Creators, business owners, entrepreneurs. Learn how to create a media kit that helps you get brand deals. I’m covering: what to include in your media kit, how to price your rates, what to do as a new creators/business, how to bust out a pro looking media kit in Canva.
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00:00 Start
1:16 What is a media kit
2:38 Why do you need one for brand deals
4:06 How to price your rates
8:36 What do you include in a media kit
22:25 What to include in a media kit as a new creator
26:55 Mistakes to avoid with your media kit
How to create a media kit in Canva to get brand deals – Video Transcript
Hello. Hello and welcome to the live stream, whether you are joining me live now, or if you are catching us on the replay. If you’re new here, please say hi in the chat or in the comments so that I can welcome you.
Today, we are talking about Media Kits. So what is a media kit? How do you create one as a business? A creator? What do you include in that? There’s a lot of confusion over this. I’m going to walk you through all of that.
I’m going to show you mine. I’m going to show you my media kit, and what I’ve done and what I’ve learned and what I’ve discovered, I find is some of the best stuff to do. And I’m also going to talk about some of the mistakes that I see, lots of people make with media kits.
And you’re not going to make that mistake because you’re watching this video right now. Now please leave a comment below if you have any questions. If you’re on the chat, leave a chat and we’ll get to them and I will create another video if required.
So for those of you who don’t know me, my name is Sara Nguyen, and I help coaches, consultants and creative pros build their business using video with ease. And I’m really excited to bring you today’s topic today, and I’m going to get right into it really, really excited.
It’s going to be a good one today. So let’s tackle the big question. What is a media kit? Everyone’s kind of talking about it. What is it? So essentially a media kit is a document of some form, normally sent to a brand, whether it’s a PDF or some kind of document, it can be portrait or landscape.
That’s not really the point. It really is a way of getting brand deals and the concept of media kits is not new. So it’s always been around particular with, you know, magazines and particularly with, you know, businesses in the past.
And it’s a way of communicating the value and the reach that you have to someone that you’re trying to get money of– an advertiser, a brand, a business. And I think it’s become more relevant now that we have lots of people who are building their presence and building brands online on YouTube, on Facebook.
And now with that, it allows us as creators, the chance to approach brands or have brands approach us for brands deals where we get paid to do content, where we get paid to, I guess, do advertising and some form of promotion in some form.
And it really is an interesting thing that we can have this additional revenue source. So that’s essentially what a media kit is, and I’m going to walk you through, you know, a lot of it.
So let’s talk about why you need one. So I think the last 12 months my YouTube channel kind of grew significantly to a point where brands started to notice me. It was a very strange thing for me.
So when I reached about probably, you know, I saw, I saw it start to creep in when I hit 5,000, definitely when I hit 10,000 subscribers. And now 20,000, I get hit all the time. Brands start to notice you and they start to reach out to you to do collaborations with them.
And having a media kit is important because it allows you one, to be strategic on how you position yourself with the brand so that you can ask for more money. And it also allows you to be strategic in what you actually offer.
So before I had a media kit and brands came to me, that would be like, ‘Hey, can you do a video for this price?’ and I’d be like, I don’t know what I charge. But then when I got advice from someone with a bigger channel and smarter than me, he said, ‘why don’t you have a media kit?
That way you can figure out what you want to charge for single or multiple video or a whole sponsorship.’ and I was like, oh, that kind of makes sense. So it allows you to be on the front foot and it allows you to paint the picture of what your brand and business looks like.
So that’s why you need one. It allows you to be strategic with how you want to price your business and well price your offering if you are to do brand deals. So let’s talk about, good segway, pricing. How do you price?
So I’ve got a lot of questions about pricing because it is this really weird space, right? So it’s a space now where, you know, as a creator, we have these big brands come to us or, you know, you will have big brands come to you if they haven’t already and want to do deals with you.
So how do you price it? Is it, are we just plucking values out of the air? And the answer is no. So I’m going to show you how I’ve been pricing my offerings, not gonna tell you what I price, but I will show you the best way I think there is to do it.
