Media kit: what to include and how to make one

If a brand just asked for your media kit, you probably want one by Friday. This is how to make a media kit that holds up when a marketing manager checks it. You'll see what goes in, which numbers to pull from Google Analytics, YouTube Studio and Instagram, how to price your work, and the FTC disclosure rules that come with paid deals.

It's written for US creators first, since they're the ones chasing brand deals and rate cards, and for small businesses that sell sponsor slots or want press coverage.

Making the kit is easy. The proof behind it is where most kits fall apart.

A media kit sells your audience, and a press kit sells your story

A media kit is a short sales document for partners. It tells a brand who you reach, how many people that is, and what it can buy. A press kit is for journalists: the facts, photos, logos and contact details a reporter needs to write about you without chasing you for them. HubSpot’s media kit guide also separates the two and calls the press kit the more traditional term for materials made for journalists.

Big companies keep their press kits as public pages. Atlassian’s press kit, Asana’s brand page and Airbnb’s media assets page are worth a look: logos, product shots and leadership photos, ready to download, with notes on how to use them.

So which one do you need? If anyone pays you for exposure, whether that's a skincare brand sponsoring a video or a café buying a slot in your newsletter, you need a media kit. If you want to be written about, you need a press kit. A local business with a newsletter and an event series may need both, and the two can share one About section, one set of logos and the same photos.

Most people reading this need the media kit first, so that's where we'll spend our time.

Brands and reporters skim for fit, proof and price

That media kit gets skimmed, not read. Whoever opens it is asking three things: does this audience match mine, are these numbers real and recent, and what can I buy for how much? Everything on the page should answer one of those, plus give one clear way to reach you.

Two rows cause most of the trouble. Past partners should say yes before their name or logo goes in. And a wall of big-brand logos you've never worked with is the quickest way to lose a buyer who checks. Your logo, colors and tone should match everything else you publish, and our branding strategy guide covers the simple brand sheet a kit borrows from.

Name the platform, the metric and the dates for every number

Once the sections are in place, the numbers decide whether a buyer trusts the rest. Write each figure the way the platform labels it, with the date range beside it. "Active users (GA4), September 1-30, 2026" tells a brand far more than "10K monthly visitors."

We checked the 8 pages that ranked for "media kit" and "how to make a media kit" in US results on October 24, 2026. Most told readers to list visitors, followers and engagement. None named the user metrics Google Analytics actually reports, and one big design-tool guide asked for a "monthly unique visitor count," which isn't a GA4 metric. Only one page mentioned FTC disclosure, and none mentioned the FTC's rule on fake followers. So a brand manager who holds your GA4 report next to your kit may find labels that don't match.

Here's what the three big platforms call things.

Google Analytics 4 has two user counts. Google's user metrics page says Total users is everyone who visited in the date range. Active users is the people who engaged, and it's the only user count GA4 shows in its reports. Use that one, name the month, and don't call it unique visitors.

YouTube Studio's Audience tab shows your monthly audience: the total unique viewers who watched your content in the last 28 days. That's people, not plays, so it's the stronger reach number for a sponsor. Views count the moment a video starts, Shorts included.

Instagram's insights help page separates Views, "the number of times your content was played or displayed," from Viewers, the unique accounts that saw it. Put Viewers next to Views. Insights cover up to the past 90 days, and Instagram calls these metrics "estimated and in-development," so round them and date them.

Never add followers from different apps into one "total audience." One person can follow you in three places, and the sum counts them three times.

List each platform on its own line.

Still choosing how to track your site? Our roundup of website analytics tools compares GA4 with simpler options. For video creators, our guide to how YouTube search ranks videos explains the Studio reports behind those numbers.

Save the export before a brand asks for it

With the labels right, back them up. Brands often ask for screenshots or a report, and it's easier to have the file ready than to dig for it at 11 p.m. the night before a deadline.

Each platform hides its export button in a different place:

• GA4: Reports, then "Share this report," then Download File, then PDF, CSV or Google Sheets. Google’s export help says you need at least the Viewer role, and a CSV holds up to 100,000 rows.
• YouTube Studio: Analytics, then Advanced mode, then "Export current view." YouTube’s help page caps downloads at 500 rows and says Studio's layout is changing in a rollout that started in July 2026.
• Facebook Pages: open Insights in Meta Business Suite, click Export and pick the file type, per Meta’s export help.

Save each export with the date in the file name, like ga4-active-users-2026-09.pdf. When a brand asks where a number came from, you can answer in one reply with the file attached.

Receipts beat adjectives.

How many followers do you need for a media kit?

