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Marketing & PR

What is a media kit?

By Vaishnavi Kumar

What is a media kit?

A media kit, also known as a press kit. It is a tool that companies use to promote launches or products as well as services. It is a kit that serves as a guide to various journalists to write articles describing the company. In simple words, it is a set of promotional materials that consists of information about companies.

These kits help companies to portray themselves in their best form. A media kit can be made available as a downloadable document or it can be a solid kit. In today’s tech-savvy world, companies usually prefer online media kits which reduces the amount of work involved to create them.

What to include in a media kit?
- About Us page– The first thing to include in a press kit is the background of the company. People are keen to know about the background before reaching out to a company. Here’s where companies need to introduce themselves, state their goals and display their logo. Showcase what’s unique about your company and why people should choose you. Do not forget to keep it brief and interesting!
- Contact information– This is a very crucial component of a media kit. To avoid the tension of the press approaching someone who is not supposed to or not eligible to answer questions related to the company, it is necessary to include contact information. If they require additional information, they can connect using this reference.
- Social Media Handles– For clients to follow and know more about your company and your products. Including social media handles is a must. Include the links to all the sites that your company is active on. It might be Youtube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, or any other site for that matter. This will allow people to assess your social media reach.
- Recent launches– People need to know that your company is continuously making progress and coming up with new and exclusive content. Make sure to always include your recent launches or accomplishments. It might be a launch of a new product or establishing a new company or a new face of your company.
- Collaborations– Mention your best collaborations. This creates a great impression on those who are thinking or willing to collaborate with your company. This might even attract partnerships that will boost your business.
- Achievements- Include information about your wins, best deals cracked, and some famous clients you have worked for. Mention the honours, grants, recognitions, and certificates awarded to your company. This will help in making your media kit impressive.
- Testimonials/Ratings– People always check for reviews. From feedback for buying a dress to collaborating with a huge company, reviews play a very important role. That’s why, it’s necessary to include testimonials and ratings from your clients and partnerships.
Things to consider whilst building a media kit:
- The media kit shouldn’t be lengthy
- Avoid putting irrelevant information
- If it’s a downloadable file, make sure the file is not too large
- Never lie about your company or work
- Your press kit should always be up to date
- Check for errors or grammatical mistakes
We hope these little tips will help you build a good media kit.

See this link for media kit templates that you can buy to build yours.

For more on personal branding and visibility read this blog post on our website.

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10 Must Read Business Books

By Vaishnavi Kumar

Reading is essential for those who seek to rise above the ordinary
~ Jim Rohn

Every aspiring/budding entrepreneur must read Business books as they provide first hand information from people who tried various hacks and ideas, people who faced challenges same as you might be facing and succeeded with exceptional results. These books also provide motivation and give a whole new perspective to your outlook towards business as well as life!

Here are our favourite 10 business books

1. Start With Why – Simon Sineck

Simon Sineck says, “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it”. According to him, in order to inspire others, we should convey our why first. Sinek explains how great people inspire others and not manipulate them. This is a book that will definitely be profitable to entrepreneurs.

2. Psychology of Money – Morgan Housel

This book consists of 19 short stories. It takes a tour on the peculiar ways in which people think about money. This book encourages you to make smarter financial decisions and ways of dealing with money. The main highlight of this book is that it makes us understand the difference between being rich and being wealthy.

3. Profit First – Mike Michalowicz

As the name itself suggests, Take your Profit first. This book not only tells us about profit but also makes us aware about the mistakes that entrepreneurs make with money leading to loss. In short it will provide tips to transform your business from a Money draining beast to a Money making machine. This is a book we always come to when we need perspective.

4. Ikigai – Hector Garcia Francesc Miralles

Ikigai is a Japanese concept. In Japanese, Iki means ‘life’ and gai means ‘value or worth’. This book describes the art of living. It teaches us to balance our lives and explains that focusing only on one thing might deplete your opportunity of benefiting from other areas. A must read book for a long and happy life.

5. Your Next 5 Moves – Patrick Bet-David, Greg Dinkin

It’s said that you need to have the ability to look 5 moves ahead to become a chess grandmaster. Similarly, to excel in any business you always need to plan a 5 moves ahead if not more. This book mentions the five strategic moves that every entrepreneur should know.