So let’s get into that now. All right. So if we go over to my computer, the way that I found is the most comfortable way to figure out what your brand or what your channel, whether it’s a YouTube channel, whether it’s a Facebook page or an Instagram account that you have, what your following is worth, there’s a site called Social Bluebook, right?
And on Social Bluebook, they have a free trial. They are a paid service, but you need to remember they’re offering a service. So when you connect your account, you can connect your YouTube account, Instagram account, and a whole bunch of other social media accounts.
What they will have, and I just want to see if I can zoom in a little bit on this one ’cause it looks a little small. Once you’ve connected your account, they will give you values for a dedicated video or a product shout out.
And as you can see here, they’ve got low and high price ranges, medium and high price ranges. So that gives you an idea of how much to charge, but they don’t factor in the time of you producing the video, the time for you to strategise about what the video will be, the time for you to edit the video.
So this is the pricing that they recommend based off their, I don’t know, let’s call it algorithm, their smarts on what a YouTube video would be worth. So they say on the low end, 17.59, which I think is very low, 18.56 is the middle, middle price and then 153 for the high end.
And then on top of that, I would add my production, you know, cost and time and effort for actually creating the video. So, you know, that would vary depending on your production, you know, you could be James Cameron, you could have like a very expensive production for your YouTube videos.
It depends on how much time, I guess, money and resources that you want to charge that you feel like you’re comfortable. So this is how you kind of get an indication of how much to charge for your YouTube videos.
They give you the values here. And I found it interesting because it gave me a baseline. And a lot of brands do actually use Social Bluebook. I found to say, well, you know, we looked up your values on Social Bluebook and we think a fair price is this.
So you can kind of use this to gauge as a starting point. And it’s easier than trying to pluck in a number out of the air, right? So you may disagree with the values and that’s okay. But remember, it’s just the price that doesn’t include your actual time and production value.
Okay. They’ve also got other, you know, information here that you can scroll through, but this is my Instagram and I have a very small following on Instagram. So my values that Social Bluebook have suggested are like very small, but it just gives you an indication of all right, based off the account, how much is a dedicated post?
How much is a reels, how much is a story post? So you can use this service to help you with the numbers. So that’s how I would take the step to help you price. And then I would avoid too much seeing what other people are pricing because I find that a lot of creators do that, you know, and it’s a natural thing.
It’s like, well, how much do you charge? How much do you charge? And it really varies depending on which niche you’re in. So the finance niche will be different to the beauty niche, which will be different to the business niche.
So it really needs to, at the end of the day, come to a price that you’re comfortable with. And the thing that I was told, which was very insightful to me was, you know, come up with the number based on going through Social Bluebook, adding your value.
Present that to the brand and if they say yes, a little bit too quickly, it means you could’ve gone a little bit higher and you know, for next time. So that’s something that I learnt the hard way, but it is what it is, as they usually say.
So let’s go into now that you know how to figure out your pricing from Social Bluebook, what do you actually include in your media kit? Okay. So this is a, I’m showing you my media kit but I varied a little bit for demonstration purposes.
And I’m going to break down what I’ve actually included. So in my media kit, I’ve got, let’s look at it here, five actual pages. And I’ve built mine in Canva. Why Canva?
I just find it really easy to make it look really good ’cause you can add all of the images, all of the text, you can add all of the elements, you know, the icons, the colours from one place. And like if you’re using InDesign or Photoshop, we have to bring everything into the tool.
With Canva, I find that it’s already there. So this is what mine looks like. I do also recommend with Canva that you consider using two types. So if you go to Canva and in the description is my link to the Pro, the paid version of Canva that you can get for free for 30 days.
So you can try them out and see if you like them or you can just use the paid one for free for 30 days. There are two things that you can look for. One is media kits. So they do have a lot of templates for media kits.
I find that they’re a good starting point, but they’re not complete. You need to fill in the gaps a little bit. So that’s one that you can search for. And you’ll see here that there are so many different templates that you can choose.
The other template that I would recommend you consider in Canva for your media kits is if you search presentations,
right? Because their presentation template, beautiful.
Well, the designers who work on the presentation templates, get that what a presentation needs to include. And let me just show you. They’re just really well done and there, well, hopefully, this is an actual one, they’re just well structured for an actual presentation.
