Imagine you’re a journalist or blogger.
You have to come up with new stories, daily. This is your job.
It’s OK though, because people send you emails every day – hundreds of them, in varying degrees of legibility and completeness. Often about things that can barely be considered “a thing”.
Now imagine an email landed in your inbox. It was polite, personalised, came with an interesting story, and all the information you needed to write a post and be out at the pub 20 minutes early.
Guess which sender YOU want to be?
Today I’m going to focus on how to make writing about your project as easy as possible for journalists. This will allow you to maximise your crowdfunding promotion efforts.
Making this simple
A good press kit will provide any person who wants to cover the project with everything they need to do so.
Basically, if you can get someone’s attention, write 90% of the piece for them, and provide a selection of other facts, quotes, and media, there is a good chance at least one or two journalists will pick it up.
What do you put in a press kit?
The basics are:
PDF Format:
- Press release (you can find more about writing a press release here)
- Bios of founders/people in charge (template available in the download pack below)
- Contact information and relevant links (template available in the download pack below)
Images (high quality JPG or PNG)
- Headshots of team/founders
- Stills (video projects)
- Product shots
- Screenshots
- Logos
Aim to have at least 6 images, and try to make them quite different from each other.
How to pull together and host a press kit
I recommend you use Dropbox. It allows you to have up to 2GB of cloud storage that you can share with anyone for free.
Put all your files into one folder on your desktop.
Use the checklist and templates above. For now, do NOT include your press release. You’ll be uploading that separately soon.
Make sure that all your files are clearly labelled. The file names for your images should tell the viewer what or who they are looking at.
Upload to Dropbox
From the main page, click the button with 3 dots […]
Click “New Folder”
Name the folder, and press enter to save.
Click the new folder to open it.
Click the “Upload” button.
Browse to your folder on the desktop and add them.
Copy the link and insert into your press release, and crowdfunding page.
Navigate back to the folder view and hover over the folder that holds the assets.
Click the ‘Share’ button that appears on the right hand side.
Select ‘Send Link’
Copy the link.
Paste it into your press release, and crowdfunding page.
Upload the press release into the folder.
Now your press release has the folder link, save it as a PDF, and upload a copy into the press kit as well.
How does it work?
Anyone interested in covering your story will be able to automatically access extra content, including images for stories and extra information.
Additionally, this is a “living folder”. You can change, delete and add to the content throughout your campaign without changing the link. That means at any given point in time, the content available to journalists and bloggers will be correct and up-to-date.
What can you expect?
As I mentioned up the front of this article, this won’t work at all if you’re not actively sending your story out to media.
Which means you need to also write a press release and send it out. To find out how to do that, check out the post on writing and sending a press release.
