How To Write An Effective Media Kit & Use It To Make Money- Community Education Event

Hi, I'm Chef Dennis Littley, and this is one of our community education events. And tonight's event is a really fun one. It's how to write an effective media kit and use it to make money, which is really the important part of it. You know, you want to write it, but you want to be able to make some money with it. And my guest tonight is the author of a book on that very title. It's Kelly Snyder, and she's going to go through some tips and tricks and show you some slides and We're going to dive into it, and if you have questions, I have the question app on. If it is working, you should see it. Shouldn't be any question where it is, and you can click on that and ask your questions. And if it's not working, just type them into the comment bar and we will get to them as soon as we can. Alright, thanks a lot. I'm going to turn it over to Kelly. Kelly, how you doing? There you go. It's all yours.

Good. Thanks, Dennis Littley. Thanks so much for having me tonight. I really appreciate it. We're just going to discuss media kits. And how to use them, how to create one, and more specifically, how to leverage them so that you can make a little money off of your blogging business. I have a real quick presentation that we're going to go through that kind of goes through some details and some insights, and then we'll just take as many questions as we have time for at the end. Sound good? Outstanding. Here we go. Okay, so I'm the author of a book that's about how to make media kits and an eBook, and we'll talk about that at the end. But I also have a secondary company that's called Foxen Media. And the reason that I began this or started this is just to be able to create a way for corporations and businesses to be able to connect with bloggers in order to do some amazing things in this online social media world. I've heard every excuse in the book for why people don't do a media kit. I've heard, "Well, I'm too small for a media kit," which is false. There is no such thing as being too small or too small of a blog in order to have a media kit. In fact, I think in most cases, sometimes the smallest blogs are sometimes the most effective because you know exactly who your reader is versus kind of a big conglomerate blog that may be getting a lot of traffic from SEO. But may not exactly know exactly down to the detail of who their reader is. Another excuse I've heard is, "Well, I'm too big for a media kit," which again is false. You can mine deep insights as to why people come to your blog outside of just your traffic. But also, corporations are looking for blogs that have significant social media traffic, and a big blog definitely relates to that. Finally, I've heard, "Well, social media reaches everyone, so demographics don't matter." Again, that's false. Demographics are incredibly important. Every blog out there has a specific demographic that they're reaching, and that demographic is incredibly important to companies. They want to find companies that are able to reach the audience that they want and mirror that with a blog that's actually reaching that audience. So demographics are incredibly important. The other thing I say is that when I hear, "Well, it reaches everyone, it doesn't matter," you wouldn't want to have, say, Clorox that's advertising on an automotive blog. That's a total— that doesn't reach the exact same consumer versus maybe a blog that's more tied into cleaning or how to clean your house in a better, more efficient manner, that would be a better fit for Clorox. And then finally I've heard, well, I'll give them stats via email, it's just a whole lot easier. Again, that's another false excuse for not doing a media kit. What I think we don't understand is when we do get PR pitches, that oftentimes just because you don't get picked for a campaign doesn't mean that your information is then tossed away. Usually it's put inside of a system that is shared within PR and marketing firms and that's able for you to get more jobs more often. So what is a media kit? A media kit has 5 essential parts. Your elevator pitch, and what I call that is 2 to 3 sentences that best describes your blog and what you're about. Your demographic information, so who are your readers, what are they, what do they like, what— how much money do they make, where do they live. Your site and social media stats, so this is going to be your unique page views, your unique visitors, those kind of things. Your basic advertising and sponsored post rates, so what you will do in order to make money. And then finally, information about you, the author of the brand. When you're putting your media kit together, one thing to always remember is your media kit is a resume of your blog or your brand. So if you think of it like that, like the same way as you would put a resume together in order for a job, when you put your media kit together, it's essentially a resume of your blog or/your brand. So why are media kits important? First, it makes you a professional, aka the super smart business person. When marketing companies or PR companies come at you and ask for something and you're able to send a media kit back, it tells them that you take your business seriously, that you're just not kind of a hobby blogger, but that you really are trying to make money at this and you take what you do seriously. And more oftentimes, if they think you're taking your own business seriously, they think you're going to take what you're going to do for them seriously. It shows that your blog is important, aka a problem solver. The only reason that companies reach out to bloggers is because they have a problem, and their problem is, is that they're not reaching a specific reader or demographic that they want to reach. If you can show them how your blog can do that, you've solved a problem for them and therefore have made your blog important. And then finally, it starts the conversation about compensation. We oftentimes will hem and haw back and forth about a compensation situation. But if we're clear and at the very beginning of that conversation, it doesn't waste time. Sometimes PR companies have money or marketing companies have money and sometimes they don't. I always tell bloggers that a PR company's job is to get as much free press as possible. A blogger's job is to try to get paid for that. So when you're developing your media kit, the first thing you should do before you ever start off is conduct a reader survey. And the reason I say that is that a reader survey is incredibly important to mine deep insights from your readers. Those insights come in the format of not only just demographic information, so how much money they make, where do they live, how many kids they have, if they're married, but it also gives you insight into what they find important. Are they interested in money-saving tips? Are they interested in gourmet meals? Are they interested in having gluten-free? Those kind of things are also important because it helps you to be able to distinctly detail and describe to a company what your reader is about. Those insights help you create a more effective media kit and help you to use specific words that marketers and companies are looking for instead of generic terminology. The nuts and bolts of a reader survey are pretty simple. I always say that you can either use it in Google Docs or SurveyMonkey. Google Docs is really great if you are looking for something that is free. It is a little bit more cumbersome to use. I like SurveyMonkey because of the interface, but also the reports that it gives afterwards. Your reader survey should be conducted annually. Your readers of your blog change on a regular basis, so you always want to keep current with that. Your reader survey should include