Transcript

[00:00:00] Jeff Sieh: Hello folks. Welcome to Social Media News Live. I’m Jeff Sieh, and you’re not. And this is the show that keeps you up to date in the world of social media and so much more. And I’m so excited today because I’ve got my good friend Peg Fitzpatrick here on the show.

[00:00:16] And we’re gonna be talking about media kits. And this is something that you guys have been wanting to talk about for a while. You had given it to us in the comments when I asked for some feedback. And we’re gonna be talking with Peg about creating magic with media kits. So media kits are really mandatory when it comes to securing brand deals and partnerships.

[00:00:35] They need to be concise and informative. They gotta be stunning, which Peg does a great job with. And she’s gotta be engaging. It’s gotta be authentic. And it’s gotta also highlight your value as a creator or influencer, but also make you look kind of attractive to brands as a potential partner. And this can be a lot, so do not worry.

[00:00:55] You don’t have to hire a PR specialist or graphic designer. You can make. A media kit all on your [00:01:00] own using clever copywriting and free tools and some great tips from Peg today. So Peg, how are you doing?

[00:01:07] Peg Fitzpatrick: Good,

[00:01:07] Jeff Sieh: Good, good, good. How’s the weather? Is it cold where you’re at? Because I mean like, it’s like, like like 80 below or something.

[00:01:14] I don’t know. It’s crazy.

[00:01:15] Peg Fitzpatrick: Well, no, not this week, but a couple weeks ago it literally was like 40 below. But today we’re just like in a little end of a little blizzard kind of deal, and we’ve had a lot of tree damage That other storm gave us like a really bad tree damage, which is always a bummer. So, oh gosh.

[00:01:31] Jeff Sieh: So, yeah. So anyway, we’re inside. It doesn’t

[00:01:34] Peg Fitzpatrick: matter. Robbins yesterday. So . Okay,

[00:01:37] Jeff Sieh: well, if you guys don’t know Peg, which it’s, I’m, it’s hard to believe. Let me introduce you. She is a popular social media speaker, trainer and writer. She’s the co-author of Author, the Art of Social Media Power Tips for Power Users, and it covers all the major social media platforms.

[00:01:52] And over the years, she has collaborated with Dream Partners like TJ Max, sharing the stage with Barbara Cochran. She was first head of social strategy for [00:02:00] Can. That’s really cool. And she also

[00:02:02] Peg Fitzpatrick: Have you heard of Canva? Yes.

[00:02:04] Jeff Sieh: Because that’s right. Cause I think I remember you giving out, I remember you giving out social media marketing world, like cards for like $10 off Canva subscriptions and all that stuff that back in the day.

[00:02:14] Peg Fitzpatrick: It was Canva credits. Yeah. Like when you, that was awesome for, it was like a dollar in image or the elements and stuff that were in there. Yeah. I found one of those at my desk the other day. I was like, oh look, a little camera credit.

[00:02:24] Jeff Sieh: There you go. Try it out. So, she, but she’s also spearheaded successful social media campaigns for aie Motorola, Motorola, Google, and Virgin.

[00:02:33] And she has been a brand ambassador for Kimpton Hotels, Nestle, and many more. So she is passionate about social media and inspiring the others to be their best. So, we’re gonna be talking about creating media kits that stand out and sell. Peg You, peg, thank you so much. If I could talk today, welcome to the show again.

[00:02:50] This is like your third or fourth time I think .

[00:02:53] Peg Fitzpatrick: It is. . Hello everybody. Yeah, so good. Yeah, so I’m glad to be here. I it, media kits are a [00:03:00] great topic because it’s one of the things that people kind of gate keep information on the whole process of how do you get brand deals. . , I think there’s a little bit more information out there now than there used to be when I first started and I was trying to do, and I was like, oh my God.

[00:03:15] Like, there was, there was no templates, there was no information. You know, you have no idea. It’s like everybody wants to just keep the information themselves and not share it. . . So yeah. Hopefully this will be helpful for people who want to work with brands.

[00:03:29] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. And speaking of helpful, let’s talk about our sponsor for the show today.

[00:03:34] It is our friends over at Ecamm. You can find out more at socialmedianewslive.com/ecamm, and they’re what makes the show possible. It’s, they have just ruled out version four, which is amazing. Let’s us do isolated video track. So when I’m done, I’ll have a nice clean feed of peg and a clean feed of me, and I can actually repurpose them in really, really cool ways.

[00:03:54] You also have isolated audio tracks, which we’ll use for the podcast, but it’s all new in version four, so make sure you [00:04:00] guys check that out at socialmedianewslive.com/ecamm slash Ecamm. All right, peg, so let’s start out talking about like, what media kits are actually made of. So, you know, what should it include?

[00:04:14] You know, it should showcase your strength. Of course, it’s supposed to prove that you have an engaged online following by your follower stats. . highlighting the kind of value you can bring to a potential client. And you’re supposed, it’s, the goal of it is to convince other businesses and collaborate collaborators, you know, to actually, you know, partner with you.

[00:04:33] So let’s discuss the format. Ideally a media kit should be short and sweet, kinda like a resume, right? So do you think media kits should be like a one page PDF or like a slide deck? What do you find to be the most successful?

[00:04:48] Peg Fitzpatrick: So it depends on, like, if you’re at the very beginning stage and you’re just gonna be sending some, a brand something, you can make a pdf.

[00:04:55] It can just be one page or it could be two-sided, you know, it could just be more than one. You [00:05:00] don’t wanna make it too long when it’s the initial thing that if you’re just sending someone a media kit, First off but if you were sent, if it was later, like I’ve done a slide deck, but that was for for guy’s podcast and that was different.

[00:05:16] It was longer because I wanted to showcase guy’s experience brands he’s worked with like in a bigger way with more images. And then also I did specific, I kind of did it like the offerings and what to charge for them. . . So in your initial one, you don’t wanna put everything in there, but you wanna have it be like a pretty good teaser and you could put your rates in there if you want, but also, you know, well, I mean, we’ll get it probably more into like the money piece of it later.

[00:05:46] . . But you don’t have to put all your rates and everything on your, on your media kit if it’s, so you could have like different levels of a media kit is what I’m saying. You could have like an intro one, it was kind of like one, one to two pages. So it’s a really short pdf. You, and then you could have [00:06:00] a longer one that could include what you’re offering.

[00:06:03] You know, like I have a, like for Jeff’s show, like I have a show, it’s a weekly show. It’s gonna reach this many people. I run it on this many platforms. I’m gonna repurpose it, I’m gonna share it. So you could talk about those. . So it could be shorter or it could be longer depending on where you are kind of in the process with the brand.

[00:06:22] Jeff Sieh: So would you suggest like maybe having one for like maybe kind of a colder email that would be where your shoulder, your, you know, your shorter one would be? Yeah. And then like if somebody requests something from you that might be your medium size or, or longer one, is that kind of how you would think about sending it to people?

[00:06:36] Peg Fitzpatrick: Definitely. Okay. Definitely. Yeah. And then in the pdf, you know, you’re making a pdf, which is amazing cuz you can do them in Canva and you can do clickable links. So in there you could link to, do we wanna talk about the things that are in the media kit or is that what

[00:06:52] Jeff Sieh: Yeah, so I, I wanted to kind of go, you know, because I, I think like testimonials would be maybe in your, especially your longer version one. So [00:07:00]

[00:07:00] Peg Fitzpatrick: yes, you could do testimonials okay. In your logger one. And, and you wanna make it as easy as possible for people to see things, especially brands are gonna get lots of pitches from people. But, so in that, in that case, you could do text things, you could get little quotes from people or it in or you could just do a screenshot of the text and put it in there to look like it’s part of the post or something.

[00:07:24] So you can make it clever. You’re an online person? . ? One of mine, I have like a little screen a screenshot of me in the, like, in a phone, like it’s me. , I think I put myself in the phone like so. Oh yeah, yeah. You know? . just did like a little gotcha frame thing and put my photo in there. So you wanna make it as engaging as possible, but you could also add links in there to click through to the campaigns, which I think is really nice.

[00:07:50] Like, oh yeah. If you were, if you’ve worked, you, like, if I did a McDonald’s campaign, I could link right in there. People could click on that and then they could go right [00:08:00] to that post on Instagram. .

[00:08:03] Jeff Sieh: to see what you’ve done in the past kind of a thing.

[00:08:06] Peg Fitzpatrick: Right. Right. I mean, of brands are so good at like scrolling through, they know who they wanna work with.

[00:08:12] They also have very sophisticated software that pulls up influencers. . , so they find people that way too. Sometimes it’s just you. , they’re looking and they find you if you tagged them. . , obviously that’s, if there’s somebody that you wanna work with, that’s a smart way to go without being annoying.