So they’ll have all of the elements and just beautifully done. So consider those to, consider either a media kit or consider using a presentation template. You can always, you know, create a couple and just see which one feels right for you.
So that’s how I would choose which template to use in Canva. The whole thing with Canva is that you have templates, so you don’t have to design from scratch, right? And that is what will save you time.
So let’s go into my one. So with my media kit here, I traced this template, this orangy template on the right here, and I’ve modified it a lot.
So let’s look at what I’ve included and why to break down what you need to include. I don’t include a cover sheet or a, you know, a cover page. I feel that’s very high school. That’s really, that’s very college and we’re not there anymore.
We don’t need to do that. So I scrapped the need for an actual title page. I feel it’s a waste of a space. You want to add your photo and your name. You can do that to the top of the document.
So the top of the document, I’ve simply got my name, what I do. It’s important to say what you do. So I’m a live streamer, a YouTuber and an online course creator. A picture of myself in case they forget what I look like.
And then my contact details. And then we get into the important part, right? So I talk about myself, but I talk about it strategically. So I’m not just rambling on about how great I am and what I do. I’ve broken it down into what I do.
So I help coaches, consultant and creative pros livestream and grow their business with video. I also am a course creator. So I tell them what I’m about. I also tell them why. So I really like this.
I got this idea from Invest with Queenie, from her media kit. And she talked about her why, right? And it’s your chance to say, what makes you get out of it, to do what you do to create those videos.
And I found that it’s incredibly powerful. So I really love that and bringing that into it. And then how, how do you do it? So for me, I cover live streaming software tutorials and tech reviews.
So I tell them how I do it. So I’m very clear on what I do, why I do and how I do it. What I don’t want you to and what I don’t want to see you do in this section is for you to have like this essay about, I did this social media 101 course on lynda.com.
I did the Facebook certification course. I did the YouTube certification course. I don’t want to see that. One, no one cares. I’m sorry to tell you, but, you know, it’s not the place to put your education history and it’s not the place to put all the courses that you’ve done.
It’s about telling them at a snapshot what you do and why you do it. I would consider putting a line in, you know, if you have experience in a certain industry, I would throw in there, maybe, you know, I’ve been in this industry for, you know, 10 years, five years, whatever it is, I may be, my channel may be new, but I’m not new to this industry.
So I would put that in, but I wouldn’t put your rap sheet on every single course that you did and every single school that you went to, this is not, you know, a work resume. It’s kind of like a brand resume.
So you need to just kind of shift that thinking a little bit. So the other thing that I’ve got on the document is my audience. Okay. So I talk about who I personally target. And this is important, particularly when a brand is looking at you, because they’re looking to see if your audience matches with theirs.
And this is what brings them in, okay? So people who have a small channel, people who are just starting out, if you’re struggling a little bit this is where brands we’ll see the value in you even if you’re small because size doesn’t always matter that much.
A lot of the brands are looking for alignment in the audience over the number of subscribers that you have. So audience, I just call it out. So these are the people that I target. This is my target audience.
And you adapt it for who your audience is. Now in this section here, where you can see top ages, audience, top viewer locations, these are the numbers from my YouTube analytics. So I’ve just plugged them in there.
If you don’t have numbers from YouTube analytics, you can just, you know, leave it at who your audience is and leave the breakdown of who your audience is without the numbers. If you know what I mean. So if you don’t have, if you’ve just started your channel and you don’t have percentages, just put down your top ages, just put down, you know, your audience.
Just put down where you feel that they are from. So that’s what I would do if I was a smaller channel. Now let’s go into the stats. So I feel it’s really important that the best of your abilities, let’s try to fit this page, you include stats of some sort. So in this section here, I have screenshots of my YouTube analytics.
And the reason that I’ve done, this is one, it looks pretty good. And two, one of the problems that brands have with creators, with influencers, I hate that word, it’s that a lot of influencers make up the stats because I don’t know. I don’t know why they make it up, whether they feel like they’d get a brand deal if they made it up or whether they feel that they would look better.