standard and open-ended questions. Standard questions are questions that are usually yes or no or more on the demographic side. Open-ended kind of gets into the thoughts of the reader. From open-ended questions, you're able to establish what the reader thinks about your blog, words that they would use to describe your blog. And what you'll find is those words that they use to describe your blog are also sometimes keywords that companies are looking for when they're describing their product that they want to market. When you do your reader survey, it should take no longer than 5 minutes. You don't want it to take too long, because then people are going to fall off, and they are not going to complete the information, which gives you inaccurate information. And remember that the more responses, the better the information. So if you have a pretty decent readership, having 400 or 800 responses is going to be more beneficial to you than maybe only having 25 or 50. So media kit essential parts. The first piece is your elevator pitch. Again, your elevator pitch is 2 to 3 sentences that best describes your blog. It's going to be provided with key insights from your reader survey. Those words that you see over and over again that your readers have used to describe your blog, you're going to want to incorporate those. It's going to be your unique voice. Who are you? Essentially, you are writing the blog. A marketing company wants to kind of know what is your unique voice and to be able to build that into the elevator pitch. Why you are attractive to companies. What makes you different than any other blog out there in the webosphere? And then I know this seems silly, but it should also include your blog name and web address. You would be surprised the number of media kits that I have seen that don't include the blog name or the address, but just go into what the blog is about. Well, many times a PR person only has 60 seconds to look at a media kit. If you're able to sell them in the elevator pitch, give them all the information up at once so they don't have to go any further. Piece number 2 is the demographic information. This is the subject of who are they. Who are they? Who are the readers? Describe them. Are they married? How old are they? How much income do they have on a regular basis? Are they college educated? Are they working inside or outside of the home? Are they married? How old are their kids? What state do they live in? I know that that may seem kind of mundane, but what you will find is when you're able to describe this, this is something that brands and PR people are very interested in. There is a completely different marketing plan for people that work outside of the home than people that work inside of their house. And there's a completely different marketing plan for stay-at-home moms versus work-at-home moms.. There's also things that fall into place in regards to income. Certain brands aren't going to want to work with blogs that don't have at least readership that falls within a certain income level. It just doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense for Coach to be able to advertise on a blog when, say, the average income is only $40,000 for a household of 4. They realize that those readers don't have any discretionary income. Being able as descriptive as you can about demographic is very important. Try to stay away from generics. I will tell you especially for— there's a lot of women bloggers out there. For you to say that you have women readers who work outside of the home that are aged 30 to 45, that pretty much describes 90% of the readers of blogs in general. If you can get more descriptive than that, that helps businesses be able to single you out and then choose you for campaigns. The next key piece is site and social media stats. Your site stats is the first part. Site stats should be your monthly blog stats, which is your unique visitors and page views. You only need those two things on a monthly basis. You need to use Google Analytics for that. I know you may think that you may have better stats if you use SiteMeter or something else.— it doesn't really matter. Google is the standard. Google is what PR companies compare to. They do subscribe to services and they will check your stats and they're based off Google stats. If you can use Google Analytics, that's what you want to do. Then I always say to use an average over your last 6 months. Whatever your 6-month stats are, do an average over it and then place that as what your blog monthly stats are. With that, it allows you to take into consideration some of your peak highs and some of your lows. It gives you more of an accurate accurate average so that when the company is comparing you to this information that they receive, that you will come up comparable. For social media stats, I believe that the haves are that you need to have Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, your email or RSS subscribers, and I'm sorry I forgot this on here, and Google+. I think all of those are haves. Regardless if they are super great numbers or low numbers, you need to have those on your media kit. Even if you have— I myself have a low number on Pinterest. I've just never gotten into it. Being able to say that I'm on Pinterest is important to brands and PR companies, even if that number isn't great, because at least they know that I'm able to play in that field. That I know what the media is. I know how to use it. I may not have a ton of followers, but if they ask me to do something on it, I'm able to do that. Then I have another group that I call the support staff. Support staff is anywhere, any of these things, which could be PageRank, your Vine followers, your Stumble, your Tumblr, your MySpace, your YouTube, podcast subscribers, etc. The rule of thumb I have though on your support staff is that if it looks bad or out of place, don't include it. You only want to include the stats from the support group if they are really good. And the reason I say to do that is because it allows you to distinguish yourself amongst other blogs. If everybody else is kind of putting the halves up there and all of a sudden you have an amazing YouTube following, you have now set yourself apart from other bloggers out there and are more apt to get jobs. Same way with a Tumblr account or if you do podcasts. It's just a way of differentiating yourself from all the competition. Piece number 4 is your advertising and sponsored post rates. I always say to make sure that you have the basic rates and guidelines for your advertising spots. If you do giveaways, sponsored posts, recipe creation, etc. And I always say just to use the basic rate. And the reason that I do that is that you don't want to overwhelm a PR agency or marketing company. Many times a PR company or marketing agency or brand is gonna look at that dollar figure to see if they can even play ball with you. If you're setting up a huge list of all the different opportunities you have and the number one thing is a huge big marketing campaign and it's for tens of thousands of dollars, that little company may be like, I can't even play ball with her, there's no way I can afford $10,000 in a campaign. When in all actuality you might have been willing to do something on a smaller scale for much less money. So just always kind of start off with your basic rates and then negotiate through email so you can see what their budget is so that you can create a marketing plan that's tailored to them, but that you know at least that you're able to work together because they have a budget that can work with your rates. And then finally, piece number 5 is about the author or brand. Who are you? The first thing I always include is a picture, and the reason I include a picture is that many times you will never sit across