[00:08:30] Right. You could mention their products and tag them. And really one of the best things you can do if you wanna work with brands, even before the media kit, before, during, or after the media kit right, is to, to really build a strong niche and have that be. What draws people to you? So for example, you do a show., you know, so that would lead you to software microphones, you know, anything within the social media. Right. You know, tool kind of deal. So that’s [00:09:00] like tight for that. Obviously there’s makeup people who do all different kinds of makeup. So there’s a whole bunch of brands in there and lot com.

[00:09:07] Competition in that space. So you would wanna have a niche, but also what’s different about you? What stands out about you? And those are the things that you wanna share in your media kit to have like a little elevator pitch. What makes you stand out from someone else? Like, I do video and I’m also like, I’m fantastic at editing.

[00:09:27] I can make great TikTok repurpose, you know, I reach this age group, you know, you wanna have all of that information, the demographics of your niche, so you can start there if you don’t have the audience yet. And think about who is it that, what is the market that you are going to serve and build your niche around that.

[00:09:47] And it kind of, you know, if you build it, they will come kind of deal. Right, right, right. It is kind of like that. So you wanna just be consistent with that. And mostly what they wanna see now is not a [00:10:00] big following. It’s not so much the follower numbers as it is the engagement numbers, the engagement, the comments and the questions Gotcha.

[00:10:08] Are what really, you know, cuz that’s what drives the algorithms now. . not necessarily how many followers you have, but who’s, who’s talking

[00:10:16] to you. So I wanted to ask a question about that because you and I have both seen a lot of media kits . And a lot of times we know that there, those numbers are inflated.

[00:10:27] Like, they’re like Right. Pulling things like we just know that it’s inflated. . And do, how important is to be super accurate on your numbers, cuz do brands, have you mentioned that sophisticated software? Yeah.

[00:10:39] They can, they can see, they can tell, I mean, you really can’t lie about stuff. They’ll either ask you for, for screenshots of stats .

[00:10:44] Or they’ll, you know, if there’s just, you really can’t lie about, you can lie about stuff, but Right. It’s out there on the internet. Yeah. Just, you know, if, if you have not worked with a brand, don’t put it on your website.

[00:10:56] Jeff Sieh: Yes, that is very true. We all know people’s done that as well too. [00:11:00] So a shout out to my friends over at Deal casters watching over on YouTube.

[00:11:03] They says, just meet a kit one page that just says The greatest show on the inner tubes. Well, thank you. You’re too kind Chris, I know that’s you. So, I appreciate your shout out there. But one of the things…

[00:11:12] Peg Fitzpatrick: And that will be right at the top of Jeff’s.

[00:11:14] Jeff Sieh: That’s right. I’m gonna use that, that testimonial.

[00:11:17] So, one of the things, let’s go kind of back to testimonials. You know, when it comes to getting your testimonials, you know, you mentioned it’s great to have ones with brands that you work for, right? Like, I could put on there that I’ve worked with Ecamm for x amount of years or whatever, but let’s say you’re just getting started.

[00:11:32] How do you handle this when you haven’t worked with brands yet? So you’re wanting to get brands, but what else can you put in place maybe of testimonials that brands haven’t given you yet?

[00:11:43] Peg Fitzpatrick: So, so it could be comments from your audience saying, oh my God, you know, that that video was so helpful. Like, you infl, you know, you from you, I learned how to do X from you, and now I’m gonna do, you know, you see all the time that people buy things.

[00:11:56] I talk about books all the time. . and I started, when I first [00:12:00] started, way back in the day, had a Twitter chat that was my book club hashtag my book club right before Oprah. I had an online book club , that’s right before Hello Sunshine and Reese Witherspoon created her empire. But the thing is like, it was really hard to make money for it with it.

[00:12:15] Yeah, I worked with authors and they would come on and be guests and I would talk about books and I was a random. Publisher influencer for a while and they would just send me lots of books. . , which was amazing cuz I love grades. That’s, that’s great. Through all the books. But it didn’t really pay and you still have to disclose it.

[00:12:31] So it’s like for a, you know, X amount dollar book, you’re, you have to go through all the disclosure stuff. . . So there’s, there’s so many different steps to it. And I forgot where I was going with that conversation about how did, how to build your testimonials if you don’t have them. Okay. So you can use comments from people in your audience in conversations that you have to show that you are an influencer in your niche before you have.

[00:12:55] So it’s building your community before you have done it. Sandra [00:13:00] Sal. Oh yeah. Amazing. I love Sandra so much so, so, so, so much. She’s my favorite. She does all kinds of stuff and she just started out, she, she was an artist and she’s done being an artist and she loves makeup and jewelry and all that kind of stuff.

[00:13:16] She posts, you know, stuff for, for her age group, which is She’s an el, she’s, she’s

[00:13:24] Jeff Sieh: a grand, she’s a grand mom.

[00:13:26] Peg Fitzpatrick: She does grand and grand influencer, I think is the one that she does. So she’s done tons of things. Her recent one she just did with a grocery store with Christie Teagan’s mom. She did a campaign over the holidays.

[00:13:39] They chose her to come in and do some table setting kind of deals. She’s got a fantastic personality, a background in Hollywood. Her husband’s, I mean, all of, everything about Sandra’s amazing. But she influences people all the time to buy stuff cuz she shares makeup. She’s honest. She’s like, I like this, I don’t like this, this, you know, she just talks about .

[00:13:58] the products. And that has [00:14:00] led to her getting big PR kits from companies, which are, when they send you all their products and you get them ahead of time and share them. And then also, she’s worked with a bunch of big brands. She’s had features in like the New York. . I can’t remember what the London, yeah, think it’s the London Times or London.

[00:14:18] Today. They’re Sunday, London, something like that. I’m sorry. If you’re in England, I don’t know your paper, but , whatever their big paper is on the Sundays, they did a whole story about her and what she did is just had her passion for. Makeup. . . And she translated that into building a really great Instagram channel.

[00:14:37] And now she’s doing YouTube as well. Yeah. So she does a great job and it’s just a matter of, you know, before she had the testimonials, she built the community of people who love what she talks about. You know, she’ll do like, get Ready with me makeup. . tutorials and all different, she’ll do like, right, I’m gonna try these new, like, she likes to do press on Nails now.

[00:14:58] She’s like, I’m gonna try these. And [00:15:00] she’ll like do it live and talk while she’s doing it. And it’s amazing. Right. So find what you’re passionate about and build the community around it. And while you’re doing that, if you’re thinking of working with brands, use their products, talk about them. . , but until you have the brand testimonials, you can use community testimonials as That’s a great to.

[00:15:18] That’s great. And one of the things with Sandra, cuz I, I’ve watched her too, and people like her and like Roger Wakefield, who started out in plumbing and became a huge influencer in that niche. Niche. . or niche, niche, whatever. I hate that word.

[00:15:32] And

[00:15:32] Jeff Sieh: anyway. And Sandra, you know, it’s never too late.

[00:15:35] Like you can get started now if you’ve never done it before. And Sandra is a great example of that, doing it kind of later.

[00:15:41] Peg Fitzpatrick: There’s, yeah, there’s so many people who take something that they do. There’s a guy who I love who does makes lunches for his kids and he makes like cool lunches. Right. And he’s done all kinds of brand deals.

[00:15:53] There’s another guy that I love that does kind of along the lines of plumbing. He has a YouTube channel and I think he’s [00:16:00] on TikTok. It’s like, for people who don’t have a great connection with your dad, it’s like this, I’m your dad showing you how to do things. So he is like, your dad’s telling you how to.

[00:16:10] you know, he does everything around the house, so it’s like a do-it-yourself thing. That’s, but he’s, it’s for, it’s from a dad perspective and people really connect with him because they go to YouTube to learn how to do things. . or TikTok, either one. And he’s there showing them how to do whatever.

[00:16:25] Right. So it’s just a matter, I mean, even Lou, your friend Lou, like he loves Disney. Lots of people love Disney. Right. You know, that’s why he has a podcast about Disney. Like, who would’ve thought that that would be someone’s career path? But it really, you know, it’s what you’re passionate about and you find the people that are also pa, I mean, there’s so many people passionate about Disney.

[00:16:46] Jeff Sieh: So, so back to, I mean, so. The, the short of it is like, listen, if you don’t have those brand testimonials yet, your community can provide those for you. And so we have a great community. I wanna bring up some comments from them. Kimberly McCoy says, thank you for [00:17:00] speaking about followers versus engagement records.

