Creating Your Media Kit in 10 Easy Steps

If there’s one thing that’ll make your travel blog stand out from the crowd to a sponsor and convince them to spend hundreds of dollars on you for their next campaign, it’s the media kit.

As a travel blogger, having that polished media kit will easily give you the edge in securing sponsorship over others that haven’t caught on yet.

The media kit is an integral part of any blog when you’re at the point when you want to reach out to brands, PR, agencies and other media outlets.

With this week’s TBT, I’m going to give you guys a bunch of simple pointers to get off your butt and have one posted on your blog by the end of the day.  This goes hand in hand with ways to make money blogging.

When I first started, the idea of putting together a media kit sounded like a massive project but after finishing one in mere hours, I realized that it doesn’t have to be as scary as it sounds.  Okay let’s first start with the basics.

So what is a media kit?

What a media kit boils down to is letting interested parties know in one quick snapshot what your travel blog is all about (i.e. niche) and even more important, key statistics that media folks care about.

A media kit is something that you’d typically place on your blog somewhere under something like “Advertise with us”.  I honestly can’t tell if this page has had much of an impact with sponsors approaching me but when it comes to me reaching out to brands and companies, I attach my media kit 100% of the time.

Why you need to make one right now

Think about this.  Why the heck would anyone want to work with you if they can’t find a quick way to get a snapshot about you and reasons why they should work with you?

If a brand has two bloggers, one being you without a media kit and another blogger with one prepared, even you’d pick that other blogger right?

Time to get your hands dirty.

10 easy steps to get your media kit ready in mere hours

Step 1:  Prep Work

Sponsors and brands care about the numbers first and foremost.  it’s a sad fact of things but there are some that are only willing to work with bloggers beyond X follower/likes.  Don’t be discouraged though, even if you feel like your numbers aren’t good enough, there are also a ton of sponsors willing to work with travel bloggers with smaller numbers as long as you can demonstrate how you’re influential in the space the sponsor is interested in and what creative ideas you might have for a post or collaboration.

Start jotting down some numbers.

Social media

• Twitter followers
• Facebook likes
• Google+ followers
• Pinterest followers
• Page Rank (from Google though keep in mind that they only update it once a year and is not as prevalent anymore)
• Klout score

Google Analytics

• Page views per month
• Average page views averaged over the past 3 months
• Unique users per month
• Types of traffic sources (do you get most of your readers from Google or somewhere else?)

Other rankings and numbers

• Alexa rank
• Quantcast rank
• Reader demographics (I literally do a screenshot of what Quantcast shows me)
• Newsletter subscribers

Related works

• Where else have you published?
• What other brands have you worked with?
• Wrote an epic guest post?

Graphics

• Make sure you have that profile photo ready and that it’s consistent across all of your social media platforms.  This is the photo that everyone will recognize you with.
• If you have a blog logo, get that ready as well
• Any good images of you in “travel mode” or just some beautiful shots you have?  Pick them out!

The point of this step is to have it all gathered so you can plop it into your media kit when ready.

Step 2:  Open Word

Open Microsoft Word or whatever word processor you use this as your blank media kit canvas.  This may seem trivial but half the battle is just getting stuff down on paper.  Once you do that, the floodgate of creative juices should start flowing 🙂

Step 3:  Saying Hello

• Write a paragraph or two about who you are.
• Since this will be the first thing that someone will be reading on your media kit so make this one count.  This is your chance to really connect with your reader on the amazing travels you’ve been on, what led you to start travel blogging.
• Drop in that photo of you in here as well.

Step 4:  All About The Blog

Now that you have intros out of the way, let’s focus in on what your blog is about.

• What’s your niche?  Is there a specific area of travel that you’re honing in on?
• What type of articles do you publish?  Lists?  Reviews?  Experiences?
• What demographic of readers do you intend to focus on?

These are all very important for a sponsor as they’re going to want to know who they reach if they work with you and whether there’s a fit between your travel blog’s focus and the brand.

Step 5:  Stats and Reach

Now remember all those stats and things you collected in Step 1?  It’s finally time to drop this numbers in.

This doesn’t need to be that fancy.  All I do is list out these stats in point form.  Ultimately, you want this to convey that you have a decent sized audience

Obviously it’s your discretion how much information you want to disclose.  Focus on the noteworthy ones.  If there’s anything you’re not comfortable with, just leave it out.

Tips:

• Update your media kit at least once a month as your numbers are going to continuously grow and you want your document to reflect that.  Put something like “All information current as of …”
• At a minimum, sponsors are going to want to know your unique users per month, page views per month, Twitter followers and Facebook likes from my experience.

Step 6:  Kinds of Sponsorship

I personally haven’t gotten really sophisticated with this but basically you want to list out all the different types of sponsorship you’d be open to.  What you should do is break it down into types of packages you can offer.

Here are a few things that you could highlight:

• Banner positions
• Product reviews
• Run giveaways
• Native advertising (links embedded in posts)

Step 7:  Testimonials

I must’ve saw this done somewhere else and that’s why I decided to throw it in there.  This is a nice-to-have where you get quotes from your readers about how awesome you are.

There are 2 methods of doing this:

1. Go through your comments and if there’s any good material there, go ahead and use it.
2. You can also approach other blogger friends to write something for you with the promise that you’ll link back to them.

I’d say gather a minimum of 4 testimonials if you can.

Step 8:  How Do You Reach Me

This step is simple.  Wrap up the media kit with a quick sentence or two about how to reach you.  If your blog has a contact form, link to that page or simply put your email.

You’re almost there!

Step 9:  Layout & Design

Now at this point you’ve been putting all this information on your Word document but it probably isn’t very pretty.  Now’s your chance to spruce it up and add a little style and design to your media kit.

My top suggestion for you here is to really look around and see what others have done.  That’s what I did.  I literally checked out all the prominent travel bloggers I knew about and looked at their media kit and picked out what I liked.

Remember all those photos you picked out and your logo?  Throw those into the media kit as well.

Step 10:  Proofread & Post

I’m notorious for slacking on proofreading but if this is going to be going out to sponsors, you need to look as legit and professional as possible.  Go through your media kit 5 times and then get your friends to proofread it.  Perfect it!

Once that’s done, all you have to do is save it as a PDF so it’s nice and tidy and get it on your blog ASAP.

The easiest way is to create a new WordPress page and link to the document to download.  If you check out my Going Awesome Places media kit page, I duplicate some of the information as a way of making it super easy to get the information without even downloading but they have the option to download if they wish.  You’ll also notice that I recently created an infographic to supplement my media kit.  I’ll write all about that in a future TBT!

 

So that’s it!  You’ve just created your first media kit.  It’s up on your blog and you have a copy ready to fire off to potential brands you want to work with.

Don’t forget that this is just the beginning though.  The media kit is a living and breathing document that you’ll need to update monthly for the stats alone and as you evolve your blogging styles and niche, the document should reflect that as well.  As you become a more sophisticated blogger, so will the media kit.

Happy media-kitting!

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