6. The One Thing – Gary W.Keller, Jay Papasan

This book talks about how success will be achieved when we narrow our concentration to that one thing. It also explains the six big lies between entrepreneurs and success. There are a total of 17 chapters in this book. The author talks about the best approach to achieving what we want.

7. Getting Things Done –David Allen

In this book David Allen, an American management consultant, shares tips and tricks for stress-free performance. Allen says,“Your ability to generate power is directly proportional to your ability to relax.” This book will help you understand how to excel in your work by not over exhausting yourself.

8. Essentialism – Greg Mckeown

If you feel overworked, constantly busy, yet unproductive, then this is definitely the book for you. Essentialism isn’t about getting more done in less time. It’s about getting only the right things done! It’s a whole new way of thinking about your work.

9. Crushing It – Gary Vee

This is not a motivational book, however it motivates us better than all the other books. Gary Vee talks about how to live life on your own terms. The book includes useful insights on expanding business through various social media platforms which is very important in today’s technological world where every day new apps are launched.

10. Influence – Robert Cialdini

In this Robert Cialdini’s shares his evidence-based research. He carried out his research over 35 years and a 3 year study on what encourages people to change their behaviour. He explains the reason behind why people say “yes”. It consists of 6 universal principles that will help us become a skilled persuader.

These are some of our personal recommendations which love, re read and refer to often.

For more recommendations see this post by Business Insider

We believe reading is critical to learning and readers are leaders. See our post on High Performance Habits here

Let us know in the comments below, your favourite business book.

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How to find your ideal client?

By Anusha Bapat

An Ideal Client is someone who finds the perfect solution to their problems or needs in the services or products that your company provides. It is important to understand your ideal client and audience for effective marketing. To begin, ask yourself three simple questions. ‘What problems does my product or service intend to solve?’, ‘Who do I want to serve? Who is my ideal client and what characteristics will they have?’
1. Analyse your audience and build a client profile.
Researching factors like geography, age, gender, occupation and income level can instantly give you a clearer picture as to how you should appeal to your audience. Conduct surveys to study psychographics like lifestyle, behaviourism and ideologies. The goal is to use this research to find where your ideal client is at.
1. Instantly draw in ideal customers with an effective marketing strategy.
Identify which social media app your clients use the most. Start promoting your content on the app on which they are likely to find you easily. You want to emotionally resonate with your client and build their trust in you. Your marketing needs to allow customers to relate to you. They need to be reassured that you are providing them a solution for their problem. Don’t hesitate to scrutinize the social media app analytics. This will help you identify what marketing works best your clients.
1. Differentiate yourself from your competitors.
Chances are, your competition is trying to win over a similar set of customers. Conduct competitor analyses. This will not only give you more data on your customers but it will also show you the gaps and positives in the competitions marketing. Show your customers what they would miss out on if they didn’t choose you. Why are you the brand that best addresses their needs? Engaging more often with your clients and conducting timely surveys can help you anticipate future trends. And be ahead of the competition.

An ‘ideal client’ is a very dynamic concept. The perfect client today, might not need your product or service tomorrow. Similarly the opposite can also be true. Someone you would never consider a prospective customer today, might become your client in a few months when trends shift. Your market survey needs to be a continuous process for you to constantly attract the best set of customers.

Read this for more ways on finding your ideal client

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5 Tips to choose your social media platform

By Vaishnavi Kumar

Social media as a platform has become a very essential part of most people’s life, be it for work or entertainment. Some of the most widely used social media platforms currently are Youtube, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Tik Tok and Twitter.

Social media has always been a great place to showcase your work, as it reaches a larger audience in just a click. And it is one of free marketing tools available today. Well it is not completely free as it does take time. Businesses and Users alike are using such platforms for a variety of reasons. From content creation to marketing their products online, from using it to earn money, to only viewing as an audience/buyer, from just posting self-pictures to using it as a medium to learn, buy, create awareness and what not!