the table from a PR or brand or marketing company, and it's always nice for them to see who you are and what you look like. Please always use a professional photo. I've had media kits come across my desk that have had people in very interesting poses. While it's quite humorous to see that, it doesn't exactly set yourself up as being a professional. So get a quality headshot and use that. Your accomplishments that are blog-related. Have you been published in certain magazines or publications due to your blog? Have you been on TV or on radio due to your blog? Have you written other books that are based upon some of the information from your blog? Anything that is related to your blog that you have accomplishments that are outside of your blog, make sure to include that. All it does is it gives you validity and it allows you to look more of an expert than say somebody else. Your accomplishments that are not blog related. If you've had a career outside of social media or still have a career outside of social media, include that. I will tell you that one of the things that has set me apart was as soon as PR companies and marketing companies found out that I used to be a marketing professional before I stayed home and did this, they all of a sudden— there is an ease that comes about them because they know that I'm a professional and I'm going to treat them and their campaign and my responsibilities in a professional manner. So if you have accomplishments that are not not blog-related, please include those as well. And then how to reach you via email or other. Again, this may seem like one of those "are you kidding me" statements, but there are many times that I've seen media kits in which they will not even include their email address at the end. So how is anybody supposed to contact them if they're interested in working with them? So after you have your 5 pieces put together, the next thing you want to do is design your media kit. My best advice to anybody is to hire it out. Hire a professional to put your media kit together. Again, I can't tell you the number of times that I've seen media kits that were put together in either Word or PicMonkey, and they go to these great lengths of finding out all this information about their readers, and they put it together in such a haphazard mess that it ends up giving a worse impression about the blogger than if they would have done nothing at all. As far as pages, I think only 1 to 2 pages only. I think I try to have the standard of a 1-page kit only and then to have the conversation via email to mine through some more information. You don't want to make it a novella in regards to your media kit because nobody's going to read that. So like I've seen 6 or 8-page media kits come across my desk. That does nothing for me because it's taking me forever to read it. Make it concise, make it complete, make it easy to read, and you're going to have a better than average chance of getting more work. Again, your kit should be a reflection of your brand. It should be the same coloring as your website. Try to do the same typeface. Make sure your logo is included on it. You want that media kit that if they never ever set foot on your blog, or when they do come to your blog, that the fact that your media kit totally mirrors that is something that's important. Remember that your media kit has multiple uses. Your media kit will be printed. I know we like to think that everything is done via computer, and a lot of things are. But a lot of marketing companies are incredibly conservative and traditional, and they're still going to print out your media kit. So you want to keep that in mind when designing it. You don't want to do a lot of reverse type. You don't want to have a lot of dark colors or a ton of colors that's going to suck up a lot of ink. You want it to be as simple as possible while still conveying your brand. Know that your media kit is going to be stored. So try to, I would say, make it into a PDF, something that can be emailed, because most likely it's going to be stored on a server that can be used later. Know that your media kit will be shared. Updating your media kit every month I do not think is a good idea because you are going to have your media kit shared with other PR professionals inside a PR agency and outside an agency. You never know what other brands a PR company may rep. You may have a situation where they pitched you for say dog food, which is nothing what you are interested in in your blog. But the way that you handle that pitch and going back to them, they, you may find that instead they are also in charge of organic cleaners, which is exactly who you want to work with. So remember that your media kit will be shared not only inside the company but also outside of the company. So how do you use your media kit in order to make money? I will tell you that your media kit is part of what I call the marketing trinity. Having a media kit is incredibly important because of all the reasons I talked about before, that it shows that you're a professional, it shows that you're a problem solver, it shows that you're not a time waster. But if you just send your media kit out without the other two, either a pitch letter or a marketing proposal, you're not going to have as great of a chance of getting work than you would if you were able to put the two others with the media kit. A pitch letter is just a letter that's going to any PR professional that just describes why you think that you are better or why that brand should work with you. It's as simple— we used to call them cover letters when we used to put resumes together, but it's just a very short and sweet letter that describes kind of you, describes why you want to work with that company and what you think you can do better than anyone else. It includes your media kit, and then if the conversation continues to go, then it includes a marketing proposal so that you can tell the brand exactly what you're going to do in order to get their product in front of more and more people. So in all of that, I wrote a book. I've presented on this a couple of times, and I find that media kits are kind of this enigma, that people are not quite sure what to do, how they should write it, and because they get in kind of a quagmire about it, they just choose not to do it. And so I decided to go ahead and write an ebook about it. What I found in it, it's a, it's a great resource that I go through why agencies find it important for bloggers to have a media kit. It gives a much more detailed description than I gave today about all 5 of those components. I give you a huge list of sample survey questions so you don't have to think of them all yourself. I also go into why you should ask certain questions at certain times and what information you should be able to get out of those questions.. I give you an example of media kits so then that way when you're working with a designer you can give them some more direction. I give you a 30-day checklist so then that way you can do your own media kit because I really do believe bloggers are amongst a great group of what I call DIYers. We tend to do stuff ourselves. So I give you a 30-day checklist and then I go into a lot more details of how you can use your media kit as part of the marketing trinity to make money. Dennis was so, just awesome in allowing me to be part of this. There's the bottom of where you can buy the media kit book at. For the launch and just being able to do this, I have a $5 off code that you can use at any time to get $5 off. Hopefully you will be able to check that out and let me know if you have any questions about that. That's kind of it for my presentation. I know a lot of times most of the great conversation comes in the form of questions. I'll take any questions that anybody has now.