[00:17:01] Yes. So that resonated with Kimberly over on Facebook and Dustin, Dustin, our friends, Dustin says, it’s counterproductive to, to lie about your stats anyways. Repeat brand deal should be the goal. And if you set unrealistic expectation with inflated stats, the brands won’t come back. So that is very true, Justin.

[00:17:19] It is true. Thank you for that. Yeah. So,

[00:17:21] Peg Fitzpatrick: and, and going on that there’s also the thing of, you know, when you do a brand deal, Sponsored posts always get lower engagement and stats on it. Brands mostly know that, but it’s like a good idea before and after you’re doing brand stuff to like do some really engaging things to get your community really going.

[00:17:41] It’s, it’s important if you wanna do this at all, you have to stay consistent on whatever is gonna be your main platform. I wouldn’t try to do it everywhere. I would say now Instagram and TikTok are definitely the place where people are getting the most, I would say definitely TikTok, TikTok ERs are making big bank [00:18:00] over there.

[00:18:00] Jeff Sieh: They are. They are. So, Let’s talk a little bit, a little bit about what sets your media kit apart, because that’s, that’s important almost as much as your content does, so being creative and concise in your kit that kind of shows brands that you, your skills are in action and you can use your media kit.

[00:18:16] It’s kind of an opportunity to stand out from the crowd. However, we all can’t be Elie Wood from, you know, with our pink perfume paper from Legally Blonde , but so how can

[00:18:25] we,

[00:18:25] Peg Fitzpatrick: it gives it a so little something extra.

[00:18:27] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. So, but what can, how can we stand out with our digital media kit? I mean, yours is definitely your design skills.

[00:18:33] Like when you see Peg’s media kit, they’re amazing. She’s, I’ve seen multiple ones of ’em cuz we, we share a lot of stuff like, Hey, does this look good? ? But she, that’s one of her skill sets. They look really, really good. And it also tells brands kind of maybe subconsciously, like, she knows how to design stuff.

[00:18:48] She knows how to put posts together. She knows how to make things look good. So how can people stand out with their digital media kit?

[00:18:56] Peg Fitzpatrick: So even before you have the media kit though, it kind of goes into like [00:19:00] building your whole brand. . . So my media kit and everything I do goes back to like my blog and my whole brand.

[00:19:06] So if you see one thing, they all kind of go together and it’s a, takes a little bit of time to figure out who, how to translate who you are into your brand. But I, I’m always who I am, right? My brand is me and it’s not like a persona. This is me all the time. So Jeff knows, he talks to me all the time. Nine night, this is me.

[00:19:27] Yeah. So it’s kind of, it’s kind of like, people get confused when they’re starting a brand and sometimes they’ll see someone else’s brand. I know like Marie Forlio is someone who I love. She has an amazing brand, her YouTube channel, she’s an OG YouTube channel. Yeah. Her channel’s amazing. She sells classes, or classes are amusing.

[00:19:47] She is somebody who’s copied a lot. She has great taglines and, and she refreshes her stuff in a very big way every year when she does her class because people copy your stuff and [00:20:00] it really stinks. Like her YouTube tagline you know, all of it. So don’t ever try to take someone else’s thing and copy it to make your brand.

[00:20:08] That number one is never a good idea and it’s not you. I’ve had people take a lot of content from my website or try to copy what I do. Like all the things in my brand are me like. , the fonts I choose, the colors I choose, all the things I choose. It’s not gonna be exactly the same as someone else. Your brand doesn’t need to look like mine or anybody else’s.

[00:20:28] It should fit you. So what you need to do is kind of boil down who you are. I always call that like the three seeds of your brand. . to give people three things to think about. So when you’re building your media kit and your online brand, you wanna say at the top who you are, Jeff C YouTuber, Texan guy with a beard.

[00:20:46] Like, you know, you wanna have like, like some things that, like Jeff’s, your beard is part of, I mean the brand. Raise your hand if you knew Jeff before the beard. Because Jeff, when I met Jeff, he just had like the baby, right? He forgot to shave one day and now look at him. [00:21:00]

[00:21:00] Jeff Sieh: That’s all you guys.Bbs before beard friends.

[00:21:04] So Peg is one and Mike Allton is one and Dustin is one. So yeah, they’re bbfs.

[00:21:08] Peg Fitzpatrick: So, but it is, it’s part of your brand. That could be a brand deal. That could be, that could be like a long-term brand deal for some beard oil kind of deal . Right? I, I saw this great brand. Over the holidays my husband and I went to New York City and we did like the little Christmas markets. Which is, that seems like a million years ago. We’re still in Covid time where there’s like no real sense of time. Anyway, the brand was amazing and they made cool brand cool beard oil and it was called Zady , which my husband loved it. We had no idea what Azadi even was, which is funny. So you could be Zady beard oil like salesman. . .

[00:21:45] So it’s all part of building like something special, unique who you are. You even have it in your logos, you have it all over. So it’s kind of like building that, like if they see that, they’re gonna be like, oh yeah, that’s that guy with a beer that I saw do that thing.

[00:21:57] He would be so good to talk about our new blah, [00:22:00] blah, blah. So it’s kind of like seeing like how the brand can work with you and it built your demographics and with your personality and with your brand. So it’s kind of all of those things together. So you wanna have that in your media kit. It has like your name, you wanna have like your, your little like kind of tagline, your ki your demographics.

[00:22:19] You wanna have, definitely how people can reach you. Have a professional email, think about what your email address is there. Cause they, they’ll get that. The number one way that I see brands connecting with people though, is through direct messages. They sent a lot of direct messages. So you wanna make sure that you’re checking your messages cuz that’s where they might contact you first and then it moves over to email.

[00:22:40] Jeff Sieh: So would you say because of that reason with direct messengers, it’s good idea to have your electronic media kit optimized for mobile? Like if it’s a pdf, should it be able to look in there? Would, would that be something, because so many people are going through DMS now. Can you,

[00:22:52] Peg Fitzpatrick: I think usually that, at that point it’s through email.

[00:22:55] They, if, if they wanna work with you, they connect through email pretty soon.

[00:22:58] Jeff Sieh: So, and then you send ’em the, then you [00:23:00] send them the media through there.

[00:23:02] Peg Fitzpatrick: Yeah. They’ll be like, Hey, can you send the Media Kit here?

[00:23:04] Jeff Sieh: One of the things I think and, and kind of people really need to remember was what you said earlier about making it your own.

[00:23:10] Don’t copy what somebody else is doing because it’s successful. . . Right? It’s great to get inspiration for those people. That’s fine. But make it your own. I like when John Lee Douma came out with Entrepreneur on Fire, everything became set, was started bursting into flames. Like, there was like accountants on fire, you know, then it was firefighters on fire.

[00:23:29] I mean, it was just, it was crazy. So it is, I mean, if you wanna look at a kind of ridiculous example, you know, look at all the podcasts that are on fire ever since John did that, and that that still happens when they start. So make it your own.

[00:23:40] Peg Fitzpatrick: The best, the best things are the organic ones.

[00:23:44] Like the guy on TikTok that was going to work and he, his car broke down. He’s skateboarding and he was drinking cra Ocean Spray Cranberry , and playing a Fleetwood Max song. And the Fleetwood Max song went crazy. I mean, obviously they’re a very well known band, [00:24:00] but all of a sudden any music that’s popular on TikTok, the bands make, they make a ton of money from it thankfully. And they’re popular. Like, there’s so many stars that are people that we know now because they did something online like Sean Mendes. Oh my gosh. Cardi B. Yeah. Megan

[00:24:19] Jeff Sieh: Zach King when he started doing cool stuff you know.

[00:24:22] Peg Fitzpatrick: Well, Zack King. Zack King is amazing. But I was just talking about those were musicians who just did, they were, they were popular because they did their music on TikTok, Instagram, vine, one of those things. So my point is, being your own organic cool thing. I’m not saying that it’s easier, but that guy didn’t think he was gonna go viral and he was just going, he was just filmed skateboarding and drinking, which I would a hundred percent fall. I probably fall if I drank cranberry. If I drank a big thing like that and tried to walk it would a hundred percent make me fall.

[00:24:58] But anyway, he ended up making [00:25:00] a ton of money from that, so it’s . . It’s not that that was the goal, but he was just doing his thing and it became popular. So it’s not necessarily that your goal is to go viral on TikTok or wherever, but sometimes in the process of doing your thing, you know, you can have something be popular.

[00:25:17] Jeff Sieh: So I want to talk about kind of this micro influencer, nano influencer. So like, micro influencer is like a 10. to like 50,000 followers and then like nano, I think is what they’re classifying 1000 to 10,000. I guess so. Yep. They’re, and they break it down. Everybody has kind of little different numbers.

