Creating a media kit for your news site

If you work for a news site, you know how critical sponsored content is. Every company must walk the extra mile in this digital, competitive era to attract new partners. Whether through a simple banner or a well-drafted article, media houses leave no stone unturned to build opportunities to collaborate. 

Here comes the importance of a media kit: a powerful, informative, and versatile tool to advertise your brand and the contents it can produce. Keep reading to find out how to create a media kit and discover the role of content verification in supporting your claims.

Why choose a media kit?

A media kit summarizes the branded spaces your news site has to offer. Media kits are a great way to introduce your brand to prospects, collaborators, and people unfamiliar with your company. However, unlike a press kit, it is not pushy; instead, it is the first impression of your brand. 

Media kits greatly complement business calls, one-to-one interviews, or presentations to attract new sponsors. Having one easily accessible on your site also allows interested parties to look at what they can achieve by working with you, saving time in back and forth with emails showing examples. A media kit can be the make or break of an upcoming collaboration.

Therefore, if you'd like to attract more brands to collaborate with your site and have the spaces and formats in mind, a media kit is perfect for you.

Knowing what should be included in a media kit can make it precise, straightforward, and informative. So, here are some essentials of a media kit: 

• Details of the point of contact for collaborations, like the PR head.
• An overview of your organization and info about the most relevant roles
• Past collaborations and achievements, described through photos and Video News Releases (VNRs) 
• Media assets like logos
• Social media and website statistics to show the impact these contents have on audiences
• Case studies and testimonials from clients
• Frequently asked questions and answers

To illustrate this tool, let's look at examples of a media kit. Fortunately, we have assembled more than one for easy reference. So here are some creative marketing media kit ideas: 

• The 2022 Media kit of Forbes, a global media company, offers excellent insight into their capabilities, worldwide presence, social media presence, collaborations, and latest ventures. 
• Advertising and marketing company Adweek's media kit introduces its mission statement, strength, and brand presence through a video. 
• The Washington Post shows both print and digital solutions, as well as the categories of content they work on, so potential collaborators can choose the ideal one for them.

Washington Post

Now that you know the importance of a media kit, you can look at Hubspot's free media kit template to get started. 

Building your own media kit

By now, you have a fair understanding of what a media kit is and what to include. So, let us move on to the next step, which is how to create a media kit. 

It isn't more than putting the information listed earlier in a visual, attention-grabbing way. Still, we can provide some tips to help you gather and assemble this data:

• No matter how big or small your news site is, make the media kit's ease of access a priority. Make it visual, clear, and precise. 
• Collaboration comes second; the first thing is impact. So try to create a powerful, lasting impression on viewers. 
• The main aim of a media kit is to convert readers into buyers. So, provide tangible results that make the reader go, "oh, I want to work with these people." 
• Visualize your audience to make the media kit more effective. In our case, sponsors and collaborators are our audiences, so tell them why you are the best. 
• Your site may go through several redesigns or restyling regularly, or you may get to work with more prominent brands, so ensure to update examples and figures in the media kit. 
• Make your media kit easily visible and findable on your site by your clients. However, please don't overdo it to make it look like a forced sale. 
• Lastly, share the media kit extensively with other teams to increase the chances of connecting with companies interested in collaborations. 

The role of content verification

When a new opportunity hits your door, you shouldn't be running around trying to build a media kit for that particular prospect. That's why we encourage you to have your kit ready and at hand.

A considerable part of sponsorships is content verification, or in other words, having an archive of your work as proof to the people you're collaborating with. It ensures prospects or current sponsors get complete insights on the past performance of their brand posts in terms of: 

• Engagement like shares, comments, and conversations
• The time and interval of running posts, proving sponsors' content is live when needed.
• Complete insight on which content is performing the best and which is failing to live up to expectations

Further, whenever a new piece of content starts doing great or you reach a milestone, you should be ready to save a copy for future reference quickly. Keeping everything in tidied folders on a shared drive with dates and names is critical. Also, remember to grant access to everyone on your team. 

Fortunately, you are not alone in fighting this uphill battle. Today, several automated content verification tools available in the market can suit your requirements. For instance, Stillio can automate your content verification efforts with screenshots in a few clicks. 

Automating your media kit archive with screenshots

With an app like Stillio, you can fully automate screenshots for your entire site at desired intervals. That way, your entire base of sponsored content will be immediately saved for future reference without you having to do manual work. 

Sites are captured at their full length, so nothing gets cut out. You can also remove cookie banners or pop-ups and use tags to keep everything organized.

Moreover, you can easily timestamp these screenshots with the link, time, and capture date. These features play a vital role in preparing a powerful media kit archive. 

We know you don't have the time to set each page of your site to be captured manually. So Stillio also features sitemap captures. You can set parameters and generate screenshots for your entire site using only your .xml file.

After preparing your media kit archive, the next step is making it accessible to the concerned team and sponsors. Stillio can also make this task easier, as it integrates to cloud storage solutions such as Google Drive or Dropbox. Also, each screenshot has a unique URL hosted on Stillio, which you can easily share with other collaborators.

Conclusion

When built right, a media kit could genuinely reflect your site's content capabilities. With the help of this tool, news sites can easily beat the competition and find new collaborators. In addition, building a robust and accessible media kit archive makes your stance stronger. 

You can quickly achieve this goal by fully automating screenshots of your entire website at an interval of liking. Book a free demo with Stillio if you want to explore how screenshotting can work for your news site.