ProBlogger: Partnering with Brands Theme Week: The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Media Kit

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Partnering with Brands Theme Week: The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Media Kit Posted: 02 Jul 2014 08:30 AM PDT   You will have noticed this week we have learned how to reach out to brands for advertising and sponsorship on our blogs – and the best way to sell yourself is to have all your details in a handy, professional media kit. It shows that you’re serious about partnering up to create an both an income for you and awareness of brands, and gives potential sponsors all the information they need to decide that you’re the blogger they’d like to work with. A media kit is a snapshot of your blog’s vital details, packaged up in a reader-friendly download. It provides potential sponsors a one-stop shop of information they use to inform their decisions about with whom they will partner. It not only has an overview of you, your blog, your reach, and your prices, but it is an essential selling tool for when PR representatives plead your case to the decision-makers in charge of their budgets. A media kit is like an extended business card you may send to anyone who needs to know more about you and what you do. This can differ from blogger to blogger, so pick and choose how much information you feel you need to supply (less is more, ya know what I’m sayin’?). Often a one-page overview is useful, but there are times when advertisers or book publishers or other interested parties need to know more detail about your blog and what you provide. The most common items are: About you: Your name A profile shot Your blog URL Your tagline (if you have one) A brief introduction/overview of you and the blog. Keep it short and punchy. The likelihood is that the person you are sending it to has already looked at your blog and your About Me page. Keep this one down to a few lines. Regular post topics or features that would appeal to brands About your readers: Statistics snapshot – unique browsers, monthly pageviews, Your demographics – who is reading your blog? Gender and age range is good to include here. Newsletter and email subscriber numbers Followers across social media sites – namely Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest (Google +, LinkedIn, and YouTube if that’s where your audience is at) Optional – Alexa ranking, Klout score, Google Page Rank, if you feel they will help your case About your services: Advertising spaces available, and prices for each (including discounts available for longer-term packages, etc), not forgetting RSS feeds and newsletters Sponsored post rates Inclusions (extra incentives!) around social media for advertisers and sponsors. Do you offer shout-outs and freebies for advertisers? Let them know! Sponsored social media update prices Conference sponsorship packages and prices Ambassadorship packages and prices Affiliate details Giveaway or review admin fees Your policies on review products Advertising spots/options to sponsor podcasts Mention (if appropriate) that you are open to any ideas the brands or advertisers have for collaborations Payment specifics and terms Your previous brand partnerships: Write a brief overview of the kinds of products and services you like to feature on the blog Link to a few of the larger campaigns you have completed that did well and you enjoyed Write a list of the other brand names that have been featured Testimonials: Include a few carefully-curated positive reviews of your work, or a couple of lines from people and brands with whom you have worked Add your press features, or where you’ve been featured on other blogs Contact details: Your name PO Box or address for people to send items Email Phone number (if appropriate) Social media links Skype details By all means hire a designer to create you one, if you like – but it’s quite simple to gather your information, a few images, and make them look great on paper. You can make a very simple one using Word (and then converting to PDF), or use any one of the image-creation sites out there. PicMonkey is easy to use (here is a great PicMonkey media kit tutorial), as is Canva, and Ribbet. PowerPoint is quite user-friendly, and can turn out professional-looking media kits in no time, you can use Pages, Photoshop, or even google downloadable templates. You could also search Etsy or similar places for either a downloadable template you can buy, or have a custom one made. Each person’s media kit needs are so different – you might find useful info at the following posts: Tips for Creating a Media Kit for Your Blog // Amy Lynn Andrews Blogger Media Kits: When You Don’t Have Much Traffic // Katy Widrick How to Create a Media Kit that Rocks // The Blog Maven Creating a Media Kit for Your Blog // The Well And you can get inspired with these media kit examples: ClickinMoms Click Magazine The Art of Simple Bloggers Bazaar Pinterest board of media kit samples The Blog Maven – 20 Media Kit Examples Best Blogger Media Kits – Katy Widrick Before you go: Update your kit often. Every three months is average Make it customisable – especially if you get someone else to create it for you. Make sure it’s easy for you to update it on your own Make it easily accessible. Consider having it as a download on your “work with me” or “contact” page. It saves email back-and-forth, and makes it so much easier (and faster!) for potential brands Think of printing – ensure your kit is of a high enough resolution to look good when printed Think of collaborating – don’t be afraid to make a list of dream collaborators, and be proactive in approaching them. Offer your media kit as a simple start. Be positive. And remember, if your numbers aren’t anything to write home about yet, you might like to mention your growth instead. Something like “doubled twitter followers in a month” sounds positive and encouraging. And is true! Be consistent with statistics. There are many ways of capturing this information, but Google Analytics appears to be the standard, and is quite accurate. Watch your language. While it’s great you write your blog with your own unique voice, this is the time to be professional (and a little quirky, as needed!). Keep it slick. We are visual creatures – break up big chunks of text and eye-swimming numbers with bright images, easy-to-read but interesting fonts, and lots of white space. Have you seen a great example of a media kit lately? What do you have in yours? Stacey Roberts is the Managing Editor of ProBlogger.net, and the blogger behind Veggie Mama. A writer, blogger, and full-time word nerd, she can be found making play-dough, reading The Cat in the Hat for the eleventh time, and avoiding the laundry. See evidence on Instagram here, on Facebook here, and twitter @veggie_mama. Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger Partnering with Brands Theme Week: The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Media Kit