I don’t know, but a lot of influencers are not honest about their data, so where you can, the best that you can show your data by a screenshots, because that adds a lot of credibility to the actual media kits. So I’ve just got my YouTube stats, which sets do you pick? To be honest, pick the ones that look really good. The really big ones.
I know for YouTube that they’re really obsessed, brands are really obsessed at the views and the subscribers. So I’ve given them those screenshots, my impressions and click-through rates looked pretty good. So I put them in there as well. So that’s how I decided what to put on my YouTube stats.
I don’t have other social media stats in there because my YouTube channel predominantly is where my audience are. I will be adding my Facebook page. That’s what I haven’t gotten at the moment ’cause I don’t have time. I’m so busy.
So add the stats for the social media platforms that make sense to you. Views are always a good one. Impressions are always a good ones. Subscribers are always a good one to start with and get those screenshots from, you know, your analytics within the app or, you know, within your account.
So that’s what I would include in the actual stats. So, you know, take another page to do one for YouTube, one for Facebook, one for Instagram, if that’s all the accounts that you have. So I just have one.
Now, I also have a page that includes my website stats. Right now, I know I just said put all your screenshots in, but I just wanted to make it look a little bit prettier and I can back this up if a brand did say to me, okay, well, show us over the six months, the screenshot in Google analytics.
So this is actually true data. It’s not actually made up so I can back it up and I’m comfortable doing that. And I just wanted to represent it this way. So I showed them, you know, the number of page views, unique visitors, time on site.
I also showed them traffic sources, so where people are finding my website from. And then the popular topics, I just position them like that so that the brand understands on my website what am I talking about? Remember, we’re trying to get that alignment.
We’re trying to position ourselves so that the Canons, so that the, who else has a lot of money, Sony, so that all the big brands can see, okay, these are the topics where we’re kind of aligned, right? We’re trying to paint that picture so that they go, yes, tick this audience.
Yes, tick this topic. So I’m trying to paint that picture so that they understand what we actually do. All right. So that’s how I positioned the web start reach section.
And then the next section that I’ve got is audience survey insights. So this was one that I also learned from a friend and I found it to be a really beautiful touch, particularly if you are a smaller creator and you don’t have big data.
If you can show that you really understand your audience with survey insights, with verbatims of things that your audience are telling you, powerful, powerful picture and powerful, powerful story. So I have this section here that has a breakdown of surveys that I’ve done with my audience on the channel and also exit surveys that I have on my webinars as well.
So and from that, I’m able to tell the story of, I understand, you know, that they haven’t lived stream yet. I know which topics that they want to learn more about. I understand their fears and I understand their desires, and this is the verbatims from surveys that I’ve done, right?
So this is so powerful, so insightful, beautiful little touch, big, big tip. Particularly if you’re a small creator collect that survey data, put it in your media kit, show the brand that you know your audience better than anyone.
And this will help elevate you, and this will help make you an incredibly attractive option for them to do a deal with. So this is what I’ve done on this one, which is the survey audience insights. And then the one that you’ve all been waiting for is the sponsorship options.
So I’ve got a page that has what I offer and what I’d like to offer the brand and how much I’ve actually priced it. So I haven’t included prices here because I feel a little bit sensitive about the prices and it really varies depending on the brand, depending on the project, depending on time.
You put the price for the options based on what you want to put together. So for me predominantly, it’s always a YouTube video, they always want videos. So I’ve figured out a single video price, multi-video price, or a brand sponsorship that we can talk about.
So these are the three options that I’ve come up with. You come up with the option that works for you. You may include with that an Instagram post, a Facebook post, a tweet, whatever it is.
And then you price it based off, one, the values that you found on Social Bluebook, plus the, you know, time for strategy and production to actually deliver these. So that’s what I’ve done here.
And that’s what I recommend you do as well. Yeah, that’s, that’s it. I’ve also put here brands that I’ve worked with. So you could put brands that you’ve worked with. You could also put, if you’re a smaller creator, other creators that you’ve worked with, which is a nice little, you know, touch to put so they can see alignment. All about alignment.
