- WHAT IS A MEDIA KIT?
A media kit (also sometimes known as a “press kit”) is used just like a resume or portfolio. It’s a document that provides information about your services, products, business, or whatever you’d like it to be. It is an up-to-date sample of how your brand can be of use to potential clientele. The reason it’s sometimes called a press kit is due to the fact some mail their kits to journalists and news companies to show the potential in reporting an event or interview. It entices the news with its helpful information and can result in articles being written about what you’re presenting or even a 30-second mention in the local morning news.
- THE ADVANTAGES OF CREATING A MEDIA KIT
Similar to a resume, a media kit includes past experiences and references, testimonials from satisfied customers, and current contact information for you and/or your business. However, it also combines some aspects of a portfolio. You can include high-resolution photographs of products your business manufactures as examples of the quality and standard you typically aim for. If you’re a music producer or songwriter, you can include links to songs you’ve produced or written in the past without having the person looking through your kit go out of their way to search for examples of your work. And, if you’re a company more intertwined with finances or numbers in general, you can provide previous business reports to demonstrate the detail in which you provide the statistics.
- FREE ONLINE RESOURCES
Designing a media kit might seem intimidating—especially if you don’t necessarily consider yourself a good graphic designer! But the procedure can be quite simple using some online resources, either completely free to use or free for a trial-run.
Canva is both a website and an app that makes designing your brand easier. It comes with a catalogue of free to use images and tools that are simple to master. This service also requires no signing up or paying a monthly fee. However, you’re always free to upgrade in order to access even more of their catalogue, and this comes at $12.99 a month for Canva Pro. Otherwise, the site provides a wide array of options for your brand, whether you prefer a classic black and white aesthetic or a more complex, colorful one.
Visme prides themselves in being “not just a tool,” but “the entire workshop.” Similar to Canva, there’s an option for having a free account, one which allows you access to design assets and templates; and the website provides an in-depth tutorial in order to learn how to use each individual tool and even tips on how to design the most aesthetically pleasing graphic you’re imagining. Unlike Canva, though, Visme offers several different levels of upgrades, each designed for a specific type of worker and their environment.
It offers the Personal account at $25.00 a month, in which you gain full access to templates and images and are granted more storage than a free account. With a Business account at $49.00 a month, you not only have unlimited access to designs and 3GB of storage, Visme allows you more options to download your work. It also grants you the ability to privatize your work and can deliver to you analytics and other features for your team to use to their advantage. The last account option is the Enterprise, intended for large organizations rather than a small and local business. Although the price of this option is not listed (you must instead email the site’s sales team), it has all of the most advanced and privacy-insured selections for your infographics and presentations. It even comes with more personalized and in-depth training on using the website to your and your organization’s advantage.
- ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Photoshop is perhaps one of the most well-known editing and designer softwares used in today’s world. However, it doesn’t come free of charge—although you have a free trial to start off with. Starting at $20.99 a month, Photoshop is a software that requires some knowledge in order to use it efficiently. While all of the various tools and options can seem overwhelming, YouTube offers free tutorials that take you through each step of almost any question you might have about how to perform a specific task. Want to photoshop all of your employees in front of your business front but don’t know where to begin in Photoshop? Check out this video by Brendan Williams called “Adding People Into Your Images Using Photoshop.” Don’t know how to change the font to wrap around a specific shape in your logo? This video by Safii Clon teaches you exactly how to do so! So while Photoshop might take more time than Canva or Visme to learn how to use, its versatility and popularity allows for ease of collaboration between coworkers or even between a designer and their client.
Now, if you aren’t interested in designing your own media kit or still feel intimidated by all of the software programs available to you, the option of hiring an outside perspective to complete the task for you is always available. The advantages of doing so allows the opportunity for someone outside of your business and brand to create what potential clientele might desire from you. You aren’t left to your own devices in wondering well, who would want this? or I don’t even know if I’m doing this right! Hiring an individual or a team, like ours at DMA, relinquishes you of the pressure of solving all of these questions on your own. We guide you in the direction of your goals and dreams and offer transparent support throughout it all.