How to Become a Full-Time Wedding Artist: Brushstrokes to Business Success
TAKE A PEEK AT OUR NEW MEDIA KIT + MAKE YOUR OWN, WITH OUR MEDIA KIT CHECKLIST
A good media pack is a must, for any blogger looking to take their platform from a hobby to a business and it’s probably the first thing you should think about doing when you’ve decided your ready to take the leap. Your media kit is essentially a little book all about you and your business. It contains everything that someone interested in working with you would want to know, from website traffic and demographics to testimonials from people you’ve worked with, as well as previous examples of your work. Bottom line: your media kit is what you will use to sell yourself to potential sponsors and business partners.
Today we are launching our 5th media pack in almost 10 years, so I like to think that we know a little something by now about creating a good media pack. This time however, we’ve simplified things. Usually we’d style some sort of editorial but this time, to commemorate next year marking our 10th year in business, we thought we’d let our blog speak for itself and include some of the beautiful real weddings and styled shoots we’ve featured over the years, as well as examples of our own projects and DIY’s.
I always love it when we release a new media kit but this one, must be my favourite! It has been a great way to relive what we’ve achieved since our launch in 2011. We have been lucky enough to work with so many amazing sponsors such as Cricut, Amazon, Etsy, Kuoni and many more. As well as being featured in top magazines such as Grazia, Cosmopolitan and Mollie Makes. We’ve watched our traffic grow from a couple of hundred views a month to hundreds of thousands and have been amazed by just how far our little blog has travelled. Quite literally, our blog is read by people ALL OVER THE WORLD! From the United States and Canada to Australia and India and I cannot tell you how amazing that feels!
So, if you’re a blogger and you’re looking to take the jump from hobby blogger to pro, I cannot express just how important this document will be and so to help you create your own winning media kit, here’s a checklist of what to include.
About your Blog
Use this section to let people know more about your business and who’s behind it. Include your blog name, mission statement and a short bio explaining exactly what it is you do. Follow on with a brief explanation of who you are, your history and what makes you stand out. This will be the first thing people will read about you, so make sure you give potential sponsors a reason to want to keep reading.
Don’t forget to include a picture of yourself! We live by the motto that readers to come to our site for our content, but they stay because of our personality and we extend that to our sponsors too. It is important to allow the reader to get to know you by putting a face to a name and it will help you to build trust in the long term.
Your Audience
Now it’s time to tell potential sponsors more about your niche so that they can see exactly why it would make good business sense to advertise with you and how you’ll help them reach their target market. So, who are your readers? What are they interested in? Where do they live? How old are they? How do they usually find and engage with your blog? All these things will be important factors when a sponsor is considering how good a fit, they will be with your brand.
Who You’ve Worked With?
It’s inspirational for potential sponsors to know who you’ve previously worked with and illustrates your ability to work with a wide range of brands. Your media kit is a great place to share examples of your previous work with sponsors. We chose to share our most recent collaboration with Rit Dye as we believed it illustrated our ability to take a seemingly unrelated product and turn it into a Wedding DIY, that could also be used at home. Brands want to see that you can think outside of the box, so share examples that you think show this best.
Testimonials are also extremely important and should be included in your media kit. Again, they help to build trust but more importantly they show professionalism and it’s a great way for sponsors to measure their potential success should they decide to partner with you.
What Services do you offer?
Now it’s time to tell the reader more about the services you offer, how you can help your potential sponsor to reach their target market and how this will benefit them. It’s probably not surprising to you that our most popular content is DIY’s and printables, so we encourage our sponsors to take advantage of this as we know these types of posts have a higher chance of being read, shared and engaged with, all of which ultimately leads to sales and that is extremely important to any business.
When working with brands we try to take as much work out of it for the sponsor by not only writing all the content but also taking charge of the photography to ensure the content not only fits naturally within our feed but also performs well on platforms such as Pinterest and Instagram which are Bespoke Brides two main sources of traffic. By playing to all your blogs strengths you will naturally set yourself up for success.
Stats
One of the most important things in your media kit will be your stats. This will include everything from blog sessions to unique visits, as well as social media stats, i.e. followers on Facebook and Instagram. Something else that is now gaining popularity is engagement and will sponsors will want to see a number for this where possible. Numbers for these can usually be found within the analytics section of whatever platform your using e.g. Google Analytics, Instagram/ Facebook Insights, Pinterest Business hub.
Finally, don’t forget to add a name for the person to contact when discussing a potential collaboration. It goes a long way to building a trusting and hopefully long-lasting business relationship.
We hope you’ve found this useful. We are very proud of our new media kit and we hope you love it just as much as we do. Please let us know your thoughts and if you have any questions about how to create your own media kit, please get in touch in the comments, we are happy to help 🙂