You don't need a minimum. A media kit describes what you have, and a shop with, say, 900 newsletter readers can still sell a sponsor slot if those readers look like the sponsor's customers.

Small accounts hit a different wall: the platforms hide audience details until you're big enough. Instagram shows follower trends only once you have at least 100 followers, and some demographics need reach over 100 accounts. Google Analytics applies data thresholds to demographic reports so nobody can single out one visitor. Google says you can't adjust them, though a wider date range can bring more users into the report.

If a platform hides the data, say so and use what you can prove. Newsletter sign-up ZIP codes, the city where your events happen, or a short reader survey all work, as long as you name the source. "Mostly within 15 miles of the shop, from 2026 newsletter sign-ups" is honest and useful.

Small creators can also sell what big ones can't: replies, a tight niche and real conversations. The polls and question stickers in our Instagram Story ideas are a cheap way to collect proof that people actually respond.

Price your rate card from your own costs, then check vendor ranges

A rate card is the price list inside your media kit: each deliverable, what it includes and what it costs. Start from your own costs. Add up the hours to plan, shoot, edit and post one piece, and put a fair hourly rate on them. Then add anything you pay out, like props or a second shooter.

Then compare with the market.

Vendor data is the closest thing to a public benchmark, and Influencer Marketing Hub’s rate guide lists ranges by platform and follower count. As of October 2026, it puts Instagram posts at $10 to $100+ for nano creators (under 10,000 followers) and $100 to $500+ for micro creators (10,000 to 100,000). For the same two tiers, it lists TikTok videos at $50 to $200 and $200 to $800, and YouTube sponsored videos at $20 to $200+ and $200 to $1,000+.

Treat those as one vendor's planning ranges, not the going rate. The page itself calls them "planning benchmarks, not fixed rate cards," and it doesn't publish a sample size or method.

Extras sit on top of the base price. The same guide lists usage rights, paid amplification, category exclusivity, raw footage and extra revisions as add-ons, and each one deserves its own line on your card.

Usage rights matter most.

If a brand wants to run your video as an ad, that's a new use, and it should cost more.

Our take: put prices in the kit, even if they're "from" prices. A kit without them makes the buyer email you just to learn whether they can afford you, and some won't bother. If you run a blog, our guide to getting sponsored posts covers pitching and pricing from the publisher's side.

Promise disclosure in the kit, because the brand is liable too

Prices aren't the only promise a kit makes. It should also say how sponsored posts will be labeled.

The FTC's Endorsement Guides cover this in 16 CFR 255.5. A connection to a brand that your audience wouldn't expect "must be disclosed clearly and conspicuously," in the rule's words. That covers payment, and it covers free or discounted products too, even when the brand doesn't require a post in return.

Brands can't treat it as the creator's problem.

Section 255.1(d) makes advertisers liable for failing to disclose material connections, and tells them to guide their endorsers, monitor them and act when posts fall short. So a sponsor reading your kit is quietly checking whether you'll keep them out of trouble.

The FTC's Disclosures 101 guide gets specific. "Ad," "advertisement" and "sponsored" work, while "sp," "spon" and "collab" don't. In a video, the disclosure belongs in the video itself, not only in the description. And the FTC warns against assuming a platform's built-in label is enough.

So add one line to your kit: "Every paid or gifted post is labeled Ad or Sponsored at the start, on screen and in the caption."

Running a contest for a sponsor? Our giveaway rules guide covers the prize side.

We're marketers, not lawyers, and this is our plain-English reading of the FTC's Endorsement Guides, not legal advice. The Guides are the agency's interpretation of the FTC Act, not the Act itself. Before you sign a deal with exclusivity or usage terms, have a lawyer read it.

Bought followers make the whole kit a legal risk

That disclosure line covers your posts. The numbers in the kit carry legal weight too. The FTC's 2024 rule on reviews and testimonials reaches them directly. Under 16 CFR 465.8, no one may "purchase or procure fake indicators of social media influence" they knew or should have known were fake. The rule applies when those fakes misrepresent your influence "for a commercial purpose."

Media kits exist to sell, so they're commercial by design. Section 465.1 gives examples of the indicators it covers, such as followers, friends, connections, subscribers, views, plays, likes, saves, shares, reposts and comments. Fake ones include those generated by bots or hijacked accounts.

When the FTC announced the rule in August 2024, it said the rule lets the agency seek civil penalties against knowing violators.

Bought followers also drag down the very rates a brand checks, because bots don't click, reply or buy.

Fake reviews fall under the same rule. Asking for real ones is easier than it sounds, and we walk through it in automating review requests.