[00:25:35] So let’s, let’s say you kind of suffer from a little bit of imposter syndrome because, you know, you can be really intimidated when you start looking at some of these even like, TikTok videos where, where some of ’em have like these millions of views and you’re like, Hey, I just got on TikTok. What am I doing?

[00:25:51] So what’s, and you’re kind of maybe, you know, unsure of what stats you may want to share. . . So when it comes to performance stats, is there, is, [00:26:00] is there a low, that it’s too low that you shouldn’t mention? Or is there a way that you can actually demonstrate your value to a brand? If you find yourself in that kind of micro or nano, like you only have like, let’s say a couple thousand followers, can you still get brand deals?

[00:26:12] Peg Fitzpatrick: Yes, definitely. I, I see a lot of them. And on TikTok you can, even if you make something, there’s an example, there’s a, a lady that she didn’t even have a lot of followers. She did mostly like Amazon couponing things. . . And then she made this video where she was using this hair tool that I actually have in love.

[00:26:31] So it’s a good one, but she just like, she just like did her hair and that thing blew up. And then it’s, it, that’s the kind of thing where you never even know. It wasn’t even that great of a video. It was just like one that she did. So I think the main thing is to know that brands already know what your numbers are.

[00:26:47] They’re very smart and savvy, and they know what they’re looking for. So if they’re talking to you at all, if there’s a good chance they wanna work with you, or if it’s a brand that you wanna work with, don’t worry that much about it. Just keep doing your great stuff and. [00:27:00] Be engaging. . . So if you wanna get people involved in things and more eyeballs on it, you wanna make sure you’re using the right hashtags, you know that you’re kind of doing something maybe a little trendy.

[00:27:11] If you see a sound that’s picking up, there’s all kinds of apps where you can find trendy music or it just has a little up arrow next to it that’s like teeny tiny on the screen. If you can hop on something that’s kind of trending, it actually does help a lot. One, the only thing I have on TikTok that like exploded was I was just kind of like looking to see what was working on TikTok.

[00:27:36] And it was like a really short video under seven seconds with text all over it and like something going with kind of a heartfelt message over it. . . So I made this little video of my husband, not him, but his hands working on, because he does not wanna be on any of it. He was making these Easter eggs that his grandma always made.

[00:27:56] Oh. And that has like almost six. . Hundred thousand [00:28:00] views. Wow. Betty Crocker commented, I was like, Hey, Betty Crocker, how about if we, you know, partner on some holiday stuff? But they were like, hi, we like your video. They weren’t interested. But cuz I’m not a baking person, like all my stuff isn’t about baking, but, so just as an example, brands already kind of see what’s going on.

[00:28:17] You don’t have to worry if you’ve had a video that’s gone viral. I would say being consistent in having people who are interested in your content is more important than having like a viral post or having bigger numbers. They know that their con, that they would, they want to work with people with smaller networks because the smaller people actually have better engagement than people with 30 million, 40 million, I mean, , you know, Charlie Jam, Emilio, they’re not gonna get her like a brand is right.

[00:28:43] They, they’re gonna pay huge amounts of money for that. So, I would say organic is better. Look at Ben Affleck and the Dunking Donuts. Yeah. Super Bowl commercial. They did not go to him. Ben Affleck said, Hey, I have an idea and this is what I wanna do. And they were like we wanna [00:29:00] film you in the boardroom.

[00:29:00] He was like, let me film it myself and then you can decide. And for, and I love those Super Bowl. Yeah. I loved his Super Bowl Dunking Donuts. It was great. That’s, he, he’s a super fan. He is a Dunking Donut super fan. He gets, there’s so many memes of Ben drinking Dunking Donuts. . so good for him. Yeah. I

[00:29:18] Jeff Sieh: So I, this is a great, and speaking about community and, and this is from our friend Ross brand.

[00:29:23] He goes, are you talking about total followers across social or one specific platform? So that’s a great question. That’s a good question. When you, when you break it down for media kits, should you break it down by platform or should you just go like, here’s all my numbers,

[00:29:35] Peg Fitzpatrick: I put all. Nope, I lost a pig.

[00:29:39] I’ll, can you hear me? I, yeah. No, you’re back. You’re back. You’re back. Good. Cuz that was a really bad freeze face . It’s always like the worst. You’re never like smiling and looking at Yeah. So you could put your total numbers and then break it down by social channel. Usually you would work with them on what?

[00:29:55] I mean there’s all different kinds of deals that you could do something across all your So social [00:30:00] platforms, it could just be for one post. It could be, there’s all different kinds of brand deals, but I break it down by different social channel. So like overall I have 200,000 followers, but then that’s like, , I’m like a micro influencer in between there.

[00:30:14] . . So it doesn’t, it, I, I swear numbers don’t matter as much. The, the reason that numbers, even to the, to the point where when I was researching how much to charge for stuff . , it was based on engagement, not follower count. So that is a true thing right there. They’re not looking at the number, they’re looking at that engagement and it was like 0.0 whatever, per engagement.

[00:30:35] So it’s, it’s definitely shifting because to no fault of influencers, all the algorithms have changed. Right. And you might have a lot of numbers and if you’re not consistent, you’re not gonna get the engagement. So I’m not posting on Instagram daily, I’m not running stories all the time. But if I wanted to, you know, get back into working with brands, I would have to do that and [00:31:00] be really consistent with it.

[00:31:01] And just keeping the numbers up, because you would wanna what you get in your, the engagement in the stories.

[00:31:07] Jeff Sieh: So let’s talk about that because you know, kind of like, you know, rates, like salaries, there’s a lot of factors that go into, you know, a pay scale, convenience, flexibility, other benefits, like how many times you’re gonna post .

[00:31:18] but that kind of all seems arbitrary if you’ve never worked with a particular brand or company before. So how do you determine a rate for yourself? How do you price yourself competitively without losing your self worth and value? Because, you know, and, and the thing is, is like, and I just read a great article from Justin.

[00:31:36] Gosh, he does the brand deal Wizards. I can’t remember his last name, but he has a great email. But he was talking about like, don’t even ask, you know, other people in your industry what they’re charged. You need to figure out what you need to charge, which I thought was interesting take. So, yeah. What is your advice on this peg?

[00:31:51] Because this is the big struggle I know that I have had. And I know other people have is like, how do you figure out your rates to charge for an influencer gig?

[00:31:58] Peg Fitzpatrick: I know it, it is hard. [00:32:00] And there’s, you know, there’s two sides of it. Kind of like what just Justin was saying is, you know, there’s the side of like, what, what?

[00:32:06] They’ll pay you and then how long is it gonna take you to do it? Is it worth it? You know, when you first start out, people are, you’re just so happy that brands will send you free stuff. They’ll send you free makeup and send you free. So you’re like, yay, free stuff. But eventually you’re like, wow, I did a lot of work for that free stuff.

[00:32:22] So you, to get to the point where people are paying you, there’s kind of, there’s kind of different factors. So I found a couple of different things for, I found one for TikTok and one for Instagram. . to talk about like specific numbers. Yeah. And I found this great tool. I, I’ll share a link in the comments.

[00:32:38] It was like, oh, let me pull up the name of it. Cuz I just, it’s like ins, it’s like inspire me. Instagram pricing calculator. But I’ll put a lick. Okay, I’ll link cuz it’s, it’s like spelled weird. But anyway, they have a little calculator where you can put in your Instagram handle and then it gives you like a little range and you can put how many posts, how [00:33:00] many stories.

[00:33:00] So I did for my Instagram, one post in three stories it generates, oh, you froze again. Charge

[00:33:09] can you 51. Hey, go back and say that again. You froze

[00:33:12] a minute. Okay. So, for my followers, I have like 34,700 followers on Instagram. It generated what they estimated the engagement to be and then it said I should get $951 to $1,200 for one post and three stories.

[00:33:29] Like that’s what they’re saying that I could get. And I will tell you that I. haven’t done I, that’s less than I’ve charged when I’ve done it. . , because it’s a lot of work to do that, right? There’s a lot of work that goes into it. So you think, oh, it’s just one post, just three stories. But there’s a lot of back and forth with a brand.

[00:33:45] When you’re creating content with a brand, it takes so much longer because you want it to be perfect and to be great. So it’s not as, it’s just not like a quick one off thing. So that was Instagram. And I love that tool cuz it kind of gave you a reign. Now you could use that if you’re just [00:34:00] starting out and it gives you, like say it tells you $500, you could say fine.

