What to Put in a Media Kit for a Small Business

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If you are deciding what to include in a media kit, start from the moment it will be used. A journalist has your name from a pitch or a search. Their deadline is today. They have a few minutes to decide whether you are a usable source — and the businesses that get used are the ones whose facts, images and contact details sit in one obvious place.

That is all a media kit is: a small, current bundle of material that answers a journalist’s questions before they have to ask them. It supports the pitching work described in our guide on how to get earned media — the pitch wins the attention, and the kit makes the attention easy to act on.

What a media kit actually does

A kit does not persuade anyone to cover you. The story does that. The kit’s job is removal of friction: correct facts instead of guessed ones, usable images instead of a screenshot from your homepage, a named person instead of a contact form. Journalists work with the sources who make accuracy easy. A kit also protects you — the version of your business that appears in print is far more likely to be right when the journalist could copy the founding date, the spelling of a name and the current logo from one reliable place.

The media kit checklist: nine things to put in it

1. A one-paragraph overview. What the business does, who it serves, where, and since when — in two or three short paragraphs at most, written as facts rather than advertising. This becomes the boilerplate journalists adapt, so write it the way you would want it quoted.

2. A fact sheet. The quick-reference facts in one list: business name, founding date, location, size, what you sell, website, and anything else a reporter routinely needs. Keep it to a page. This is the sheet that gets checked at 6 p.m. on deadline day.

3. Bios and headshots. Short biographies of the people a reporter might quote or profile — founders, owners, specialists — with the topics each can speak about on the record. Include a clear, high-resolution headshot for each. A journalist choosing between two sources often chooses the one with a usable photograph.

4. Logos. Your logo in high resolution, in the versions a designer might need — colour and plain, light background and dark. Label the files clearly and clear them for editorial use, so an editor never has to ask permission or redraw your mark from a screenshot.

5. Photographs. Real images of the work: products, premises, the team doing the job. Caption them briefly, make them downloadable at full size, and keep them current. Stock-looking or years-old photography undermines the facts around it.

6. What you sell, in plain facts. A factual description of your products or services — what each does, who it is for, and prices where they are public. Skip the sales language. A reporter needs to describe your offer accurately in one sentence, and this section is where they will find it.

7. Recent press releases and news. Your most recent announcements, kept in date order. This shows a journalist your current activity and saves them reconstructing it — and it is where our press release distribution clients most often find their kits are out of date.

8. Past coverage. Links to previous articles, interviews, appearances and awards. Coverage begets coverage: a journalist can see that other outlets have found you worth writing about, and can check how your story has been told before.

9. A named contact. One real person, with a direct email address and phone number, who responds quickly. Never a generic inbox and never a web form. On deadline, “who do I call?” is the question your kit must answer fastest.

How to create a media kit without a designer

You very likely already own most of this material — on your website, in your files, in past announcements. Creating the kit is mostly an organising job. A clean page on your website works well: the nine items above, clearly headed, with download links for the full-size files. A tidy PDF or a well-labelled shared folder does the same job. What does not work is decoration: kits are reference documents, and plain, consistent formatting is a feature. If a fact lives in the kit, it should not contradict the same fact anywhere else — check your website, your profiles and the kit against each other.

Keeping the kit current

A media kit decays quietly. Prices change, people leave, a product is renamed, last year’s coverage stops being recent. An outdated kit is worse than none, because it publishes wrong facts under your authority. Tie updates to triggers you will actually notice: a new product, a new hire in a quoted role, fresh coverage, a price change. Then review the whole kit once a quarter — the same rhythm we build into our earned media service, where the kit is checked before every distribution round.

Frequently asked questions

Is a media kit the same as a press kit?

For a small business, yes — the two terms are used interchangeably for the bundle of facts, images and background a journalist needs. The exception is the creator and advertising world, where a media kit means something different: audience figures and collaboration rates for sponsors. If you are preparing material for journalists, the press kit contents in this guide are what they expect.

Should a media kit be a PDF or a page on my website?

Either works, and many businesses keep both from the same source material. A web page is easier to keep current and easy to link from a pitch; a PDF is convenient when a journalist asks you to send the kit over. What matters is that the facts in both match, and that files are clearly labelled and downloadable at full size.

How long should a media kit be?

As short as completeness allows. The test is retrieval: a journalist who has never heard of your business should be able to find any fact, image or contact in the kit within a couple of minutes. Long company histories and sales material fail that test and belong elsewhere.

Do I need a media kit before I start pitching?

You can pitch without one, but the first interested reply usually asks for exactly what a kit contains — a photo, a fact, a bio, a quote. Having it ready protects the opportunity, because a journalist working to a deadline will use the source who answers in time. Build the basic version before you need it.