And that’s what you would include in the media kit. Within Canva itself, you know, I’ve got a link in the description to a tutorial on how to use Canva. Everything is a matter of using their templates. I’m using the elements on the right-hand side.
So searching for elements, whether you’re looking for graphs, I find the graphs are really great. So you can create, you know, the pie graphs and the bar graphs and the line graphs simply by clicking on them and then dragging them onto the page.
And then playing around with the value. So use Canva to create all of your elements. You know, there’s obviously the graphs there, you’ve got the text elements so you can have beautiful texts.
You’ve also got images that you can pull in as well. So you can search photos, you can search the element section for vectors, whether you’re looking for icons. Like I use, I always search for icons.
I look for, you know, like website, whatever you need. The thing that I found really powerful about Canva is that everything you don’t need to go source it from somewhere else, everything’s already in their tool.
So that’s the beautiful thing about Canva. So just search for what you need in the elements. Otherwise, you can click upload, there’s all my photos here, and then you can add your own and then that will bring it into the tool. And then you can simply like add it to the document and drag and resize it and put it wherever you want.
So that’s the amazing thing about Canva. It really is a really easy tool that allows you to use the templates to get a beautiful, beautiful layout. So that basically is a wrap of what to include in your media kit.
Now I did a quick version. If I was a brand new creator just starting out, what would my media kit look like? And this is how I’ve adapted it so that you can see what it looks like. So, you know, the first page, I still have my about me, my what, why and how.
I’ve got my target audience. So I stripped out all the numbers there, but you know, it’s all about alignment. So I’ve broken down who, the ages and the locations of my audience. Now, the next section that I’ve got is platforms.
So just show them, you know, where are you? Just show them what your brand or what your, you know, you encompass. So where are you? So show them all of your social media platforms.
And then talk about your topics. I find people overlook the value of topics, right? They overlook the value of content. If you’re a small creator, rely on your content, rely on the quality of your content to be your strength, right?
Because you know this better than anyone else. And you can use this to grow your channel. You can use this to grow the business and to get brand deals and visibility. So rely on you being able to produce this content, which I know you can do.
So add the topics that you actually cover. Remember you’re painting the story of who you are, where you’re at, what you actually talk about. So the brand, the Sonys, the Canons, they go, Oh yeah, that’s interesting. We like that.
And then I talked about content again. I will showcase them. So if you are just starting out and you don’t have content yet, build it, build it out, record it, put it out there, and then put it in your media kit.
So I’ve got this document here where it’s fictitious. I’ve just used a lot of Ipsum words to show you for the purposes of today. Show them, add links to your, all of the key blog posts, all of the key videos so that they can see what you’re about and what you can produce.
And they don’t have to go hunting for it, right? Put it all there for them so that they can go and have a look at it and see how amazing you are and offer you a brand deal. So that’s what I would do.
I would have a page which showcases my content, whether that’s your videos, your blog posts, your Instagram posts, your, I dunno, whatever content you create. So have a document, have a page within your media kit that shows all of your amazing content.
Leverage that. Particularly if you’re a small creator, this is so powerful. When I was on the other side, when I was working for, you know, as a brand, this was a tool that I saw a tip that I saw, like some of the smaller creators do, but it was all about that alignment.
The brand liked it because they were like, okay, they haven’t gotten a massive amount of subscribers, but they’re subject matter experts. And people will listen to them. So little tip here from my past life. There. Okay.
Testimonials. So if you’re a new creator, just building out your media kit, definitely add testimonials where possible. And I’m saying this, like, don’t feel the whole thing with testimonials, but it just helps to add a little bit of credibility to help you fill out the media kit, right?
Add testimonials from clients, from brands, from projects that you’ve worked on from people who kind of vouch for your expertise. And that’s the point of this, painting that story, showing people what you are all about. Then we have, do your survey insights.
So regardless if you’re a big or a small account, you can do surveys. You can, you don’t have to necessarily do like massive surveys. It could just be smaller surveys. It could be like interviewing your potential clients.
It could be interviewing, you know, peers or people who are your target audience to get the insight. So definitely add a page for audience insights, if you are a brand new starting out creator. And then your sponsorship options, whatever that looks like to you, and if possible, the brands that you’ve worked with.
