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Watch this video (1 min 46 seconds) to hear Henny’s experience of building a media kit for her dance music production work.
A media kit strengthens your personal brand and highlights the value you offer.
As an accountant and business owner, you have a wealth of experience under your belt. From your knowledge of the specific niches you work with to your expertise as an entrepreneur yourself, you have valuable insights to share on podcasts, panels and speaker slots.
All of these platforms are an opportunity to introduce your brand to new prospects, strengthen trust with your audience and show them why you’re the guide who can solve their problems. Your media kit is a tangible demonstration of your value, showing your credibility and proving your success. It shines a spotlight on why you’re the right guide for your audience.
You probably already have everything you need to create your media kit.
Good news: a media kit is far easier to create than you might think. You don’t have to build something new from the ground up. It’s likely you already have the components you need to create your media kit, spread across your website, LinkedIn and even your business cards.
Let’s start by looking at your brand. If you feel like you don’t have a brand, it usually indicates you aren’t in control of it (don’t worry, a lot of accountants and business owners feel this way!).
Whether you’re consciously building it or not, everyone has a brand. Every social post, email, blog post or phone call you make is part of your brand and communicates who you are and the message you want to share. What you’re probably feeling is that you don’t have any direction over your brand.
That’s the beauty of a media kit. Whether you’ve yet to work on your brand, you’re in the middle of doing lots of brand work or you’ve already refined all the elements, it helps you bring every element together to form a cohesive brand you have total control over.
Video is a powerful tool to include in your media kit.
Remember: as well as laying out your experience, qualifications and achievements, you also want your personality to shine through, especially if you’re aiming for speaking opportunities. Including videos of yourself in your media kit is a fantastic way to do this.
Video helps the recipient of your media kit get to know you faster. Words on the page are great, but a video of you shows your speaking skills rather than telling the reader about them. Think of it like a video CV; you’re looking to secure speaking opportunities, and the best way to do that is to show off those skills directly!
Don’t shy away from talking about what you’ve built.
In your media kit, you’re marketing yourself more than your business, but your firm is still a huge part of your personal brand. It’s tangible evidence that you’ve built something which helps real people solve their problems and achieve their goals.
You’ll deliver your media kit to conference organisers and podcast producers, but they’re the “middle-man” between you and potential new clients. You still have the same end goal: to position yourself as the trusted expert who provides the solution to your audience’s problems, and ultimately win more of the clients you love to work with. Your media kit lays out exactly why you have the credibility and experience to do just that.
Start building your media kit.
Let’s walk through the five elements which make up an impressive media kit (click to jump to each one):
- About section
- Qualifications and specialisms
- Social proof
- Press shots
- Social media and contact details
In this example, we’ll be using an AI-generated accountant. Introducing: Rosa.
1. About section
You want to make a great first impression here. Consider kicking things off with a video of yourself, helping the reader immediately get to know you. If you take a laid-back approach when talking to clients, reflect that here! Let your personality shine. This is an opportunity to show your most authentic self – which makes for the best and most authentic marketing! You want to give the recipient the best idea of who they can expect on a panel or podcast.
What to include:
- Your experience and business journey.
- Your values; what you fundamentally believe in, the things you live out every day in your professional life.
- Your personality!
Rosa Herrera is the owner of a successful, self-started CPA firm in New York City. She’s an ambitious accountant who cares about her team and wants to only work with clients she loves. While she doesn’t always feel it, she’s creative to her core, solving problems for her clients and team every single day.
Her firm provides bookkeeping, compliance, advisory and proactive tax planning services to restaurants in Long Island. She has extensive experience in advanced tax planning, saving her clients anywhere from $50k-$1m in tax by implementing advanced tax codes.
She wants to give more talks on tax strategy to position herself as a key person of influence in this field, and is seeking more clients with an annual turnover of $1m+ . There are a handful of conferences and events for local restaurant owners which would be a great opportunity for her to connect with more of her ideal audience.
Example:
2. Qualifications and specialisms
This is a great way to draw attention to areas in which you’d like to have more opportunities, so you can secure more clients to reach your goals. Is your goal to gain 10 more clients who need to be guided through the exit-planning process? Highlight your knowledge of exit strategy in this section.
Don’t be afraid to shout about what you know. Think of it as a chance to help the clients you most want to support. You’ll help them achieve their goals while also achieving your own.
3. Social proof
In this section, talk about previous public speaking experiences and the topics you’ve given talks or presentations on. Which topics are you most passionate about and are looking to pursue more opportunities in? Which areas align with your goals?
The more specific you can be here, the better. You want to try and differentiate yourself from other individuals going for similar speaker slots or podcast opportunities. For example, if you’ve given a talk about a very niche area like business valuation in the manufacturing industry, shout about it! This is also the perfect place to include testimonials, both from clients and from any organisers you’ve given talks for.
4. Press shots
When you secure a speaking opportunity, the organiser or promoter will want to use your photos in any promotional materials. Make sure you have up-to-date, high-resolution photos which are easy for the reader to download.
Bear in mind the following tips when gathering your press shots:
- During the photoshoot, wear clothes you feel comfortable in. When you feel good, you look good!
- Aim to wear clothes in solid colours, rather than busy patterns.
- Take a variety of poses and arrangements; close-up shots, head-and-shoulders, full-body, sitting down, standing up, laughing, smiling, looking at the camera, candid shots.
- Avoid taking photos against a busy background.
- Make sure all photos are well-lit. Natural sunlight can be a great tool here!
- Once you’ve taken your photos, upload them to a shareable Dropbox folder. Then, embed this photo as a link in your media kit.
5. Social media and contact details
Your media kit has made a great impression, and now the reader wants to know how they can get in touch. Include clear links to your social media profiles, website and email. Remember, your social media is just as much a part of your brand as your website. It’s where many prospects will first come across your brand, so making a fantastic first impression here is an important step.
Get support to create your own media kit.
We’ve created a template that will guide you in gathering everything you need to create your own media kit. You can download the template for free here.
Still need some help? At PF, we collaborate with our clients to create personalised, professionally designed media kits that help secure opportunities to connect with more of their ideal audience. To find out what that would look like for you, fill in our discovery form and book a chat with one of our creative team.