When we started Littlesherpatravels.com 2 years ago, we never imagined a few short years later we would grow to the scale that enabled us to earn a side hustle income and work with some of our favourite Australian and global brands in the travel, lifestyle, food and drink sectors.
It's a big day when as an influencer or blogger you receive your first request for a brand collaboration, and we want to help you be prepared. That said, you don't need to be huge to start reaching out to brands yourself and trying to land your own collaborations, we started with our first paid partnership at 3K followers. If you want to look professional and showcase what you can do for a brand, a media kit is the perfect way to do so.
As your social media accounts or blog begins to grow, even from as little as 1K followers, its time to start thinking about what you can offer brands. Think about what services you might be able to provide to help them reach their audience and add value to them. Many brands use algorithms to find their ideal influencers across various niches. We've found that in many cases, while followers are somewhat important, having an engaged and relevant following is far more important. For the collaborations we've worked, on brands have wanted local audiences with strong engagement from followers who are interested in the topics related to their audience. Be sure to think about this as you grow.
If a brand reaches out to you, the starting point for creating a collaboration should include you sharing a media kit. This will help a brand define if you would be a good fit with their target market. If you reach out directly to a brand having a media kit is also something which will help you stand out and look professional. We often reach out to a brand first via social media to see if they are interested in collaborating with us and request an email to share more details, at this point you can include your Media Kit.
Here's a sample of one of our Media Kits we use (You can shop this editable template here)
How to create an influencer Media Kit - Getting the design right:
It's important that your influencer media kit matches your brand and personality, be sure to pick a theme that fits with the style of your social accounts, and if that changes, don't be afraid to update it. It is very important to use a media kit template you can easily keep updating as your statistics change.
Using Canva.com to create a Media Kit: Shop our Templates for the easiest way to start with a professional design proven to work.
We use Canva to create all of our media kit templates, it's free to create and account and use with some pro paid elements. If you're interested in using Canva, shopping our templates will offer you a fast and simple way to start while having a professional design. We offer multiple 1-3 page template designs on our etsy store.
With our templates you can edit them within the FREE version of Canva on either mobile and desktop. You can easily change the images, colour, text, font, styles and more. You can then download your kit as a PDF, JPG or PNG.
What you need to include in an influencer or blogger Media Kit:
6 Essential Media Kit elements you must include
Be sure you keep your media kit brief, we recommend between 1-3 pages. Be sure to include imagery, your contact details and links to your social media channels, key statistics, examples of your work and your services.
1. Details about yourself: 'about you' and 'your aim' or 'your mission' and a profile image
Brands will want to know a bit about you and how you add value. Keep it brief and share in a few sentences how you help your followers, what your niche is and the style of content you create, where you are based and how you would be a good fit for the brand. We would always edit this slightly depending on the brand. For example if we are working with a tourism body we would focus more on our travel content, if we were working with a restaurant we would focus more on our food and drink content. Brands what to ensure your style fits with their target audience and your values align with theirs.
Here is a sample of ours, we share both an 'About Us' and 'Our Aim'
About us: We are Danielle & Andrew, a husband and wife couple based on the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. We love to share travel, food, event & lifestyle content.
Our Aim: We inspire others to see the world in just a weekend! We love to share local hidden gems, events, short break travel guides and activity inspiration to help others plan their weekends.
Practise writing your 'About you' and 'Aim' by editing our statement. To start, answer the questions from our image above.
2. Include your social media links, social media handles and contact details
Be sure to include at the front or top of your media kit to include your social media handle and link to all of your social media channels, for example your Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, Facebook, Youtube or Blog as well as your email address. By using our Canva editable templates you can download your media kit directly to PDF which will make your links clickable.
3. Include follower, reach and engagement statistics in your Media Kit
Brands are looking for so much more than just follower numbers, they want to ensure that you also have an engaged audience that you can influence. We recommend not only including your follower numbers of your key social media accounts in your Media Kit but also your reach and engagement statistics such as reach, likes, comments and shares. You don't need to include everything, just select those that are most relevant to you.
Here are a few ways to find your social media account and website metrics:
Instagram Insights: Instagram offers free 'insights' and analytics within your profile where you can find a lot of the statistics you need. Here you can find your total number of followers, accounts reached, content interactions and more. We recommend including total followers, and average weekly or monthly accounts reached, likes, comments or any other relevant interactions you would like to highlight. Instagram now offers Reel highlights, if you share more video content or will include this in your proposal to a brand, this is great to include too.
TikTok Analytics: TikTok also offers free 'analytics' under their 'creator tools', press 'analytics', Here you and find your total follower count, engagement statistics including video and profile views, likes, comments and shares. We recommend including total followers and video views.
Pinterest Analytics: Under Pinterest 'Business Tools' you and find Pinterest 'Analytics' which is also a free tool included with your pinterest account. Here you can include your total followers, impressions, engagements, total audience and individual pin statistics.
Google Analytics: If you have a website or blog, be sure to create a free Google Analytics account and integrate this into your website. This will allow you to include insights such as your total website users, sessions, active users and more.
4. Audience demographic statistics
One of the biggest things we have found in working with brands is they are looking for influencers who's following matches that of their target market, which is why audience demographics are one of the most essential parts of a media kit.
Including in a summary format your audience gender mix, age rages and location including top countries and cities. You can find these analytics included in 'Instagram Insights' and 'TikTok' analytics along with your follower and engagement metics. You don't have to give every detail, use those you think will be most relevant for working with a brand.
Below are a few examples of statistic we highlight.
You can shop this template here and edit it yourself to use for your own media kit.
5. Include past brand collaborations or highlights
If you have already worked with brands in the past, be sure to include some of your work, including images and details of the collaboration. Using a PDF Media Kit template you can link the images or text directly to your post. We recommend in your email to brands to also include a few links to past work work as well. This will help give brands an idea of the style of content you can create for them.
If you haven't worked with brands in the past, don't worry, instead you can share some of your top performing content or content that has been featured or shared by other major instagram accounts or brands, be sure to call out the accounts which shared your posts.
We've included both our past work and content features in our media kit, here's how you can message it:
Content Features: Our posts have been reposted by some of the biggest accounts including....
Past Projects: We've created paid posts, stories and content creation for leading brands in Australia including
You can shop our template here, and edit it for yourself to include your own details.
6. Include your services offered
We suggest in your media kit to provide a summary of the services you can offer to a brand. For example if you are a blogger you may want to include a sponsored blog post featuring the brand. If you are on TikTok or Youtube you might highlight either posting a TikTok, Youtube on your account featuring the brand or services in video content creation.
In your email communications to a brand you can be more specific on your offering depending on their needs. They will often have specific ideas and requirements in mind if they have reached out to you.
Here are some examples you can offer:
Content creation and posting on your social media platform of choice, examples: Instagram Posts, Reels, Stories, TikTok, Youtube videos
Blog Posts
Photography
Videography
Account takeovers
Brand ambassadorship
Should you include pricing in your Media Kit?
This is up to you. We have heard of influencers who opt for both options. We personally have not included price in our media kits and have landed plenty of collaborations without having our rates upfront. Since we opt to share our media kit at the early stages of a conversation with a brand to determine if we are the right fit to work together, we find this is better to share at a later stage once this has been confirmed.
What Next?
We hope you found these details helpful! For more social media tips and tricks be sure to keep checking our blog and Etsy Store.
