve said it before but it’s true – if I’ve asked for your media kit I’m already there, or pretty close to it – the way to ‘seal the deal’ is to make sure you are really clear on the details I’ll be looking for. Here’s an overview of things to include, and it’s totally OK to use dot points! In fact, if you can do some of this visually, then I’d recommend doing that via Canva – breaking information up in ways that make it easy to digest is a really smart way to go!
- Your name
- The city or state you live in
- If you are a parenting blogger then the ages and genders of your children is helpful
- Monthly stats – pageviews, uniques are best. Use Google Analytics for this information – if you don’t have it installed then now is the time! These should be kept reasonably up to date. If your stats are over 6 months old then you need to be refreshing your info!
- Social stats – include the networks you use the most, and consider a comment “I also have active profiles on x, y, z” as appropriate.
- Costs for working with you. This should include what you offer and what the brand gets – e.g A sponsored posts costs $300 and will be the headline post on my blog for x and will be shared on the following social media networks x number of times etc… It’s also helpful to include if you open to unpaid reviews and whether you open to negotiation.
~ Anything that is non-negotiable should be outlined (I required giveaways or I don’t return products etc…) Again, short and to the point and work hard to use friendly language in this section. Though you want to be short and to the point you don’t want to convey a friendly tone in this section – adjectives help with this
4. Have you included some social proof?
You don’t need to go overboard here but if you can add in a couple of testimonies or information from or about brands you have previously worked with and any outcomes generated then do it. For example:
- Key brands or agencies you have done work with
- Testimonials from those brands
- Outcomes such as average number of entries for competitions
- Testimonials for readers about why they like your blog and/or if they have made a purchasing decision based on something you have written.
Again – keep it short and sweet. The point of this is not to go into detail but provide a snapshot of your influence and relevncya
5. Make sure your blog backs it up!
A media kit should be in sync with you blog – they go hand in hand so design them to go hand in hand. It’s tempting to whack everything into a word doc but there are a lot of free tools around which will help you create something you can be proud of. Remember, first impressions count and we are visual creatures!
For some great tips on creating winning media kit out Jeni’s post from The Blog Maven –
via:http://www.brandmeetsblog.com/tips-for-bloggers/5-big-problems-with-your-media-kit/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BrandMeetsBlog+%28BrandMeetsBlog%29
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