[00:34:03] If it’s a dream brand that you’ve always wanted to work with, fine. Do the deal for the, what they’re offering. If you do a great job, it could lead to more things with them later. So it’s, there’s nothing wrong with taking something that you maybe feel is a little bit lower. The thing that you wanna avoid is working only for product unless you really want it.

[00:34:23] Right? If you’re working only for product, you’re never making money in it. And technically you’re supposed to pay taxes on anything that you receive in kind. So, . There’s a lot of things to think about. The Shopify, I found a Shopify article that had pay range for TikTok and that one just had by the number of followers that didn’t have any engagement factors worked in there.

[00:34:45] I can find that article and share that too later. But this had, for 1000 to 10,000, you should get $800 a post for 10,000 to 50,000. It was 1500 for 50,000 to 500 it was 3000, and then 500 [00:35:00] to a million, 5,000. And then we know anything over that. You know, the sky’s the limit , right? God only knows what celebrities are making millions of dollars for a post anywhere.

[00:35:08] Right. So, but,

[00:35:09] Jeff Sieh: but I, I think that’s great. That, that gives you a baseline. Now that doesn’t mean you have to, to do that. Yeah. So, Facebook user, I don’t know Facebook user, I dunno why it’s coming, not coming through, but drop your, your name in there so I don’t have to call you Facebook user , but they say I encourage my peers and junior peers to push up their fees.

[00:35:25] When they do, I raise my fees. I always want to be the most expensive as psychology as this in this profession has value. So, that’s interesting way to do it.

[00:35:35] Peg Fitzpatrick: That is true. I, I lost out a deal to someone I know who charged. , even though my engagement and everything else was better. So it’s true. That can happen.

[00:35:45] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. So once again, you have to be comfortable and feel, and one of the things is, I guarantee most people are not charging enough for the people who’ve, who I’ve talked to and they’re saying, Hey, I don’t know. I gave them this number. And I’m like, you should’ve doubled that. Like [00:36:00] because of the amount of work of work and I know the deal casters have this happen all the time is like when you become an AM Amazon influencer, The people, they come out of the woodwork wanting you to do it now.

[00:36:10] It was really great when I got started cause I wanted free stuff. Like you were saying, if you want free stuff, that’s great. Like, but I don’t do that much anymore unless I really, really want it. Or if it’s like woodworking, like I really want this company to send me this like laser etcher for my woodworking.

[00:36:24] Like if you’re listening. I’m still interested. Um Right. But other than

[00:36:28] Peg Fitzpatrick: that is part of it. Yeah. Right. Go ahead. But you, but ultimately you’re doing this cuz you wanna get paid, right? So you, you know, you’re gonna get, you’re gonna get offers saying we’d love to send you this product in exchange for .

[00:36:40] Blah, blah, blah. , the really cool brands say, we wanna send this to you. There’s no expectation that you have to do anything, but we just want you to have our product. There’s one brand. And they even like, follow up and they’re like, do you want, do you need more? We’ll send you more products. And I, yeah, I love, it’s very nice.

[00:36:54] Those are cool. Yeah. Yeah. So, but going back to that, so you need to make [00:37:00] sure that you’re comfortable with negotiating, which is very, very hard. . . So they’re gonna come and they’re gonna go, what do you charge? And then it’s kind of that, what do you pay, what do you charge, what do you pay, like .

[00:37:09] So you can ask the brand, you can say like, what you know what, a lot of times it might be a specific campaign that you wanna work with. So they’ll say, you know, in our industry it’s like we’re going to this, speaking at this event. You, they wanna do a tie in with that. They want you to do stuff live there, blah, blah, blah.

[00:37:27] , you can say, well, what’s your budget for this event? . , you can kind of turn it back on them and see if, if brands accept your deal right away, you know, you’re probably not charging enough. Right. If they didn’t come back and say, well, we’re not really sure about that. The other piece is when you’re in, in the negotiation parts, there’s a lot of things to look at, like, is this exclusive?

[00:37:48] Is this exclusive for 30 days? You know, how many places are you posting? Do you need to leave this up forever? Like there’s things in there so you need to make sure that you read contracts that they send you, and [00:38:00] also when are you gonna get paid for this? Because sometimes brands are really slow to pay and that really stinks.

[00:38:07] So you wanna make sure that has in there when you’re gonna get paid. Do you want half of it upfront? Then tell them, I want half of this upfront and then 30 days after I want it all paid. Cuz tracking down money from people from something you did a while ago is the pits.

[00:38:22] Jeff Sieh: Yep. That is very, you know, and that also reading those contracts, because more and more I’ve seen brand deals come through when you read this fine print, they say you can’t do any competitor’s products for like 60 days or, you know, half a year something.

[00:38:37] So be real, read all that stuff. And, and most of the time when I’ve had stuff happen like that, I’ve able to go and say like, I’m not doing that. Like, change the contract. Right. And most of the time, a lot of times I’ve found they’ll do that because they really want you to talk about

[00:38:50] their product or something.

[00:38:51] Peg Fitzpatrick: You can say, if, you know, I need this to be changed or my rate is triple right, .

[00:38:56] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. So we talk about that a lot with Amazon stuff because if they start giving me [00:39:00] direction on how to shoot a video, then that becomes a paid thing. And my rates really shoot up because I don’t want to have to deal with going back and forth with the brand.

[00:39:07] If they, if I am, they’re gonna have to pay me. The other thing is, is if they say We want to use this video, on our own social channels. . , we wanna have the rights to it. Well then you really jack the rates up because you’re losing out on any stuff that you would have for your own channel. So, always, always read the contract, always, you know, make sure you understand what the brand is really asking for, and be very clear, like if they’re giving you something, like if I have a product that somebody wants to send me and I really want it like a woodworking something or other, I’m very clear like, thank you for this product.

[00:39:41] You have no direction on me. Saying, saying, how do you want this shot? Or, you know, any of that stuff. It’s just like, I will do it the way I want to. When you move into directing me, that’s a whole another price level.

[00:39:53] Peg Fitzpatrick: If you wanna gimme a script and I’m doing X, that costs more. Yeah. It, it is, everything is negotiable and everything they add [00:40:00] on costs more.

[00:40:01] So if they wanna give you a script, if they’re giving you, you know, if they wanna just send you product and you do your thing, that’s a okay. But you do just have to look for all of the, the fine print and stuff, like exclusivity and, and

[00:40:13] if they don’t have a contract, be wary and ask for. So, yeah, don’t just

[00:40:17] like, yeah, I would say most of ’em have contracts cuz they really want the right to post up on their channels.

[00:40:22] Jeff Sieh: Well, I’m, yeah. My thing is, it’s like what I was talking about through Amazon, they’ll just send you stuff like, make sure you get a contract if things are going just to protect you in the long run. So,

[00:40:32] Peg Fitzpatrick: The other piece, so this is really a whole other show, is when you do branded content, you do need to make sure that you’re disclosing it.

[00:40:38] And if brands are asking you not to disclose that you’re working with ’em, that is a huge flag. Yeah. Flag. Flag. I won’t work with brands. I, I had a brand who was sending me stuff and wanted, you know, they were like, you know, they wanted all these people to be brand ambassadors for them, but they didn’t want.

[00:40:55] you to tell that, that you were working with ’em. . and I was like, I’m [00:41:00] done. Thanks anyway. But you know, and I actually had a call with their social media team to talk about all this stuff cuz they were new and they didn’t know how to do this. I’m like, you guys are asking people to do this and it’s really not okay.

[00:41:11] But the owner of the company, that’s how they wanted it to all look organic. . . Well that’s not organic. That’s illegal. You’re manipulating the market and it’s illegal. Yeah. Yeah. So I said, no thank you. And I do love the product and I’ve talked about them a lot, but I don’t anymore because I.

[00:41:27] Jeff Sieh: That’s not cool.

[00:41:28] No. So a couple questions. I mean, a couple comments from our audience. Gary Stockton friend watching over on YouTube, he goes, yeah. Fender, get in touch. Yeah. , he wants a friend deal there. He’s a great musician. I like watching him on Instagram. He does a great job. And Rich has a great comment saying, always be willing to walk away too.

[00:41:44] So that is a great point, rich.

[00:41:46] Peg Fitzpatrick: Yeah. And that’s, that’s negotiation. You can’t be so excited about that you just say yes and sign it right away and then later you realize, oh, you had an exclusive deal in there and you can’t.

[00:41:55] Jeff Sieh: Right. You know, that’s really important to read those contracts. By the way, something I’ll never walk away from [00:42:00] is our friends over at Ecamm.

[00:42:02] Look at that. So yeah, so one of the cool things we’re talking about brand deals is I was using e m way before. , I even, you know, started the show and, you know, they even, we even talked about having them be a sponsor of the show. And that’s one of the things I wanted to bring up. It’s, it’s great to have a real relationship with the brand.