We are sharing a few tips which may help you choose the best one for your business:-
- Identify the reason – The first thing is to recognize why you need a social media platform. This is the first step towards choosing your platform. It will give you more clarity and will make it easier to choose. Set some goals around what you want to achieve via Social Media.
- Recognize your target audience – The second and most important thing is to identify your audience. If your content is focused more on engaging Gen Z then Instagram and YouTube is the best platform for you! If sharing professional information, LinkedIn is the apt platform for you. However if your audience is on WhatsApp then you may have to find ways to market on that particular platform. Hence identify where your audience is at. And then choose your platform accordingly.
- Study and compare various platforms – The third step is to study and understand each platform thoroughly. Each platform has its own way of engaging people, its own set of audience. Learn all the features, how the platform works, what are some best practices etc. This will help you leverage the platform well.
- Keep an eye on your competitor – What platform are they on? And where do they have the most traction and engagement. Therefore this is also an important step in choosing your platform. It’s always a good idea to keep a watch on your competition.
Ultimately what matters is not the platform name, but where your audience resides and which platform will help you grow your Business. Research is the first step towards any work. Hence, take into consideration all the factors and choose the best platform. Don’t just jump onto all the platforms at once.

First set up one platform and grow it to a certain level before you start another one. This will help you stay consistent and also make it sustainable for you to grow faster and better.

We hope these tips help you in choosing the best platform and reaching new heights.

See this article on the Biggest Social Media Sites and Apps in 2021

See this article on how to be a LinkedIn Top Voice

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Why creating an MVP is important?

By Anusha Bapat

A minimum viable product (MVP) is a prototype of a product idea with basic features and characteristics that can be used by a group of early customers for feedback and product development. MVP’s help in minimizing costs. A final product is developed after analyzing the preferences and response of your early customers.

Here are 4 important points to remembering while creating your MVP offering:
1. Identify what problem your product intends to solve. This will give you an idea of the features that can be incorporated into the product. The key to coming up with a successful product is to identify market gaps. And then offer efficient solutions to cover the gap. Spot your success criteria. Identify your users and demography and strategise to ensure your product impacts your audience.
1. After you know what your product is going to be, you will have to create a market offering. Build a compelling call to action. You have to create a brand that will attract customers and allow them to trust your brand enough. Credibility builds appeal.
1. Create different prototypes. A feature you might not deem important might end up being useful to a few customers. Focus and build on the features that receive a positive response. Eliminate the ones that don’t add to the utility of your product. Start building hype around the product to excite interested customers and attract new ones.
1. Consistently record data and assess your initial product. Evolve your product around the consumer response. Filter your product to an optimal blend of the most used features. Once you’re satisfied with the response of your upgraded and optimized product, you will begin the “Minimum marketable product” (MMP) stage of your market offering. This is when you release your product for all customers and earn your initial revenue.
MVP is a very efficient strategy to spend as little time on product development. This helps you go to market while keeping costs to the minimum. This allows a better user interference and gives a clearer understanding of your customers needs. Instead of directly going through a stressful product release, creating a MVP helps you optimize your product to match the demand and increases your chances of success.

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Brand Design is a critical part of your Business

By Bhumika Ramesh

Brand design and brand identity creation is one of the first and most crucial steps in any business. It defines the niche of audience you will be reaching out to. The type of branding you choose to implement can affect long term impressions and growth rates and eventually, your success rate. Today, brand design is one of the ways you can begin to stand out from your competitors – uniqueness and familiarity are what attracts people. Starting with a visual identity is one of the best ways to captivate potential customers – a preview of your brand shows the viewer the type of service they can expect.

Here are a few tips that can help you enhance your brand and visual identity!
- Lay out the foundation of your brand personality
Brand personality refers to the unique style or voice your brand has. To develop this, delve deeper into what your brand stands for. You can think of the mission your brand aims to accomplish or the feelings and thoughts you want people to experience when they hear or visualize your brand. Keep your ideal customer in mind as you develop your brand personality.
- Choosing the brand palette
The colors you choose give your brand the ability to evoke feelings and bring out different moods. Choose colors that are in line with your brand personality. It influences recognition by a solid 50% ( just think of pink – brands such as Barbie or Cosmopolitan come to mind). Read into the psychology of colors to effectively develop primary and secondary palettes. Use a few specific fonts that fit in with your core colors.
- Designing the logo
The logo is a vital part of your brand – it is what customers associate your brand with. An effective marketing strategy usually keeps the logo at the center. Explore the other logos out there before you settle on one – being unique is quite hard in today’s world. Test out the logo on various platforms and ensure you like the way it appears. Brand designers are a good investment for this process.
- The Website
Your website represents your brand in the digital space, more so if your business is exclusively online. Customers will check your website before deciding to purchase your service or product so it’s important to pay attention to how your website is designed. The various images you use are also effective – choose photographs and graphic designs carefully such that they complement your brand.
- Business Cards
Although Business cards seem redundant now, it however depends on the industry you are in. Depending on who are meeting a Business card may still be expected. You can use this as a tool in reinforcing your brand when you meet clients and other connections in person. A well-designed card reflects your brand and its personality in one look. Keep it simple: use personal details, brand colors and your logo.