Okay, we do have quite a few questions in queue.

Yes.

Some of them are using the question app. I still don't know where it is. I'm going to have to work on that. But Brian Parker has been asking quite a few, and his first one is, should your media kit be accessible on your site for the unsolicited public to see?

That's a loaded question. Personally, I do not do that, and the reason that I don't is because I think that it doesn't allow you to have a conversation with somebody via email about a proposal or about an idea. And so I'm always hesitant about just slapping it up there because I think that then you're gonna find people that are gonna choose either to discard you or to say nay just upon that media kit when there's a lot of times that we are so much more than just a page. You know, being able to interact back and forth and to be able to sell a concept I think goes a lot farther in order to being able to work with a brand.

Great. He asked another question, he says, "Would it be helpful to build a character that represents your main demographic?" Yeah, a great description of who your demographic is is always important.

When I write, I write media kits for bloggers, and one of the things that I always try to do is to be able so that you can visualize who that person is. So if you're talking about, you know, a woman, I'll call her Meg, and we'll say that Meg is 35 and that she has 2 kids and that she's working part-time out of the house and she's really concerned about keeping her house clean. At the same time, she's trying to raise her kids and do homework and eat organically. And so as much as you can describe about that character and that demographic, the better off you're going to be because it allows the company to visualize who that is versus just having stats.

Great. Lisa Mae asks, do you have a basic rate formula? Is there something they can use to try and figure out what they should charge?

That's a loaded question too. What I always say is to talk with other people that are in your same niche that have around the same size blog that you do. What I have found in working with different niches is that a cooking niche or a recipe niche has a different rate than say what I call a frugal blogger niche, which has a different rate than a homesteading niche that has a different rate than a tech niche. And so to say once across the board this is the rate that it should be isn't going to work. It's going to work to sit down and maybe talk with some other people that are in the same niche as you are from a blog perspective and just kind of give some average numbers. But there is no formula of like this many uniques equals this much for sponsored post.

Great. Okay, Kim Pebbley wants to know, what is the most professional way to tell a brand you don't want to work with them on the what they're offering?

The best way I have found is first to say thank you for even emailing me. So thank you so much for this opportunity. Second, I would just explain why you don't want to work with them. If— is it a situation where their product doesn't fit your demographic? Is it a situation where what they're asking you for isn't quite what you want to talk about? Whatever that is, explain why. Um, and then after that, explain what you do want to do. Again, because PR companies, PR professionals work inside big companies that carry multiple brands, to say, well, I don't really work with dog food, but I do work with baby products, and these are some of the things that would be interesting to me to be able to work on. And by the way, here's my media kit should another opportunity arise. I can't tell you the number of times myself personally and people that I consult with where that has happened, where we have said no to something, but then it turned around and 2 months later we were given a pitch by the same person for a completely different product that was just spot on for our blog. Great.

Okay, Cave Girl Cuisine has a paleo gluten-free recipe blog and she wants to know who exactly would she be creating a media kit for? Who is this audience for?

For a paleo and gluten-free. I would say that you're going to— a lot of products are becoming more and more gluten-free. We're looking at, if you look at just from the consumer brand side, there's more and more specialty products that are gluten-free. Oodie's is an example. I'm totally drawing a blank. I know Betty Crocker has started to go into gluten-free from a bigger brand, General Mills. There are companies out there that are starting to make that shift. It's not the big huge brands that maybe she's wanting to work with. To be able to work with Kraft is probably not going to work, but some of the smaller brands. I think what you'll find is that working with the smaller brands is more effective and easier than it is to work with bigger brands. And that reason is, is that you're not having to write a pitch for a committee. You're usually just having to write a pitch for one or two individuals because it's a smaller company. Great.

Okay, we have a question here from Grace, and she wants to know, if you've never done sponsored posts, ad space, or recipe development, how do you determine basic rates?

I would say it depends on how big her blog is. Then the next thing I would say is, what is it worth to her? There's a lot of talk in the blogging world about how much people should do something or how much little they should do something. I always think it comes down to what is the time worth for me and is it something that I really want to do. There's a sliding scale a lot of times. I've been offered sponsored post opportunities for products I really didn't want to work with or maybe just I didn't have time to, and so I shoot high. Sometimes they say yes and sometimes they say no. Then other companies will come to me and it's a company I really want to work with because I really believe in them. That may be a lower rate than say somebody else. To her point, I just think you just have to come to an understanding of how much you want to work, how much it means to you to do that work, and what it's worth to you. Again, talk to other bloggers too. I can't say enough about having a network of bloggers that you talk to about these things to kind of help you along so that you're just not out on the island by yourself.

Excellent. Denise Woodward wants to know where she can buy your ebook. Will you be able to leave a link for that later when we're all done here?

Sure, I can bring that up again, but if you go to FoxenMedia.com, so it has my name at the bottom underneath my name, and there's a big add for it on the site so she can buy it right there.

Great. Okay, we have another question here from Leo Barnes, and it's, is it a good idea in a pitch letter to include a sample post targeted to the company?

Instead of a sample post targeted to that company, I would provide work that you've done in the past. So if you are pitching a food company, if you have some sponsored posts that you've done in the past that work with with a food company that you are proud of, or if it's recipe creation, some recipes that you've created, definitely include those links into the pitch letter. But I would not create a specific post for that company because I want to make— I would want to make sure that their work is being protected. And as much as we like to think that companies are above board, there's been numerous times that I've known of people that have done work for companies on the promise of getting paid and then in the end aren't and their work is taken and something else is done with them. So again, sample work is good for other companies in the like niche or like vertical, but I wouldn't create a specific post for one company.

