Media Kits for Bloggers

It’s time to delve a little into Megan’s life through this fun fact: I’m a communications professional in the day time (with a mass communications degree as well). Blogging is my night gig. [Now I just picture me as a super swanky, smooth saxophone player (random fun fact – I played the saxophone for 7 years in school).] The reason I am bringing up my day job is that I thought I may be able to provide some helpful information to you out there. The blogging world is such a self-taught, trial and error type of world; it’s always great to get tips from others!

Today’s topic of choice: media kits! I thought since I had just completed one for Haven Conference, now would be a good time to share the skinny on it.

First off: what is a media kit? A media kit is compiled information that you hand out to possible sponsors, brands, interested parties, businesses, etc. about your blog. It goes past a business card, which is basically just contact information, and puts all the facts together about your blog. Your hope is to enough information to a company that entices them to learn more about you and then partner with you in some way.

Traditional media kits have many pages of information that you put in a folder, attach to an email, compile on a website, hand out in person…you get the picture. But for a blogger, I have found that one sheet is all that is needed. You want to have it in person to hand out (like at a conference or trade show) and you want it to be available as a link (PDF’s get lost). You want it to be short, succinct, and packed full of informational tidbits about yourself.

I broke mine down into multiple sections:

About the blog (and you) – You want this section to really give the flavor of your blog. You want it to be jam-packed full of personality while also giving a short overview of what your blog is all about. This will enable the person looking at to understand if your blog and the company’s products/values will be a good fit. Also, the more they connect to you and like you, the better.

Statistics – What do brands and sponsors want to know? They want to know your influence and your reach. This will give them a sense of how many people you are reaching and on how many different platforms.

Services – What are you actually offering this company? They want to know how they fit you too. List the types of opportunities for businesses.

Contact information – After you’ve worked so hard to real ‘em in, you need to keep them. If they don’t know how to reach you, you’re sunk. (Cue cartoon sinking sound here.)

Now that your media kit is sounding pretty awesome, now it’s time to make it look awesome too. As for the look, you want it to pretty much look like your blog. Uniformity is key across all your platforms. This is your brand, remember, so you want the packaging to trigger peoples’ brains to YOU!

I took my blog’s header, about me picture, background image, and social media buttons from my blog files. This also makes it a little easier on you too since these are already created. Basically you are just dressing up your media kit and making it scream you!

That’s my two cents about media kits for bloggers. You get all kinds of opinions – some bloggers have never used one and are super successful. Others think they set you apart. Since I’ve started viewing my blog as a business (that I really, really, really love), I think it is important to get my blog out there as much as possible in the most professional way possible.

I used my media kit at Haven for the first time and it was very well received. When I gave it to one brand the person actually said, “Wow, thank you for your professionalism! This is what I am looking for and I haven’t gotten many of these today. It’s very important to me.” Well that got a big smile out of me. It was worth it just to get that assurance from him.

I also noticed that most brands at Haven were just throwing business cards into one big pile. Except when I threw a monkey wrench into their pile with my 8.5 x 11 paper. It stood out from the pile of 300 other cards. Yes, I see the potential of them finding my big paper annoying and chucking it – but that’s why I gave a business card too. I’m in the stack too.

I hope that helps you when putting together a media kit. I encourage you to put one together so you can have it next time you’re at a place you need to hand one out or next time you are emailing a sponsor you can shoot them a link to your media kit. I think that’s a good first impression! It never hurts to try and stand out a little!