A brand encompasses the vision of your company and helps it stand out. In conclusion designing and developing factors that help enhance your Brand design is crucial. Brand identity is a great thing to depend upon to guarantee attraction and sales – if played along by the right rules.

See this post here on Branding Strategy.

Here is a post on how to incorporate your brand elements into your social media posts with these Canva Hacks

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4 simple email marketing hacks you should be using now

By Bhumika Ramesh

Email Marketing is an extremely versatile tool used in the world of advertising and online marketing. Apart from its several other purposes. Email marketing is an excellent strategy to include in your business to up your game. It has proven to be 40% more effective than Facebook Ads. However getting people to sign up for your mailing list might be a little tricky, but the real challenge comes with your open rates.

The higher your open rates, the higher the engagement is. And the higher the possibility of your client purchasing your services or products. Even the smallest changes to your strategy can increase the number of readers, so let’s get into it!
- Modify your previews -The preview text is what appears after the sender’s name and subject line. It is a wonderful tool to catch the attention of your audience. By having an interesting preview line, you make your email stand out from others in an inbox. Since not all users can see your preview text due to device availability, keep it between 50 – 100 words.
- Personalization is key – Adding first names to address the client or using your own name can help a lot. People will pay more attention when they see name is being used to address them. Make the email cater to them – pique their interest. This increases the user’s recognition of your emails and those open rates get higher!
- Timing the sends – Determining when to send out your mails is quite a tricky task and requires experimentation – especially if you cater to several clients over several continents. There is no one best time to send them out. Research your audience, their working hours and the time zones they are in.
- Pay attention to your CTA button – The CTA(Call to Action) button exists to help users complete an activity or task such as reaching a website or downloading a guide. Highlighting it is important. Experiment with different texts, backgrounds and overlay designs. If you’re trying to lead the audience to one destination, try to keep only one CTA button in your email. Optimising CTA can lead to a decrease in unsubscribes.
Email marketing can help make your brand visible, stand out and expand your presence online. In the present digital age, it is one of the most consistent techniques to bring in more users. Hope these tips help you to increase those open rates in your mailing lists!

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Why networking is important for your career

By Bhumika Ramesh

Your Networth is your Network. Are you networking enough?

We all might have heard that networking is an essential task. It is – for many reasons, such as to keep up with connections. The right people can lead you to the right places.

It is one of the most important assets in your business. Apps and websites such as LinkedIn and Clubhouse make the process of building an expansive network much easier. In this article, we’ll be looking at some of the various benefits networking can provide to an individual.

1. A channel of knowledge

A great advantage of having a big network is that you regularly get to meet new people and transcend the boundaries of having to work in the same environment every day. The more people you meet from different backgrounds and paths, the more you learn about trends in the market and gain plenty of substance to work with as you actively engage with these connections.

2. It can help you go a step further

Many jobs are hardly advertised and this proves to be a hurdle for the common person. Having a large network can get you in through some of those doors, as opportunities usually travel by word-of-mouth.

Such a network can also help you acquire a promotion by recommendations.

3. You acquire self-confidence

The more people you create connections with, the more frequently you step out of your comfort zone and in this process, you definitely improve your communication and social skills – this adds to your self-confidence and influences all the other spheres of your life. By venturing to keep trying out new things and meeting new people. You constantly improve your skillset.

4. It builds relationships

The most important part of networking is building those deep connections and constantly investing in them over time. This results in presenting many deep conversations, changing perceptions and giving advice among other factors. Having an invested relationship is never a waste of time – there is always a silver lining.