One page, filled in: a made-up bookstore's kit

Those rules fit on a single page once you see them laid out. We built this example kit ourselves on October 24, 2026. The business and every number in it are made up.

Example: Cottonwood Page Books is a made-up independent bookstore in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with three staff, a monthly email newsletter and a monthly author night. It wants local sponsors for both, so its kit is a sponsor media kit with a small press line at the bottom.

Nothing is added together.

Look at the numbers row first. Each figure has a source and a date. The example shows 2,400 newsletter subscribers from the email tool's list report, 4,100 Active users in GA4 for September 1-30, and 6,800 Instagram Viewers for the same 30 days.

Every offer carries a price, all example prices as of October 2026. A newsletter slot costs $150 an issue, a table at author night $200, and a week in the front window $120. Bought separately, that's $470, so the $400 monthly bundle saves a sponsor $70. Set your own from your costs, not from ours.

The footer holds the disclosure promise, one email address and a "numbers as of September 30, 2026" stamp. That date tells a buyer at a glance whether the kit is stale.

Build yours in an afternoon

With a finished kit in front of you, building your own takes an afternoon. Work in this order:

1. Decide who it's for: sponsors, press or both.
2. Export your numbers from each platform and note the date range.
3. Write a 50-word intro: who you are, who you reach and where.
4. List each offer with what's included and a price or "from" price.
5. Add 2 or 3 past partners or press mentions, with permission, and one short quote.
6. Add your logo, a few photos, one contact email and your usual reply time. List your brand fonts by name; if you only have them in an old image, our font finder test shows which tools named fonts correctly.
7. Lay it out on one page, two at most, with a "numbers as of" date in the footer.

For the layout, Canva's own page calls it a "Free Media Kit Maker," and any design tool you already use will do. Templates make it easy to fill every box. Don't. White space and a few big numbers read better than a crowded page, and a brand skimming on a phone will thank you.

Hiring it out instead? Read what a graphic designer costs first for the price ranges and the questions to ask.

Host it on a page, send it as a PDF, and tag the link

Your finished media kit works best in two forms. A page on your own website is easy to update and always current. A PDF is what a brand forwards to a boss or drops in a shared folder. Keep both, and put the "as of" date on each.

Link the page from your bio. If one link has to do everything, our guide to link-in-bio pages shows how to give the kit its own button.

Then tag that link. The free UTM builder on our site adds campaign tags, so GA4 shows whether people opened the kit from your bio, your email signature or a pitch. For the plan that sits behind all of this, start with our social media strategy guide.

Update the kit every quarter, or sooner when a number jumps. Old PDFs keep circulating long after you've grown, so replace the file at the same link instead of making a new one.

Want the kit designed for you? Our graphics and video team designs media kits and rate cards for small businesses and creators. That's a paid service of ours, so weigh the suggestion with that in mind.

How we made this guide: on October 24, 2026, our team read the Google Analytics and YouTube help pages and Instagram's and Meta's insights help. We also read the FTC's Endorsement Guides, Disclosures 101, the 2024 rule on fake social media indicators and Influencer Marketing Hub's rate guide. We checked the 8 pages ranking for "media kit" in US results, took the GA4 screenshot ourselves and built the bookstore example from scratch. Each fact links to its source where it appears, and Eram N. reads and approves the rewrite before it goes live.

First published April 2025. Rewritten October 24, 2026: new text, platform metric names and export steps, vendor rate ranges, disclosure and fake-follower rules, and a filled-in example.

Sources

• Google Analytics Help: User metrics (Total users and Active users)
• Google Analytics Help: Share & export reports
• Google Analytics Help: Data thresholds
• YouTube Help: Audience tab in YouTube Analytics
• YouTube Help: Advanced mode in YouTube Analytics
• Instagram Help Center: About Instagram insights
• Facebook Help: Export Page insights in Meta Business Suite
• 16 CFR 255.0: Purpose and definitions (eCFR)
• 16 CFR 255.1: General considerations (eCFR)
• 16 CFR 255.5: Disclosure of material connections (eCFR)
• FTC: Disclosures 101 for Social Media Influencers
• 16 CFR 465.8: Misuse of fake indicators of social media influence (eCFR)
• 16 CFR 465.1: Definitions (eCFR)
• FTC press release, August 2024: Final rule banning fake reviews and testimonials
• Influencer Marketing Hub: Influencer Rates 2026 (vendor data)
• HubSpot: Media kit examples and media kit vs press kit
• Atlassian: Press kit
• Asana: Brand and media assets
• Airbnb Newsroom: Media assets
• Canva: Media kit templates