Having a good press kit can really help PR for some crowdfunding campaigns. Here are some simple steps to follow to create one that’s at least “not bad”.
##Goals The basic purpose of your press kit is to make it as easy as possible for the journalist, editor, or blogger you are contacting to cover your campaign. Don’t make them chase you for media assets like video or photos. Make it clear what your product is and how it should be described to their readers.
The icing on the cake of the press kit is something exciting that will get them more personally energized about the product and make them more likely to promote it (or cover it at all).
A relatively inexpensive thing to do is build your press kit on custom-branded USB flash drives that match your design aesthetic. This also gives you the option to include higher-quality media or alternate files that you wouldn’t normally use.
##Ingredients
Your press kit should include all of the following:
###Text Overview
Write a one to three paragraph description of the product, clearly outlining:
###Linking
If the campaign page won’t be live when you release the press kit, provide the URL where the live campaign page will be published along with the time and date it will be available.
###Video
Embed the campaign video onto the page. Ideally, this should be done with Vimeo or a similar service. If you would like the video to be syndicated by other publications, make it possible for the video to be shared and re-embedded directly. Consider providing the embed code to do so.
If you have multiple videos, include each of them, along with a text label explaining the video. For more information, see our video creation guide.
###Imagery
Provide exhaustive coverage of every aspect of your product. If you have multiple colors or SKUs, make sure they are all pictured. Include accessories and packaging if available. Also, it’s worth including a few semi-redundant images–e.g. slightly different angles of the same item–so that different outlets can use different images and put out a slightly less identical placement.
For formats, you should provide, at a minimum:
Crowd Supply can help you create high quality, high resolution images once you’ve been approved to launch.
###Press Release or One-Pager
Since you’ve worked through a messaging framework, this should be straightforward. Unlike your campaign page copy, which will have much more detail, a good press release or one-pager explains only the most important aspects of your product, in terminology that most people would understand.
Elements of a great press release or one-pager include:
###Packaging It Up
At a minimum, all of this content should be made available on a single, static web page. Make this page as simple as possible, do not add extra eye candy or ‘fluff’. Make it easy for the editor to pick and choose the assets they would like and download or embed them directly.
You need to build a fast, responsive and good-looking page that is viewable by editors, journalists, etc. on whatever device they have handy, including mobile devices (since journalists travel a lot). Tools like Bootstrap can help you with this, provided you have the technical skills. Alternatively, Crowd Supply’s marketing services can help you this.
If you would like to send a physical press kit, you can include all of these files on a USB flash drive, with folders organizing the different types of content, and a README text file containing your text summary and an inventory/description of the other files.
Question not answered here? Contact us to see how we can help.
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