[00:42:20] A brand that you can trust . that you can talk to and, and, and go back and forth with ideas on. And that’s why I love Ecamm and that’s why I continue to, you know, shout their praises during the show. Really appreciate them for sponsoring the show. Mentioned earlier that they just ruled out with version four, which is amazing.

[00:42:35] They got a ton of cool stuff happening in their community as well. They’re one of the best brands, I think, on helping train about the product and, and having a community and Discord and on Facebook all the places. So if you haven’t checked them out yet and you want to create presentations, live shows, all sorts of stuff, make sure you go to socialmedianewslive.com/ecamm

[00:42:54] all righty. So let’s continue our talk about media kits. But we’re gonna talk a little bit [00:43:00] about, okay, you got a media. Now what do you do? Because , I get a lot of pitches. I know Peg you get a lot of pitches through email and LinkedIn that end up in spam and most of them are just emails. But once in a while I get a media kit.

[00:43:15] So what’s the best way to reach out to potential partners with your media kit instead of like a cold email or sliding into their dms? What’s the best way that you found, like, you wanna, you wanna do that to connect with some of these brands?

[00:43:29] Peg Fitzpatrick: Well, it kinda is sliding into, into your dms. I think the first thing is maybe make a list of brands that you really wanna work with.

[00:43:35] Like, who are your dream partners? And then, you know, kind of check out their social, make sure that they, that you fit with their brand. You know, if they’re very conservative brand, you don’t wanna be swearing or Right. You know, doing things like, so it’s you kind of fitting in those ways. And then, you know, try to connect with them online and talk with them.

[00:43:55] Kimpton, I definitely was talking to them before. . [00:44:00] I worked with ’em and I just sent them a pitch like, Hey, I’m doing this thing I love, I would love, I sent them a like, Hey, I’d love to work with you thing. . , TJ Max, a brand that I love, contacted me. So that was like, oh my God, I love TJ like that. I love TJ Max so much that I was like, I probably would’ve almost done that for free, but I didn’t.

[00:44:20] Yeah, yeah. Good. I know I didn’t, and if I did, Barbara Corker would’ve kicked my butt. She was so awesome at that, at that event, I got to meet Barbara Corcoran and Layla Ali, like two really awesome business women. But yeah, so that, so yeah, it’s kind of like knowing who you wanna work with, you know, make a little vision board for it and kind of put it out there.

[00:44:40] Like, what would these look like? If you have an idea for a thing that you wanna do with a brand, don’t just do it and put it out for free. You could just, you know, kind of create pitches and send it to them. I’ve done that, like . , hey, we could do this. You know, I’ve done that with Guy before too, and there’s companies that he wanted to work with, you know, Make it happen.

[00:44:59] Like say, [00:45:00] hey, you know, sometimes you just reach out and say, Hey, blah, blah, blah. But sometimes it’s a little bit of a flirtation with a brand beforehand. Like maybe you’re mentioning them, maybe you’re talking like, I tried it with Betty Crocker. Betty was only sort of interested. . Yeah. But I could’ve pursued it more.

[00:45:14] But honestly, like I, that’s really not my niche. So

[00:45:16] Jeff Sieh: I was like, I would’ve been happy to send me some like muffin mix. That’d be great. . Cause I love Betty Cocker. I have the Body built by Betty Crocker, by the way. The thing that I wanted to ask you is like, do you wait for a brand to request your media kit?

[00:45:28] Or should you just send it?

[00:45:30] Peg Fitzpatrick: To I think I would talk to people. I think I would kind of talk to them first. I don’t think I would blindly, I’ve never done a blind send. I think it’s just kind of like, you wanna have all these pieces ready in case they do ask you, you wanna connect with them. Probably the, you know, they’d say, send me an email here and send your media kit.

[00:45:46] So you don’t wanna, at that point, have to try to like, create it. It’s kind of good to keep something current. . , you could have it on your website so people could download it. , you know, you could send a message out saying, you know, I’m interested in working with brands. If you [00:46:00] want me to send your, send me your meeting.

[00:46:02] You know, there’s a way you can just let people know you’re open to stuff too. . , you know, it’s kind of like putting, putting it out there like, Hey, I’m looking to work with brands that do X, Y, Z. Yeah. You know, I saw one recently where somebody wanted, I can’t even remember what it was. Sometimes it’s even companies, like, they just make a video, like a fake, somebody did it on TikTok, they did a fake commercial for something, and then they got hired to do it.

[00:46:25] They were not paid. They just loved the brand so much, and the brand was like, I love it. .

[00:46:30] Jeff Sieh: So, so the, your point about making a pitch, like how . , once you send the pitch, like, how long should you wait before, like, you follow up? Like you don’t wanna be annoying, but do you have like a rule, like a rule thumb that where you like say, okay, I’m gonna wait before I follow up and hopefully they’ll ask for a media kit?

[00:46:47] Peg Fitzpatrick: I think if you’re connecting, usually there, it’s either like a PR firm or the brands people, they’re pretty good about doing things right away. So I would say like a week, week and a half follow back up and just be like, [00:47:00] Hey, I’d love to talk with you. You know?

[00:47:01] And if, if you, if their job to connect with people, so if they’re not responding they might just not be interested. I mean, you could follow up and say, you know, Hey, let me know if you need more information. You know, if you have any ideas or that, that might be a good place to say, you know, I’ve been thinking about this deal.

[00:47:18] I had this great idea to do X with X. Like if it’s a certain product, um hmm. . Gotcha. You know, it might be a place where you might need to be creative and come up with an, a really good idea to pitch to them. Maybe they hadn’t thought of it and maybe, you know, it’ll be good. I, I actually just saw one on TikTok.

[00:47:35] It was a girl that was talking about makeup and she, she does her mascara, like in a really, she really weird way. She just puts on a ton of it, gets it all over and then she cleans it off . But she just ha she has like a. eyelashes though, like on her own, but she just does a mess. She’s like, does everybody do this?

[00:47:51] And so like, like Rare Beauty, one of the big Selena Gomez’s . Beauty brand reposted her video. So with permission of [00:48:00] course. Right. And they mentioned her, so, you know, it’s just kind of sometimes doing the thing to get out there. You know, maybe, maybe you are doing something that would be kind of a paid thing for later.

[00:48:09] But I think she was really just doing your makeup and showing how she does it. And she ended up getting hired by a different brand to be in their ad campaigns because she had such great eyelashes. So you never know where something’s gonna go. Right. You know, like she was just kind of being like, I make a mess when I do mascara.

[00:48:25] Does anybody else do this? It was funny. It was like the opposite of what most people show. She and she got two big brands attention and hired by probably both of them. Wow. So, sometimes it’s just like, you know, the, maybe your cold, maybe your cold pitch is you doing something creative with a brand before you’re working with ’em, is what I’m saying.

[00:48:46] Jeff Sieh: Gotcha.

[00:48:47] So I wanna be respectful of your time, but I have a couple more minutes on this section. Do you need me to move on or are you good for sticking around a little bit longer? Do what you wanna do. Okay. Because I mean, this is great stuff. This is gonna, this is providing a lot of value for people because this is something [00:49:00] that I don’t think a lot of people talk about, and so it’s really, I think, important.

[00:49:03] . . So the question, so we got this media kit, so what can we actively do? You mentioned building a community. Yeah. And you know, and maybe app mentioned them not being a pain about it, but like every once in a while or. So how do we actively attract brands to invest in us? Is there, is it enough to do your thing?

[00:49:20] Just keep putting out great content as everybody says, hoping that somebody notices you someday? Or how can we be proactive on attracting brands?

[00:49:28] Peg Fitzpatrick: I would say, yeah, it is a manner of just doing your thing. And I’ll use an example, I’m not gonna say her name cuz she’s, she’s somebody that I, she, I, she’s not a client, but I, I am like friends with her.

[00:49:38] She’s actually a local girl and she works with my daughter. She’s amazing. She has a really great TikTok account. She does makeup. She just does, she does her little get ready with me makeup. She has worked with tons and tons of big brands now. Tons of brands are working out with her. . She, and that was really from her just loving makeup.

[00:49:56] She just tries the products and she does it. She’s in the right place. She’s on [00:50:00] TikTok. She and she, you know, she’s very consistent on her niche and all these brands, ta talk to her in her comments, but also in dms. So if, you know, you just have to be in the right place doing the right thing. That is how it works these days.

[00:50:16] You know, if you’re making like videos and they’re not getting interaction, nobody’s interested. Are you doing ’em in the right? YouTube I think is harder to connect. I don’t hear of people on YouTube getting direct messages from brands getting deals. Do you? I never hear that.