Okay. Alright, Grace asked another question. She wants to know if you're hiring a company to put your media kit together, what should that cost on average, or what's a good number to think about?

I do media kit work for a number of bloggers, and I think for a good company to do your reader survey and to really dive into the information and to create good elevator pitch statements and demographic statements, I think anywhere between a couple hundred bucks to $350 is accurate. I know that seems like a lot of money. But when you think that that only is like 1 or 2 sponsored posts is going to pay for that, it's well worth the investment.

So would you let them, the company, do the entire survey and everything too? You don't have to do any of the work, you hire them and they do the survey?

When I do work for other people, that's what I do. I just look at their site, I create the questions, I do the survey, I create the kit, I design it, I send it out. It's turnkey.

Huh, well, that seems well worth it to me. If I don't have to do all that, that's, that's like a bonus. I thought we had to do that and present it to you and then you put it together. Nope. Okay, all right, we have another question here from Ryan Parker. Would you view creating a media kit differently if you were a podcaster versus a blogger?

No, I wouldn't, because you're most likely in your podcast, you're still using some of the same old, same of the same social media. So you're still using Twitter, I'm sure you have a Facebook page, all the same things. It's a little different in that it's not static, but because of the increase in podcasts that we're seeing, I wouldn't approach it any different. I would approach it the exact same way because you're going to have specific listeners who are going to fall under a specific demographic, and a company needs to know that.

Great. Okay, we have a question from Kimberly Asher. Where do you find PR companies that work with bloggers? Good places to pitch?

Some of it is just doing your own work. I always tell people that if they're interested in certain brands to create a list in Twitter Twitter and just start following them and interacting with them. I've done that and have gotten great PR sponsor post opportunities just because of my interaction with those. So it's as small as just starting there. Other ways is like on Facebook pages, just having quality interaction with people. And then again, if you're going to any blogging conferences, you know, just try to be as authentic as you can and outgoing. Get as many business cards as you can and just start pitching. I wish I could tell you that there's a service that you could just put your name into and then automatically things are just going to magically appear. But what I found is that it still comes back to that human interaction and being able to show that you're a quality individual and that you take your blog and working professionally.

Very good. Okay, Laura Kuhman wants to know, she's a lawyer, and do you think that would scare people away who read her media kit? Should she include that fact because it does show that she has a successful career outside of blogging, or is that something she shouldn't include?

I think she should totally include that she's a lawyer, especially if she's a successful one. I think it shows that she takes her job seriously and that she's going to take her blog seriously. With that being said, if Laura is talking about pretty pink bunnies and then she says that she's a lawyer, that may be a little bit of a juxtaposition where they might have a hard time. But if she's a lawyer and again that she's blogging about something that would fall within that professional vein or something that can be tied somewhat to it, then I think that yes, definitely include it.

Okay. Uh, Kelp Kristen Doyle wants to know, how do you encourage your readers to take the survey, and what kind of a turnout should you expect?

I always offer something, a small giveaway for my readers after they've completed the survey. So I will put it up there, I will have my reader survey available for a week, and then at the end I will have a chance for them to leave a comment on the post where the reader survey is housed, and I'll pull maybe 5 winners, and each one will get like a $5 gift card to Amazon.

On.

Again, pretty inexpensive, but it just shows the readers that you care about them and that you care about their time. Then what was the second part of Kristen's question?

How many can you expect to get? Is there a percentage?

1-3% of your monthly uniques is usually a great turnout. If you can get more than that, then consider yourself blessed. Again, it's just, those are going to be your most loyal readers that are going to take your reader survey, and actually that's what you want because those are the people that you influence. And that's what companies want to know about.

Okay, Ryan Parker has another question, and part of it did disappear, but it was, would you recommend having tiered pricing for your media kit and send that out when you send it out?

I'm assuming what he's meaning by tiered is that having different marketing programs, so like tier 1 would be a sponsored post and an ad, tier 2 would just be a sponsored post, tier 3 would be just an ad or something to that extent. I think that comes more in the marketing plan and marketing proposal. And honestly, I think that that's kind of a step 2. I think your first step is the pitch email with your media kit to a company and start having the discussion back and forth, and then proposing what your marketing plan is going to be. Again, the reason I say that is because I have seen companies do this where they will take information that bloggers have gave, if they put a huge proposal together use that proposal but don't use that blogger. So again, I think tiered is fine. I think it gives options to the company, but again, I wouldn't do it in your first email out. I would wait after you've maybe had an email conversation back and forth.

Okay, Cavegirl Cuisine says again, she says she's been blogging about a year and a half and have a healthy following, but she stayed away from ads on her blog just because it's hard to find ones that really match what she's doing. Should she seek out advertisers then to find something that is a good fit for her?

I would definitely include that as part of her marketing plan. I would include it probably in her media kit. If she doesn't have any other advertisers on her site, then I probably would include that as part of your basic rates. I think she's going to have great success if she pitches a lot of small companies with that. They all have marketing budgets. But most likely they're not going to be huge where they're able to do these monstrous campaigns. But if they find a site that fits, has readers that fit exactly who they're going after, and she's able to track that, which she should be able to do, she's going to probably have a very lucrative opportunity with those smaller companies.

So a media kit would still be a really good idea for her then too?

Absolutely. I mean, have a media kit and then include— we talked about basic advertising rates. But for her, she would probably want to include ad space as well. She doesn't have any other advertisers and what that would mean. Um, and then what's great about it is that she's going to be able to track it so much more accurately because she isn't going to have a whole bunch of other ads on her site.