5. It helps you to better your pitch

With the number of people you meet growing higher, your preciseness to pitch what you do in a very short period of time improves exponentially. Often known as an elevator pitch, your intro of who you are, is a great conversation starter you attend networking events or other conferences. Using an effective pitch has a lasting effect on the conversations you have a role in.

Building networks can assist your journey in plenty of ways and some of the relationships you build last for a lifetime. A wonderful part of the experiences you undergo is probably due to the opportunities provided by your network. It’s never too late to start investing time to develop your networking skills and get a headstart!

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5 Canva tools and features everyone should be using

By Bhumika Ramesh

Almost all of us use Canva as a platform to get the best designs for our products and content. With the site getting updated now and then, here are our favourite tools and features!

Importing PDFs

We have all had those documents we wanted to desperately edit but realized that they were PDF’s! It’s time to put away those frustrations as Canva has brought out a new feature where you can import your files and directly edit them. Upload them on the website as a new design and you can get down to changing the various images, fonts, text and way more.

Multiple Brand Kits

Ever had too many projects or clients which require separate kits? You can now create up to 100 brand kits in a single account – satisfying all those extra designs of yours! You can just upload all the brand essentials such as a branded palette, logos and fonts to supercharge your work. Teamwork becomes easier with such kits.

Copy style

Using tools may be a bit tricky, but the paintbrush icon on the top right of your screen works wonders! Called the copy style – it allows you to copy the various sets of different styles and settings from your previous works and applies it to any other text you wish to format in the same way. But unfortunately, it does not do the same for images, Nevertheless, it’s a great tool for implementing texts in your designs.

Canva Magic Resize

While handling several platforms such as LinkedIn, Instagram or even your blog, you will need to resize your content pieces to fit the dimensions of each website. Canva has got this covered for you! The Magic Resize feature allows you to resize your graphics to various formats for your different platforms. This will save you time and energy that it takes to resize your graphics. You will save time with the crop tool or searching the net for the perfect size ratios.

Adding Comments

One of the most important tools for those who seem to forget their ideas or thoughts is the function to add comments. This helps you not lose those important ideas while designing your content. Working with teams makes this feature worthwhile. As you can pass on notes and comments to your colleagues without having to email each other or use other apps to correspond.

Click on any element present on your template and a little speech-bubble will pop up. Click on it and type down those thoughts!

Here’s to creative sessions in Canva – made a little easier with all these new tools and features!

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6 Tools you need to start making videos

By Jivitha Shobashree

You guys want to start making videos for YouTube, Instagram or another platform.

If yes, ask yourselves these question
- Will I make videos consistently?
- Do I have the right tools for the content I want to create?
- Will I continue to use these tools?
You do not need to spend a fortune on buying equipment, here is what you need:
1. CAMERA
If you’re making videos obviously you’d require a camera. The cameras present on your phones both apple and android have a good quality which you can start off with.

If you want a better camera quality you can buy cam recorder, webcam, action camera, mirror less camera or a DSLR.
1. MICROPHONE
Your audio quality should be good so that it compliments your video.

Often the phone’s audio quality isn’t that great so buying an external microphone would be better.

You can start off with a USB microphone, its affordable and has a good sound quality.

If you want a highly versatile and high-quality audio you can go for Shotgun microphone or lapel microphone.
1. TRIPOD
No one likes to see an unsteady video, no matter how good your camera is you need proper stabilization of your camera. The tripod can increase your video quality.
1. LIGHTING
Without proper lighting people get distracted and lose interest in watching. The lighting improves the final quality of the video.

You can buy softbox, umbrella lighting, ring light or on-camera lighting.
1. VIDEO EDIT
Video editing is like icing on the cake, it is a very essential part of video making. You need to find good editing software post-production.

Adobe premiere pro, Final cut pro X are some of the top video editing software.

invideo, imovie, Videopad etc. are some of the free video editing software available.
1. MEMORY CARDS
Too many videos and photos can take up your storage so the best way is to store them in memory cards.

You can shoot long videos without having to worry about running out of space.

What comes first?

No matter how great or expensive your tools are at the end of the day people come to see videos because of your content. So you should make sure that your content is great others are secondary.

You can start off with the basic camera you have on your phone and a video editing software. If you decide to take your videos to the next level you can then up-level your equipment as well.

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