[00:50:31] Jeff Sieh: I, I have ’em reached out.

[00:50:32] Like if they’re, if they’re a specific, like we had Monte Weaver on a couple of weeks ago, he does really like tech stuff and like going live and all this stuff and they’ll reach out to him because he does, he’s very specific about like, I’m gonna be, this is the microphone I use. This is why you should use it.

[00:50:47] And he gets brand deals that way. He’s also big on Amazon, but I think I, I’m like, so

[00:50:51] Peg Fitzpatrick: DM dms are the place, so just if you’re doing your thing, you know, just be consistent with your niche. You know, if I, if I wanna do, if I wanna connect with baking brands, I [00:51:00] would have to start all over and just post baking, bake a stuff every day.

[00:51:03] But then I,

[00:51:04] Jeff Sieh: which you could do by the way, cause I’ve seen your stuff. It’s pretty good.

[00:51:07] Peg Fitzpatrick: If could get my husband outta my kitchen , he likes to bake now more than I do. Can never get in there. But he makes great stuff.

[00:51:15] Jeff Sieh: So, . So on that same note, let’s talk about, you know, kind of going beyond this me media kit.

[00:51:20] Yep. How do you leverage, I mean, this is, this could be also another show, but really just quickly some of your tips leveraging social media when you’re securing those brand deals, like how do you use your following on LinkedIn, Instagram, or others to secure those brand deals? Maybe not just mention your numbers, but is there ways that you can use those platforms to get them?

[00:51:39] Peg Fitzpatrick: I think it’s just a matter of connecting with ’em. So, I don’t know if anybody who gets, well, maybe there’s some LinkedIn brand deals, maybe. . , LinkedIn actually doesn’t want people posting sponsored content, but people do it. . , is there a way to leverage that? I think it’s basically just the engagement and content.

[00:51:57] Right. Yeah. It’s, and it’s not the, [00:52:00] the follower count necessarily, it’s the engagement count. So it’s kind of building your community, nurturing your community, and really being interested in your community. Like, it’s not a matter of just like posting and posting and posting. You can’t post and ghost, as I like to say.

[00:52:16] Right. It’s really a matter of connecting and being interested in your audience. So, like you were saying with Ecamm, they have a community and they’re really passionate. Obviously they want you to pay for their product, right. But they’re not just like, buy our product, do our thing. They’re like, Hey, join our community.

[00:52:32] Here’s other people doing it. I love when you can join a community for something that you want to learn that is like really where you connect with people. I’m doing a writing workshop this weekend for a community that I found on Instagram. I, I’m a writer, but I don’t really have. Writer friends, and I want writer friends.

[00:52:51] I want people to connect with. I wanna like learn. It’s hard to learn how to do, like this whole thing, learning all the brand thing. It’s like another thing to be an author. . . And to build [00:53:00] that, like, there’s the same things but different things. So I was really involved, like I love communities.

[00:53:07] Some of ’em you pay to be a part of and that’s fine. Like Ecamm m that’s their thing. But if there is like somebody who is producing videos, I’m sure there’s tons of ’em, right? Who have communities and you can join this community for X amount of money, it’s worth it. So building a community and building the engagement is really where the numbers are these days.

[00:53:26] So, you know, if you, if you feel like you’re not getting anywhere, just make sure that you’re, you’re creating content for the people who you wanna reach and connect with them, whether it’s in messages or like write in the comments. A, a lot of the best conversations. do happen in direct messages.

[00:53:44] So that’s the, that something I was with your community.

[00:53:47] Jeff Sieh: That’s one of the things that I, especially on Instagram when you were talking about like engagement and brands looking at your engagement, I’ve seen a lot of people and a lot of experts in social media talk about how important dms are. Well, that’s hidden from a brand, [00:54:00] so Right. Can you give them like, Hey, yeah, I get X amount of dms per month.

[00:54:04] I mean, is that a stat that we should think about? Because a lot of people are sliding into dms to ask questions. There’s conversation and actually community happening in these, in these dms. So what would you say about that?

[00:54:15] Peg Fitzpatrick: Yeah, I haven’t, I haven’t seen that specifically is a stat. Okay. But I mean, the ones that

[00:54:24] like the in Instagram stories, there’s a little, you can encourage people to send you a message. So there’s stats from that. So if you did something, there’s stats for that one in particular. But just think about using all the tools that you have like that. Send me a message, you know, respo, you know, ask me a question.

[00:54:42] All of those things, the new things that they add into stories are all to build the conversation. So it’s not just you posting, it’s you. And to be honest, I never post pictures of myself that much anymore. . . And yesterday I posted a picture and I’ve gotten messages [00:55:00] since then just saying like, yeah, just nice messages.

[00:55:03] It’s, it’s interesting that like that wasn’t my intended goal, but that’s what happened. So it’s kind of like just reaching people. Cuz if you wanna work with brands, that’s gonna be part of what you have to do because they want you to post any people to talk about it, right? So you can’t just expect to start doing a brand deal and magically people are gonna appear.

[00:55:24] it doesn’t happen that way. And also in a, in a good way, build your community of friends. So when you do have a brand post, you could send it to a couple of your friends and say, could you please comment on this for me? Not to people you don’t know. Not to, you know, I’m talking about your true friends. Like I could send it to you.

[00:55:43] I could send it to Dustin and I could say like, Hey, you know, can you just comment on this? Because. Anything that you post with that, that branded content tag, it does get less distribution and you can’t sponsor those posts. Right? You can’t boost again anymore. You used to be able to, I [00:56:00] actually worked that into my thing a couple times where they had to pay for sponsorship of the post so it could get better distribution, but now they don’t let you do that anymore.

[00:56:09] Right. So this is, so, you know, you mentioned writer friends. Well, Kathy says I started following Peg because she is a fellow writer. So there you go. Kathy.

[00:56:19] You are my writer friends. . There you go.

[00:56:22] Jeff Sieh: So, so I wanna that, I wanna move on to our last segment here really quickly, because I think this is where Peg really shines.

[00:56:28] I mean, all her stuff’s good, but she’s an incredible designer. I keep telling her she needs to do a course on creating presentations because they’re amazing. But we mentioned at the top of the show, you know, you can make a media kit all on your own. with, . , you know, your copywriting skills, templates, free tools.

[00:56:43] So what do you recommend we use when we start making these brand kits? I know you have some favorite tools that you use.

[00:56:49] Peg Fitzpatrick: Well, I would say Canva. , yeah. Ca I, I made my first one in Canva when there was no templates for it. But now if you search for Canva Media Kits, there is [00:57:00] maybe 250 different templates in there.

[00:57:03] . . So you wanna fit something. If you’re gonna look, you could just look through the templates and make your own a hundred percent from scratch, or just take one of theirs and a hundred percent customize it, which is what I do. So you wanna make sure it has photos of you, recent photos of you. Don’t try.

[00:57:22] You, you want, they wanna work with you, right? So it’s gotta be the you right now. Whatever they’re gonna see on camera, that’s what they need to see on your thing. So you want to if you have, actually the girl that I talked about on TikTok, she was like, what do I do? I don’t even know how to do this.

[00:57:36] I actually made her a really cute media kit and I love to help people that don’t ask , , here’s a media kit I made for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you could do screenshot, you could do shots from your video. So like, you could do like little, she’s got all these great vertical videos, so I just like took little pictures from there.

[00:57:56] It does take longer to do it that way, but you could just go through [00:58:00] anytime that you’re filming a video, do some still. before or after, you know, just think about building up a little repertoire of things that look like brand deals you could make. Yeah. So just make sure that you have like, current pictures, good pictures.

[00:58:15] Everything we always talked about is do like clear the best pictures. But right now, like everything is moved more towards the Gen Z doesn’t even like clear pictures. They like, like a blurry, like right, like you’re moving kind of deal, right? So, hey, if you’re young and you can do that, good for you, go for it.

[00:58:31] But I’m still with the clear photos. If there’s specific brands you wanna work with, you know, look at what their brand looks like, kind of get a feel, you know, you could do different media kits for different things. I, for guys, stuff I had had done specific pitches for certain brands. So, you know, if it’s a really big brand, you know, think about how, what kind of stuff they have.

[00:58:54] Is it moody? Is it . , bright and fresh. Is it, you know, It’s right. They’re all different. So

[00:58:59] Jeff Sieh: [00:59:00] look at their aesthetic. You’re what you’re saying. Pretty much.

[00:59:02] Peg Fitzpatrick: So, yeah. Don’t, don’t copy.