Okay, Tiffany McCauley wants to know what kind of questions would be asked in the survey.

There's a lot of different ones. Um, I kind of put them in 3 different buckets. There's a standard set of questions. Those are mostly looking kind of— they're one-answer, one-word answer where it's mostly about your demographics. There's another set that's open-ended questions, and those are the ones that we mine out keywords from. Open-ended questions can be, "What do you like best about my blog?" "What do you use the most often in my blog?" "How would you describe my blog?" so that the readers have the opportunity to describe and you're able to see words that are repeated over and over again, which then can become keywords.. Then I have what I refer to as informational questions. What informational does is kind of mine deep insights out of your readers to figure out what's important to them. A lot of times what we feel is important as bloggers and what we continually put on into our blog, our readers may or may not find as important. I've worked with numerous clients who have spent large amounts of time in printables where they've had printable recipes and printable menu plans and printable whatever. What we came to find out is that those readers on that blog didn't really care about the printables and never used them. And so for her, it was an investment in time that she could be investing in something else on a greater return. Another client we found, she made one mention in regards to homesteading and having chickens, and her readers brought that up over and over again that they wanted more information about it. Again, it's just ways that you're able to find more about your readers and what they want so that you can provide them what they want so that they keep coming back for more.

Great. I had no idea that was in a media kit, all this information here. Just what a timely, timely community event this has been for me too.

Yay!

Grace brought up a point, and it's something that's kind of a sore point. She says she can't tell you how many times she's been told to ask fellow bloggers questions about, you know, rates and things and how much they make, and no one really wants to to give any information out. They're all really tight-lipped about what they're making. You know, I don't know, they're afraid to give out money so you'll undercut them or whatever. But it really— we found that a lot, numbers, what they're doing and how much they're making. A lot of people really don't even want to bring that up. It's like not in polite conversation.

It is. I, and I feel her pain, I really do. And what I will tell you is that is to have confidence in yourself yourself and start putting some rates out there and seeing if you are being taken up on those often, and if you are, then look at increasing them. If you get told no a number of times, then maybe you're a little bit too high. I have a client that I'm working with who they had a rate that they were really happy with, and I sat down with them and I'm like, you guys aren't asking enough because you're continually getting too much work, and so let's raise your rate and see what happens. And we did, and they were able to cut down on their work, but they were able to make more money. So I know it's hard because people are tight-lipped about how much money they make, but I would just tell Grace to have confidence in herself and confidence about what she's willing to work for and to put it out there. And the PR company is going to come back to you and tell you if that's an accurate figure or if you were too high.

See, what Grace isn't also telling you, she has a book out already. She's been in national magazines, so she should not really be afraid of asking for money.

Exactly. Grace, don't be afraid for asking for money. All of it— I mean, again, a PR company's job is to get as much press as they can for free. Our job is to get paid for the work that we do for a company. And there's nothing wrong with asking for money. I think that's a hang-up that a lot of us get into of not wanting to ask for our worth, but we need to because we are providing a service and we are basically providing a group, an audience for brands, and they're connecting., and we're an influencer, and so that is worth something. Great.

Okay, Jenna Urban wants to know, should we have a local and a national media kit? Do you think that small businesses would take a media kit seriously?

I have a hyperlocal blog and I've never done two different blogs. I've only just had one, and the reason I have is because in my mind I almost provide more value for a local company than I do a national company because I am a hyperlocal blog. I have more influence in my local than I do from a national perspective. I would say don't undercut yourself from a small local perspective because you actually will probably bring in more traffic than if you were from a national perspective. No, don't have two, just have one. And don't be afraid to charge the same for a national company that you would a local company.

And I would think you'd impress the hell out of a small business if you sent them a really professional media kit. I don't think it would scare them away.

No, no, they might not understand it. You know, we have, you know, there's still a learning curve. I think we are entrenched in social media, and so we think everybody gets it. So there's going to be education that a lot of times goes into that, you know, talking with small businesses.

Okay. All right. There's a lot of great questions out there. If you've got any more, we know we still have a few minutes here. Don't be afraid to ask your questions, bring up some points that you might, you might want to know. And if not, you know, definitely I would, I would look into picking up that book. I know I'm going to have a lot of very useful information that you'll be able to use down the road and in getting together your media kit. And I like the idea of hiring somebody for sure to do all the work.

Yeah, it's just— I know it's for some bloggers, it's a lot of money, but in the end, like I said, it's 2 sponsored posts and you've paid for it, and you've got a professional-looking kit that you can send out anytime you get a pitch or re-pitch. I guess we didn't talk about that either, the re-pitch. Like sometimes when we get pitches that aren't necessarily good for our blog, never be afraid of sending back information to that PR person of, again, why it wasn't a good fit, but then also credentials as well, including your media kit, so that it can be put into the system.

Okay, I know a lot of us get pitches— or not even really pitches— we get offers from a lot of different medias that say, you know, I'd love to have you write a post for us, take some pictures for us, promote it for us on all your social media, and we'll send you 2 boxes of cereal, one to give away and one for the post. Woo-hoo! How do you handle these kind of offers?

For me personally, I just am very matter-of-factly to explain to them what my rate is. I will just say, thank you again for thinking of me, thank you for the opportunity. However, my guidelines, my rate is this, this is what I provide for this rate, this is why I think I'm worth this rate. So you go into what your social media stats are and everything else. And then I provide my media kit. And then again, it's up to the PR company to decide if that's worth it or not. If they say no, never be discouraged about that. Again, a lot of times PR companies don't have budgets to work with. They literally only have 4 cases of cereal in which to try to get their news and mentions across. And so that's maybe all that the company has given them is, you know, 2 cases of cereal to give out to bloggers. And so you telling them, no, don't feel bad about that. But again, you should not work for cereal. None of us should work for cereal. And the more that we stand unified in that, the more the rates are going to continue to go up and we're going to get better opportunities.