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Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

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Personalizing Automated Emails Posted: 02 Jul 2014 06:30 AM PDT Marketers do not have the time to individually write emails for each recipient, though we would like to. Personalization of emails is a powerful thing and it is possible to convey even through automated emails. In this Marketo post, blogger, Rachel Kavanagh, gave four ways to do so. “There's no doubt about it: automating your marketing can bring incredible efficiencies to your business, allowing you to scale your efforts without losing precision. But you don't want your automated messages to feel automated – you want your marketing to feel personal, to build connections, and you also want it to amplify your brand. After all, it's widely accepted that it takes at least seven positive marketing messages to make a brand stick in a potential customer's mind. That means that every single message counts – especially until you've "stuck." If your communications are not consistent with your products and company values, or are insensitive to information you've already collected, you may lose some of your highest quality leads. Unfortunately, many companies are not effective enough during this delicate phase. Their brand messages aren't building their credibility, or resonating with the audience receiving them. Consumer brands like Coca Cola, on the other hand, are excellent at this – they have comprehensive, enforced brand guidelines to control every marketing message across all channels. They can justify huge spend on media like TV, radio, and print, and they enlist the help of high-profile celebrity endorsers, to simultaneously resonate with consumers and their personal values. They're conscious of how brand voice, narrative, and imagery should all tell a consistent story. B2B marketers generally have less money to spend and fewer channels to leverage than consumer marketers, but they also control a large proportion of brand transmissions in your emails. Luckily, automation can actually make your marketing more personal, and can also help you remain consistent in your messaging across every channel. Here are four easy ways to create more on-brand emails which resonate with your prospects, using marketing automation, your data, and a little creativity: 1. Sender Personalisation and Brand Ambassadors As people, we are hard-wired to crave connection with others, which is why, as marketers, we want to introduce our brand as authentic and personal. Despite this, many B2B marketers are still sending emails from "marketing@mycompany.com", or signing emails with "Sincerely, Your Marketing Team." In other words, they're simply begging for unsubscribes – who wants to be reminded that they're on a marketing list. Instead, make sure you're sending your emails from a real person – one who represents the values of your product or organization, and who fits with the message you are trying to convey. Choose brand ambassadors wisely. To give a widely publicized example, Coca-Cola chose Taylor Swift as the face of Diet Coke last year, which, due to her controversial, polarising persona, many blamed for a drop in Diet Coke's sales. If possible, send emails from a person who is highly relevant to the message – ideally, an expert in the subject matter discussed. Include an e-signature, links to Twitter, LinkedIn… whatever you decide will demonstrate authenticity. You might also include a photo of the sender in the email's signature – try a little A/B testing to find out what drives the best results. If you're using marketing automation, you can tailor your "from" names to appeal specifically to each email send's audience – you might use your own name, include contact information, or use the name of someone in your company (with their permission, of course!). This is where knowing your brand comes in – do you have a charismatic CMO whose name you'd like to highlight? Or do you position yourself as friendly practitioners? You can dive a little deeper into these options with our ebook, Creating Your Email Marketing Subject Lines and From Names. 2. Segmentation and Geographic Relevance Nothing encourages an express opt-out like a message in the wrong language, or an event invitation from the wrong continent! These messages are highly irritating, and are guaranteed to result in unsubscribes. If you're marketing globally, an incorrect geographic filter can even have legal implications. That's why we recommend segmenting the audience you send emails to. Beyond geography, you might also consider segmenting your audience by gender, age, job title, company size, industry, interests, and more. Marketing automation makes segmentation easy to implement, helping you avoid this major (and surprisingly common) faux-pas. 3. Use Your Data to Find Other Data Data has a way of hiding right under your nose. Often, marketers will waste time gathering info, only to discover only that they've had what they needed all along. For instance, some industries and countries require you to address potential customers formally – typically with both a salutation and last name. If you don't have this information for every prospect in your database, you might be daunted by the idea. But if you're looking for a last name, these are often included in email addresses…can you pull from there? If you're looking for a prospect's gender, can you discern it based off of first names? Both country and state can often be derived from contact fields. You can also derive a prospect's interest in a product based on behavior, which marketing automation can help you track. In short, don't re-invent the wheel – take advantage of automation to cleverly embellish your data with information you already have. With a little creativity and the help of automated campaigns, your database will rapidly fill up with the personal details needed to make emails feel individually tailored. 4. Create Resonance with Scoring And finally, use lead scoring – an essential, but often overlooked marketing tool that is used to qualify and pass along leads to sales. If you're using marketing automation, lead scoring presents a ready-made yardstick to measure how responsive new leads are to your content. First, marketers define levels of buyer interest (i.e. early, mid, and late stage), and then set parameters to determine a lead's qualification for each level. As each lead progresses from one stage to the next, the messages they receive can be adjusted in turn. You know how interested a lead is in your product or services, so you can be sure you're communicating in a personally relevant (but still automated!) way, sending the right content at the right time. Remember those first, most crucial seven touch points? Carefully plan your content streams for the most resonant results. This is often the difference between a marketing message that results in qualified leads, and a marketing message that results in an unsubscribe. So how can you measure success? Your response rate! You know you are making personal connection with the right brand messages when someone responds to an automated email. Honour this with a response whenever you can. And congratulations! It's not easy to achieve.” Trying to increase your Google rank that is like no other?