[00:59:06] Jeff Sieh: Oh, you froze again. Don’t copy. Nope, you’re back. Okay.

[00:59:09] You froze a little bit. Hey, another bad freeze. So yeah, so for your media kit, if you’re making your main media kit, you want it to look like if you have a website to match that or whatever your aesthetic is.

[00:59:19] I like plants. I have lots of plants. My whole backstage thing is pretty much my aesthetic. I have plants. It’s got, you know, my book is back there. It’s got things that are my brand colors, stuff like that. So just, you know, you wanna have current pictures, you wanna have your, like demographics, you wanna have your little like elevator pitch.

[00:59:37] You know, I’m a blub. Some people put their age and everything and stuff. It’s mostly the younger people. I don’t, I would never put my age on stuff, but , maybe if I was, maybe I would have if I was in my twenties, but I don’t think so. Right. So just what you’re comfortable with, it’s gotta have your contact information so they can email you.

[00:59:57] They get a lot of stuff. If they print it [01:00:00] out, you would want them to have that examples, your stats, things like that. So, and just do it in a really nice creative way. You’re, you’re doing online stuff, you know, do it so you’re on a computer, do it so you’re like in a little smartphone . with a frame kind of

[01:00:13] deal.

[01:00:14] And Canva has all those things that you can actually drop stuff in. Really easy to make those kind of graphics to, to do it. So it’s easier probably than you think if you find the right template. But once, what was Peg was saying, make sure that you, cuz you don’t want people looking at your, your meeting and going, oh, they made that in Canva.

[01:00:29] You wanna customize a little bit enough that it is yours. So, you know, change the colors, all that stuff. .

[01:00:36] Peg Fitzpatrick: Yeah. And if the, if you don’t see anything that you love or if you want something that you feel is really different, creative market.com is a fantastic place to go and get templates, but they’re not obviously as widely used as the ones on Canva.

[01:00:49] So you can take those and customize them. You could hire someone to create design stuff for you, but you don’t really have to. I mean, it, it’s really, it’s, it is easy to make something that was, yeah.

[01:00:59] Jeff Sieh: So p says it’s easy, [01:01:00] but her stuff’s amazing and, you know, so, I think she’s gonna drop in, in the comments to some of her examples of some media kits.

[01:01:07] Make sure I can do that. Once again, don’t copy, use it for inspiration, but you’ll get some great ideas from hers. And, and it’s a pdf so it’ll be really hard to copy anyway. But , but you look at it and see how

[01:01:18] Peg Fitzpatrick: she’s doing it. You, you could open PDFs in Canva. Now, I,

[01:01:22] Jeff Sieh: I was trying to save you from people copying you anyway.

[01:01:24] Peg Fitzpatrick: Good luck, ,

[01:01:25] but make sure that you, you know, change it up. But look how she’s laid it out. Look how the flow goes. Intermediate kits it’s, to be honest, she does a really great job because it’s kind of an art. It’s not just a standard template. And Gary says, yeah he says It’s great to have for going on podcasts.

[01:01:43] Yeah. More and more podcasts like Gary’s saying, are, are, you know, when you’re wanting to be on some of those higher podcasts, a great way to yep. Grow your podcast audience is to be on other podcasts. Having a media kit, talking about what you talk about, what, where you’re, where you’re visible, downloads, your downloads, all that stuff is a big [01:02:00] deal.

[01:02:00] So Gary, thank you for that comment.

[01:02:01] Really, you can do, there’s a lot of different ways that you can use a media kit. It’s not just for somebody who wants to work with a brand. It can be an author. If you’re an author, you can make a one sheet or a two page for your book, or if you’re looking for an agent, if you’re in the query process.

[01:02:16] So that’s called you can have it be all the stuff about you can, and especially if you don’t have a website, which some people don’t these days, but if you don’t, you know, it needs to have all your stats on there. . . So you could be a podcast, you could be someone looking for guests. You could be someone who wants to be a guest.

[01:02:33] Either way, people pitch, I think, gosh, I think people probably pitch podcasts more than anything else now. So what’s the benefit of having you on as a guest? Are you a good guest? Are you interesting? Like what other shows have you been on that all those things are important.

[01:02:49] Jeff Sieh: And also make sure you pitch.

[01:02:50] I get so many pitches where people don’t even know what my podcast is talking about. They say, Hey, I love your podcast. And it’s very, very obvious that they have never listened to it before. So,

[01:02:59] Peg Fitzpatrick: Sure. How about [01:03:00] the people who send me one on my podcast? I don’t even have one. . That’s right. So I get those on LinkedIn.

[01:03:05] Hey, your podcast is great, love. I’m like, Really? Yeah. What one? Tell me what,

[01:03:09] Jeff Sieh: tell, tell me what? I don’t even know it. Yeah, exactly. So last question. How often should we be updating our media kit? Is it like once a year? Once a quarter? Should we really keep talking about Google Plus on ? So

[01:03:24] Peg Fitzpatrick: how often should we, I do just cuz I have a million and a half followers on Google Plus.

[01:03:28] Right. Even though it’s gone to me, it’s not, I still, I’m just kidding. ? No, you, it depends on how often your stats change. If you’re somebody, if you’re like a hot TikTok or like a little hot makeup girl on TikTok and your numbers are growing every month, then updated every month because sometimes they are growing there.

[01:03:46] If you have one viral post and you’re, you know, it takes off it, you could do it monthly if it needs to. Otherwise, you know, just if you’re sending out to a new brand, I would just pull it up and say, is everything still current? If not, , you know, update

[01:03:59] Jeff Sieh: it. [01:04:00] Right? And that’s the, that’s the great thing about Canva, is that you can have that template up there, have it all built, and you can go easily change those stats, download a new pdf, upload it to your website or for an email or whatever.

[01:04:10] So, that’s a, that’s a great way to do that as well. So, and people do

[01:04:14] Peg Fitzpatrick: have their media kits as downloads if you had a podcast or any kind of thing. . , you know, you can have a media page on your website where you could have your, your photo downloads, if your podcaster’s gonna be in lots of other shows, have your professional photos ready to go so people can borrow ’em.

[01:04:30] Have your bio, have your media kit so people can grab it. Right. So just be ready to go people, the more professional you look, the more you know places you’re gonna connect with people. So, yeah.

[01:04:41] Jeff Sieh: So, peg, we are at the end of the show, but I wanna get half let people, I mean, this is awesome. You know, we could talk forever about this stuff.

[01:04:48] We had some great questions for everybody. So thank you guys for asking all your great questions. Thank you for sticking with us as we win a little bit longer. But Peg, where can people find out? About all the great things. That’s the amazing Peg [01:05:00] Fitzpatrick .

[01:05:00] Peg Fitzpatrick: I am Peg Fitzpatrick everywhere on the internet.

[01:05:03] My website is peg fitzpatrick.com and you can find me at Peg Fitzpatrick on every social platform that I’m on .

[01:05:11] Jeff Sieh: Awesome. And check her out because I mean, like I said, she’s been a mentor to me for. Oh, so many years and she’s done such a great job. And she just knows everything social, and she’s got some cool stuff coming out that I, that is secret, but it’s coming out.

[01:05:25] It’s gonna be awesome. So make sure you follow her. I have secrets everywhere. She has very many secrets. So, thank you guys for, for watching Day. We kept come to the end of another amazing episode of Social Media News Live. But there’s something I wanna share with you really quick. As many of you know, Grace Duffy has been a co-host on this show since the beginning, and we’ve also worked together at many years at a different company and she’s been an integral part of this show and I really couldn’t have made it this far without her.

[01:05:52] But today we are saying goodbye to Grace and it’s really sad cuz she’s sick today. This was gonna be her last day on the show. She’s got a [01:06:00] fantastic new job. I’m sad to see her go, but I’m very excited for her. This is cuz this job’s amazing. It’s actually one of the, our guests who have been on the show before and I know she’s gonna continue to do some awesome things over there.

[01:06:10] But she’s been a mentor, a confidant, a great friend to me, and her guidance and direction have. Help this show become what it is today. I’m gonna miss her tons, but I know she’ll always be a part of the show. And we look forward to having her back on the co-host seat from time to time when she’s available.

[01:06:26] But the show’s gonna go on, and we have some fantastic guest co-host lined up for the future. So stay tuned for some more exciting episodes of Social Media News Live, but Grace from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for all your time, your hard work and your dedication to the show. You will always have a special place here and we wish you the best on your new adventure.

[01:06:44] And with that to all our viewers, thank you for tuning in, listening to the podcast. We’ll see you next week on Social Media, News Live Social Media News Live, I can’t even say our show. I’ll see you guys next time. Bye everybody.