Yeah, I think one of the big problems with that is, is they know there's a lot of new bloggers out there where they might not get the traction from the new bloggers. You know, they're going they're so happy to get the attention that they're going to work for the 2 boxes of cereal when they kind of know they can just go somewhere else. But you know, you get— it's like anything else, you get what you pay for. We do our own media kits, we're getting what we paid for. If we hire you or a company like you to do our media kits, we're going to get more for our money in the long run.

So, right. And the other thing too is that, you know, you do get what you pay for. And again, it's the solidarity of us standing together saying we're not going to stand for anything less.. And sure, they can go to new bloggers and maybe get away with that, but for how long? And they're not going to get the traction. I would say too, you would be surprised how many PR companies don't know what they're doing. We are still— I know again, it feels like we've been in this social media thing forever, but for a lot of brands and PR agencies, they're just now starting to get into this and to really understand what it is and how to work with it. So again, it's about us educating, and it's about us standing firm, and it's about getting paid for what our worth is. With that being said, I don't ever feel like there is an entitlement feature either. One of the things I get most frustrated with, with bloggers, is that I've seen so much where they do get sponsored post opportunities and it is what I refer to as the cut and paste, where they will do one line of text, they will have taken a press release, copied and pasted it, slapped it in, put another line of original text and called that a sponsored post and expected to get paid $500 for it. You're getting paid to work. We still need to work. And so as long as you work and put together good authentic product, you are going to be asked again and again by PR companies to do more work. Our names get shared. I can't stress that enough. And if you put together good work and have a good work product, your name is going to be shared in a good way with other PR companies, and you're going to get more work because of it.

Excellent advice. Alright, we have Tiffany McCauley wants to know, is there anything that should not go in your media kit that we might not think is obvious?

That should not go? Again, professional photo always. I've seen so many bad photos. Please don't put a bad photo in there. Always a professional headshot should be included. I always say to try to make it as personable but yet as— you don't want too much personal information in there. I don't No one wants to know details inside and out about your personal life or what you fix for breakfast or some bad experience that happened to you 10 years ago. We want to know the basics of who we are, who we're dealing with, but we don't need to go into super details. The other thing that I think happens is when we get into media kits that we want to talk about everything. So I want to tell them everything that I can about my blog. Too many words is not good either. It's hard to read, and as we know just with doing blog posts When we don't allow enough white space for the reader to take a rest as they're reading things, they're not going to read it all the way through. And that does a disservice to you because most likely you've done a lot of work to put your media kit together.

Great. Alright, we have a question from Grace, and it's kind of specific to her because she's from Canada and she has a lot of trouble with some of the companies in the US. A lot of the brands are based— most of her audience is out of the US. Is there any suggestions with getting around this in the media kit?

So they won't do work with her because she's Canadian?

Because she's in Canada. Canada has some different laws, or lots of times the product's not available in Canada, but yet still the bigger portion of her readership is all US readership.

If she can explain that in a media kit, that would be great, especially if she would allow fulfillment by the company. So in her media kit, one of the things— or what, I'm sorry, in her reader survey, one of the questions I would make sure to ask is if if the reader is from the States or from Canada, and if they are from the States, which state they reside in. And just make sure that she puts that information in her media kit so that she can say what percentage are Canadian readers and what percentage are from the States readers, so that when she's working with U.S. companies, she can show that, you know, from a valid aspect, just because she's Canadian doesn't mean that she doesn't have a United States readership.

She asked again, is there an example of a well-written sponsored post? Is there some place she could find one?

Oh man, there are so many great bloggers out there. I would hate to go through the list. I would just say that whatever niche she's in, so if she's a food blogger or if she's a tech blogger— She's a baker. Baker, awesome. I would go and I would look at some of the baking blogs that she really respects, and then I would look at some of their sponsored posts and see what they've done. Not just from one, but maybe over an assortment, so maybe take her 5 top blogs. And just look and kind of go through their list and see which sponsored posts they've written. I mean, just kind of see what they do and how they do it. I always think the best thing from a sponsored post is to make sure that your voice is heard through it. So it's just not, you know, again, it's not a copy and paste. It's original. It's unique. It's if I'm speaking to a friend. Original photography is always good. How it applies to our everyday life is good. So if you can create a situation when you have a sponsored post of like how it's used. Again, think of it from a reader aspect so that they can think themselves in the situation that they're reading in regards to the sponsored post.

Okay, I have a question based on something I did. This made me think of it. Last year I did a sponsored post. I don't do very many sponsored posts, and I had one last year, and I had the company write to me, the representative, and say that I had written the perfect sponsored post for them.

Awesome!

Yeah, I thought so too. I was so happy. So I wrote back over at Joid thanking them very much, and that I really did like the product, and I used it, and I loved it. And if they were ever looking for a brand new ambassador, that I would be very happy to work with them. Never heard another word back from them.

Well, in that situation, again, it's about budget. It's not to say, Dennis, that your name hasn't been put on a list for brand ambassadorship, but it could just be a budget situation. Again, this is all kind of brand new that's coming into these marketing budgets and PR budgets to work with social media and work with bloggers. We're seeing more and more companies put line items for it, but it's one of those things that they start off pretty small and then it's growing over time. So again, never be discouraged because you don't hear back. I always tell people too, it's okay to send another email and just say, hey, I just want to make sure that you got that and if you're interested in what I proposed. And I always keep going to that until I hear the word no.

