Just like Rome, your online presence can’t be built in a day. Garnering earned media requires a strategic approach to frequent outreach and a solid understanding of the role of digital media when it comes to publicity.
Once considered an online resume for musicians, an Electronic Press Kit (EPK) can be easily adapted for the B2B landscape. It’s no surprise that musicians, and their teams, have mastered the art of publicity — and now you can too.
There are certain content assets you need to have before you can start implementing any digital media publicity strategies. An EPK works as a digital solution for showcasing your company’s services, awards and previous work. By providing resources such a backgrounder and case studies in one easy-to-access location, an EPK will make your life, and journalist’s lives, easier.
Assets to Include in an Electronic Press Kit (EPK)
Backgrounder
Your backgrounder is a company bio that informs anyone writing about your company the “who, what, when, where and why” of your organization. It’s best practice to include both a long-form and short-form version of your backgrounder that explicitly sums of what your organization does. If your backgrounder is full of jargon, or just simply hard to access, it’s likely that any story being written about you will get dropped.
Staff Bios
Providing staff bios is going to reap both internal and external benefits. In addition to saving a writer an extra step, it also ensures that your company members are being talked about exactly how you want them to be.
Product or Service Descriptions
Your product or service descriptions need to be concise and to the point — a one sheeter would be the perfect length. Like your backgrounder, it’s important to keep industry jargon out of these descriptions.
Visual Assets
Visual assets include anything photo, video and graphics related, such as your logo. When it comes to including your logo, it’s super important to make sure there are a couple versions: one suited for use on a dark background and one suited for use on a light background.
All visual assets need to be file types that are compatible. Instead of uploading the actual Photoshop file, upload a web-compatible PNG instead. Additionally, if you’re going to be including any photos, be sure to include relevant photo captions as well. This will ensure that anyone including these photos in their articles can accurately describe the scene.
Accolades and Awards
This is your chance to show off your thought leadership and skills. In this section, you can include any awards won, features in publications and quotes from clients and partners. Rather than including this in your backgrounder, keep it separate. Writers will decide for themselves whether or not they decide to feature your awards and accolades, which will provide you with outside credibility.
Case Studies and Work Samples
Much like how it’s important to include your product and services listing, providing a few concrete examples of those will help make your EPK successful. This will give writers and journalists a chance to speak about specific works and projects that your organization has worked on, which will help you gain credibility in the long run.
Contact Information
Lastly, you want to be sure a point of contact and headquarter address is clearly listed in your EPK. The method of contact that you list needs to be monitored frequently to ensure you’re responding in a timely manner. For example, at New Breed, our point of contact is the head of our internal marketing team.
This section is also a great place to include a link to an online media center or newsroom if your organization has one.
Key Takeaway
An EPK is going to make everyone’s life easier by putting all of the information needed to write about your company in one easy to access location.
Your EPK could live as a landing page on your website, a subdomain or it could be a zipped folder you attach to press releases. If you’re sending out files, it’s important to remember that your EPK files need to accessible and compatible. Someone who doesn’t have access to Microsoft Office won’t be able to find value in an EPK built exclusively off of Powerpoint and Word. Additionally, all files should be named appropriately — no one is going to be able to locate a file titled “sdfghjk.png”.
Lastly, you can gate part of your EPK — but in most cases, you should have at least some form of your electronic press kit completely public.
