In our monthly Good Vibe Tribe Newsletter this month, we discussed how to communicate with companies for collaborations. I loved reading the tips and advice from the other accounts about how to open up the lines of communication to make a collaboration happen. There was so much feedback from accounts that were so excited to start learning how to make their hard work on Instagram pay off! One thing I saw as a common thread throughout the advice was having a media kit, yet I was shocked at the amount of messages I received from people that had no idea what a media kit was. Not just newbies, but accounts that have been around for a while, even ones that have done collaborations! So I decided to write up a quick blog post about how to master the media kit. I’m going to tell you why a media kit is so important, what it should include and how to make it memorable. Remember, this is all my advice based on my experiences, you may hear other things from other Instagrammers and that is totally fine! Filter through it all and glean out the parts that work for you. There is no one set way of doing things, you have to find what works best for your account and the companies you are trying to work with!
Why a media kit?
Why do you need a media kit? Won’t companies just search through the millions of Instagram accounts, find you and come beg you to work with them? While that can and has happened, it is not the norm! The majority of the time, you will either reach out to a company you would like to collaborate with or they will come to you and ask you to apply for an opportunity they think you may be a good fit for. In either of these situations, your media kit plays a vital role in communicating who you are and what you can do for a company. Your media kit is essentially your resume. You need to be able to clearly tell them the details and statistics of your online reach and partnership capabilities. No matter what size your Instagram or blog is, go ahead and create a media kit. You never know when a collaboration opportunity may arise and you don’t want to have to be scrambling to piece something together. It is very
What is in a media kit?
Introduction
Stats
Follower Demographics
Offerings
Testimonials
Contact Info
Start of with a brief introduction, tell them who you are and where you can be found in the social media world. Summarize who you are in a few sentences, making sure to emphasize you expertise in your area. Make sure to convey your passion for your niche. List your Instagram, Pinterest, Youtube, Blog, wherever you produce content, list it. This will allow companies to see your social media reach and make sure you are a good fit for their products. Make sure to include a clear headshot of yourself, ideally the same one you use as your profile picture on your social channels.
While your follower number is not the main indicator of your success as an influencer, companies will need to know this number to help them better understand your level of influence. You can use Instagram Insights to get some of your stats including accounts followers, reach, and impressions. Hype Auditor or Influencer Marketing Hub are both a great places to get your engagement rate and all the information you will need for the next item, follower demographics.
What country are the majority of your followers from? What age bracket are they? Are they male or female? It does not matter to a company how many followers you have if they are not the target audience for them. If your audience is 90% male, a company selling cookware will probably not want to work with you. Let them know exactly what your typical follower looks like and where they live. I have found Instagram Insights to not have accurate data regarding what states my followers come from, so I pull this data from Hype Auditor. The most successful collaborations occur when your audience demographics match the demographics of a brand’s customers.
Let potential partners know what sorts of collaborations you can provide. Dedicated Instagram posts, stories, videos, blog posts, whatever partnership ideas you can provide, add these to your media kit so brands know how they can work with you. While we are on the topic, a ‘dedicated’ post means you are only talking about one company. While your picture may show your faucet, sink, countertop and window, if your post is about the sink company, you only talk about and tag them. This ensures you are generating as much engagement as you possibly can for their brand.
Make sure and ask for a testimonial from any company you collaborate with. Then include the most impactful ones in you media kit. This allows brands to see first hand the positive experience you have brought to other companies.
Add your email, phone number, links to your blog, Instagram, or any other ways a brand can contact you.
How to make your media kit memorable.
You want to keep your media kit brief, three pages maximum but optimally one page. Brands get a lot of media kits and do not have time to sit and analyze page after page of data. As I mentioned earlier, your media kit is essentially your resume. Keep it short and sweet, stick to the facts and avoid embellishment. Use short, succinct sentences to convey your analytics without including unnecessary information. Make sure to include key imagery from your social channels. If you use consistent colors and typography online, use these in your media kit. Make sure to leave plenty of white space around your writing and images to avoid it looking cluttered. Make sure to keep your media kit current. You really should update it each time you send it out so you can not only make sure your data is current but also allows you to tailor the information to the particular brand you are talking to. A great way to do this is by having a digital media kit like my friend Brooke from @PlankandPillow, you can see hers here. The great news is she will actually be launching this as a product you can buy here in the next few weeks! This will be a game changer for so many of us! Until then, Canva.com makes it so easy to set one up! You can search through countless templates to find one you think fits your brand and easily customize it! The best part is, unless you add any additional designs, it is free to create one there!
A media kit is such a fundamental necessity in the world of collaborations and social marketing. It is the perfect tool to let companies know who you are, who you influence and how you can promote them to your audience. Investing a little time to make an eye-catching, accurate media kit that you keep current will go a long way in helping you catch the eye of the companies that you think your brand aligns with.
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