Okay, that's what I should have done then.

Yeah, I mean, it doesn't— and I was just— it's nothing forceful, it's just like, hey, I just want to make sure you got it, I just want to make sure that you're have all the information you need. However, if you decided that this isn't the way that you want to go, if you just let me know so I can take it off of my, you know, follow-up list, that would be great.

Excellent. Okay, we have a question from Liz Latham. Is it best to attach the media kit in a PDF or Word?

PDF.

PDF. I thought you said that. Okay.

The reason I don't like Word is because Word change— there's so many different variations of Word even from like, you know, a PC to a Mac, that all that styling that you spent time with can just get totally discombobulated. The other thing too is PDF is kind of this universal language that most every computer can open, and it always looks exactly the same.

Okay, yeah, I know just from seeing some Word documents, they just never— they don't always translate exactly the same. There's just funky stuff going on sometimes.

Right, and you don't want that to be a reflection of who you are. And it is. When all of a sudden you've got a typo or the text is all jumbled or a graphic is in the wrong place, it becomes a reflection.

We have a question from Alea Barnes, and it's, I'm currently writing for a company's blog. I want to contribute to another company's blog, and she also has her own blog, but she's busy. How would my media kit be different from someone soliciting for sponsored posts on their own blog?

Blog? I would just, in your about statement, I would include that you are a compensated writer or just a writer for whatever blog that you're writing for. Again, that just creates that you're more of an expert, that you have more experience. So again, just kind of treat it like a resume that, you know, if you were putting a resume together for work, you would list all of your past work experience. Do the exact same on, you know, your media kit.

Great. Okay, uh, Kaveri Cuisine with another question. It's one I was actually going to ask too, was how often should you update your media kit because of the change in your social numbers? Is this something we should have on hand, uh, just like a resume awaiting a job and just keep updating it?

I always say to update your media kits at least every 6 months, but no often than once a quarter. And the reason I say that is because your media kit does get passed around and get shared. You don't want to update it too often where you may have two PR professionals that have printed off your media kit and find drastically different numbers. That's a red flag that will come up and they'll be like, well, which one is the most accurate one? When you update quarterly, it's a pretty good chance that when you have that update, that that's the update that's going to continue to get used and there's not going to be any red flags that are going to be shown.

Okay, great. Laura Kooman wants to know, how do you know where you fit in the blogosphere in terms of size and readership? Are there any comparators?

You know, there are some out there, but I don't take any stock in them. I really don't. I really feel that it still comes down to relationship that we have in regards to the people that we're working with from a PR or brand. I've been compensated for my work on blogs since I was itsy bitsy and starting out within the first 3 months that I started my blog. I also asked for what I thought was— what I felt that I was worth at the time. It still was a great sum of money for what I was doing. I considered myself getting paid well for what I was doing. You can go ahead and compare yourself, but to be honest, I don't ever feel like those comparisons are accurate. I know people that have very small blogs that are paid really well for their sponsored posts. The reason that they're paid really well is because they do a really, really good job. The people that they work with and their readers, they have a very tight connection and they are an amazing influencer. I know other people that have what I would call humongous blogs. They're looking at half a million half a million, a million page views, but they have a very impersonal relationship with their readers, and so they're not paid as well because what they have found is that the brands have seen that they're not able to accurately, or how I want to say, influence them so that there comes up to what I call traction in regards to that product. It's a very hard thing. From a marketer's perspective, I wish there was some tool that I could use that I could just say, well, X Y this, and there you go. And it doesn't work that way with social media because, as we've always said, it's about relationship and it's about influencing the people that we have a relationship with.

Very good. Okay, Grace has another question. She wants to know, would you suggest noting in your media kit the date it was updated or prepared?

Yes, great point, Grace. Always have your date of whatever the date it was that you've updated it. So So if you're making one this month, make sure it has August of 2013 on it.

Great. Okay. That's all the questions we have right now. If you've got any more, we've got a couple more minutes. If not, we're going to bring it to a close. But boy, it's really been an informative night. I was— I'm pretty excited with the questions. How did you like them, Kelly?

I loved them. I can't believe we went for a whole hour. This rocks.

I know, I told you, you know, you never know how it's going to run. Sometimes it gets hot and cold. And then when the questions start pouring in, it's like a dam burst open. It's been a really, really great night. So, well, I think that's about it on the questions then, so let's take this opportunity to wrap it up. Do you have any last words of wisdom or advice you'd like to give our readers?

Just do it. I think so many times we put a media kit on the back burner and say that we're going to get to it. Just commit in the next 30 days that you're going to do it. Get the ebook, definitely that will help you out to be able to structure it so that you're able to put together a successful kit.. But don't wait and don't not do it because the minute that you do it, you become more professional. Again, it's all those things I talked about. You become a professional. They look at you as that you are— your blog is important and that you're able to be more successful because you're not wasting anybody's time. I just think that it's just one of those key pieces that every blogger needs to have regardless of their size.

Excellent advice. We're going to close it out on that.. And I am Chef Dennis Littley, and tonight you were here with Kelly Snyder as we talked about how to use or how to create a media kit. It's something we all need to do. So don't— do what she said, 30 days, make a plan, get that ebook, and then you'll get all those great tools in it to use to help you create it. And then find yourself someone to do that media kit for you. Alright, thanks a lot, Kelly, and good night everyone. Have a wonderful night, and we'll see you again soon.