Help me and win a grand for yourself Posted: 02 Jul 2014 06:13 AM PDT Not about 2 years ago we launched a marketing platform called the Par Program. Functioning at an agency level, which included state of the art email, social integration and high level ROI tracking, we also did all the work for the clients. Just some of the extra work we did for clients included graphics, copywriting and programing. Needless to say, clients loved it and their results were staggering. But……the price point of that service just isn’t something that most can afford! Which brings us to this moment right now and why YOU are here! In the next couple of months, we’re launching a new company that will bring the SAME industry leading features and functionality the PAR Program provided, but at a price EVERYONE can afford! We’re literally going to shake the entire market to the core and leave a few well known services scratching their heads as to where all their customers went. Now, this is where you come in. We want you to be a part of this process in two different ways. First, we want to give a very select few the opportunity to beta test this and give us feedback. Tear it apart, make suggestions and requests. We know what people want already, but there’s no better way to give you what you want than to ask! Now, we also haven’t named this beast yet and we want your help with that as well! The person who comes up with the name we go with not only wins a cool $1000.00, but also a one of kind t-shirt with the phrase “I Named (system name)”. Sign up below right now to become a beta tester or just to throw your name in the ring for the cash and shirt prize for naming the system. We can’t wait to bring this to the public, it’s going to change the game forever. Go here to suggest a name and/or sign up to be a beta tester: http://greatestemailplatformever.com/     Looking for an SEO service that won’t get you banned?

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