So that’s what I would include if I was a smaller creator. See I’ve still been able to beat out the media kit. It may not have all of the data that, you know, my other one had, but it still tells a story.
And I think it still shows that as a creator, you’re still valuable because you understand the audience and that’s what the brands really want that audience alignment. So that brings us there. Now, let’s come back to me.
Let’s talk quickly about before I get to some of the comments, what are some of the mistakes to avoid? So the biggest gripe that brands have with creators and influencers is when they’re not transparent about their data, when they make it up.
There was an influencer that I was working with and she had massive amount of Google traffic. So she– oh man, it was really impressive. So she was doing about 20 million views per month.
And then something happened, perhaps Google algorithm changes, perhaps a whole bunch of other things. And that dropped right down to quite low, so way below 1 million.
And she was, you know, that’s, you may go “It’s still 1 million”. And I was like, it’s still 1 million. But for her, she’s like, I went from 20 million to one. And then she was like, is there any way we can doctor this? And I was like, why would you do that? Why would you falsify the data given that this is where you’re at.
And I understand that it’s kind of painful that you all of a sudden had a change in the number of years that you’ve had, but if you falsify it and the brand goes off this false number, and you pretend that you’re still at 20 million views and you’re not, and then they give you this brand deal and then you create all this content and it doesn’t get the results that they’re expecting of you at 20 million.
Then that looks bad on you, right? So don’t falsify your document. You don’t falsify your documents, don’t falsify your data. Be really honest with your data. You are at where you’re at. And let your content sing to the strength of your brand.
So that’s one of the biggest mistakes that I see creators make. They’re really nervous about looking bad because their numbers are small, but you’d be really surprised. So be honest with your data, show your data as you start to get it, right.
So as you start to create content, as you start to see your YouTube analytics, your Facebook page insights up to date, start to show it where you can and don’t falsify it. The other mistake that I see creators making their media kit is that they don’t actually talk about their, they don’t actually talk about how they bring value.
So they’ll talk about their rap sheet, their history, every course that they’ve done, which is not valuable as I’ve mentioned, but they don’t actually talk about, you know, what topics they talk about.
They don’t actually talk about their audience. They just talk about themselves. It’s kind of about you, but it’s more about you in terms of how you understand your audience, the people you reach and you know, the content that you put out.
So make sure that you don’t make those mistakes. And I know that you won’t because you’ve been watching this live stream today. So that essentially wraps up today’s live stream. Lins on FIRE says, “Your media kit is so organised. Thanks for sending this to me”.
So this is Tiffany. Hi, Tiffany. Thanks for watching. I took a lot of time to create the media kit and it was, it took a lot of time, but it was really rushed. So I kind of got to the point where someone had asked me for it and I was like, Oh, crap up I’ve been putting it off for all this time.
And I finally need to, you know, produce one. So I kind of just sat down with all of my data and did it over a weekend. So in terms of the time it takes, it really depends on you.
And, you know, using a tool like Canva will make it easy because you can just drag and drop all the elements to put it into the actual media kit. And now that you’ve seen what to include in one, you know what to include in one, you don’t need to be digging for months like me on what to actually include.
So that essentially wraps up today’s live stream. I hope you found that really useful, kind of showed you a lot of myself. I showed you my media kit, which I didn’t show you my pricing, but I still showed you how I do it.
So hopefully you found that useful. Now, if you found this video useful, let’s see, give me a thumbs up and don’t forget to subscribe to the channel if you haven’t already, where I do lots more tutorials on social media, on live streaming, and I hope you build and grow your business using video with ease.
Now, if you haven’t already make sure you grab a copy of my Social Media Checklist. I’ll show you how to get up and running on all the major, major social media platforms so that you can start growing your business, building out your media kit, getting that data so that you can leverage the power of social to grow your business.
So make sure that you grab that. I’ll put the link in the description and also in the screen somewhere as well. So that essentially wraps us up for today’s live stream. It’s been a while.
Thank you so much for joining me live. It’s great to be alive again after a little bit of a while, I will see you in the next live stream and bye for now
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