Stock photo via Pexels
Brands receive media kit requests constantly. Most get a quick scroll and a pass. The ones that convert share a structure that answers the specific questions a marketing manager or brand partnerships team needs answered before they can justify a budget line.
Understanding that structure is not complicated, but it requires thinking from the brand’s side of the table rather than the creator’s.
Why Most Media Kits Miss the Mark
The host of Sidewalker Daily’s August 2025 video noted that after reviewing what the transcript describes as over 50 media kits in the current year alone, the same gaps kept appearing.
Media kit conventions from 2016 and 2017, the video notes, look completely different from what performs today, the format has shifted, but many creators are still working from outdated assumptions.
The core problem is that most creators build a media kit to showcase themselves. Brands use it as a filtering tool. Every section that does not answer a concrete business question is padding a brand manager has to scroll past to find what they actually need.
The other common mistake is treating a media kit as static. Sidewalker Daily’s video makes the point clearly: a media kit is no longer one-size-fits-all.
Different brand categories care about different signals, and a kit built for a beauty brand does not translate directly to a pitch for a travel or tech company.
The Sections That Actually Matter
A Headline That States Your Value Proposition
Brands do not want a bio. They want to know immediately whether this creator reaches their target customer.
Sidewalker Daily gives a specific example of a strong opening headline: “I help brands reach millennial moms through family-friendly content, high converting Instagram content.” The format is consistent, who you reach, through what type of content, on which platform.
That framing answers the brand’s first question in one sentence.
A vague opener like “lifestyle creator passionate about authentic content” answers nothing. It describes the creator, not the audience the brand would be paying to reach.
A Genuine “About Me” That Brands Can Use
The Shelf identifies specific details brands want in this section: the creator’s country, their own age and the age ranges in their household, relationship or marital status, gender, occupation, interests, and which types of posts generate the most engagement.
These are not vanity details. They tell a brand whether the creator lives the lifestyle that their product targets.
A 34-year-old married homeowner pitching a home improvement brand is a more credible fit than someone with a larger following whose demographics are a mismatch.
Brands increasingly understand this, which is why the Shelf notes that audience size is no longer as important as brands originally thought it was two to three years before their article.
Audience Demographics, Specific Ones
Follower count is the least useful number in a media kit. What brands need is the breakdown behind it.
The Shelf lists what brands actually want to see under audience size: the location of the main target audience, total followers per platform, and followers broken down by country.
Kayleigh June, a beauty and fashion photographer based near Sydney who walks through her own kit-building process in a 2024 tutorial, recommends including engagement rate alongside those geographic and age-range figures.
She uses Metrical to pull those statistics for brand deal packages.
The reason this matters: as the Shelf states directly, brands using influencers who have purchased followers cannot determine whether any of those followers represent valuable leads.
Earned, verifiable audience data is what separates a credible kit from one that goes in the bin.
For creators wondering about platform growth more broadly, the principles around audience quality over raw numbers apply across channels, getting views without gaming the algorithm covers the same logic for YouTube growth specifically.
Past Work, Including Gifted Collabs
This section catches out a lot of newer creators who assume they have nothing to show. Sidewalker Daily is explicit on this point: gifted collaborations and trade partnerships belong in the past work section, not only paid partnerships.
A brand looking at past work is assessing two things: whether you have produced brand-integrated content before, and how it looks. A clean, well-executed gifted collab demonstrates execution ability as clearly as a paid one does.
What it cannot demonstrate, and what brands know, is whether that content converted. If you have post-performance data from past partnerships, include it.
What to Leave Out (Including Pricing)
Kayleigh June makes a decision in her tutorial that is worth noting: she no longer includes pricing in her media kit. Her reasoning is practical, the quote for any given campaign depends on what the brand wants and what the deliverables are.
A fixed rate card shown upfront can eliminate a brand before a conversation has even started, especially if the creator would flex on scope or format.
This is a reasonable position for most creators to take. The media kit opens the door; pricing is negotiated once there is a genuine fit on both sides.
The other category of content that does not belong: anything that inflates the kit’s length without answering a brand question. Testimonials from friends, overly designed multi-page backgrounds, and vague mission statements all dilute the sections that matter.
Format and Length: What the Research Shows
The Sidewalker Daily video’s observation about 2016-era media kits applies to format as much as content. A one-page PDF is still a legitimate format for the right creator. Kayleigh June builds a 1080×1080 single-page kit in her tutorial using Picsart.
Canva’s template library, which currently offers over 440 media kit templates, includes multi-slide options with 10, 11, 22, and even 99 slides, covering everything from a single-platform influencer kit to full brand style guides.
The right length depends on what you have to show. A creator with three platforms, documented campaign results, and a substantial back catalogue of brand work may need 8 to 12 slides to do the material justice.
Someone newer to brand partnerships is better served by a tight, honest one-pager than by a padded multi-slide deck that highlights how little is in it.
Kayleigh June’s advice on subscriber count is practical: every content creator should have a media kit, whether they have 500 subscribers or 50,000. The kit’s job is to present what exists clearly, not to obscure what does not exist yet.
Platform matters here too. Creators navigating platform-specific requirements, from follower thresholds to partnership eligibility, will find that the audience quality standards brands apply to media kits mirror the requirements platforms set internally.
Twitch’s partnership eligibility rules illustrates how the same emphasis on authentic, engaged audiences runs through both brand and platform criteria.
A Media Kit Is a Filtering Tool, Not a Sales Pitch
The clearest way to think about what belongs in a media kit: include anything that helps a brand quickly confirm you are the right fit, and cut anything that makes them dig for that confirmation.
If a brand manager cannot determine your audience’s primary location, age range, and engagement rate within the first two slides, the kit is working against you.
If they cannot see what your branded content looks like in practice, the past work section is not doing its job.
Start with the value proposition headline. Build the audience demographics section around verifiable data, not round numbers. Include past brand work regardless of whether it was paid. Leave pricing for the conversation that follows.
The creators whose kits convert are not the ones with the most followers or the most polished templates. They are the ones who answered the brand’s questions before the brand had to ask.
FAQs About Media Kit Templates
How Long Should a Media Kit Be?
There is no universal answer. A one-page kit works well for creators earlier in their brand partnership journey, while creators with multi-platform audiences and documented campaign results may need 8 to 12 slides to cover the material properly.
Prioritize clarity over completeness, a shorter kit that answers every key question beats a longer one that buries the answers.
Should You Include Follower Count in Your Media Kit?
Yes, but it should not be the lead number. Follower count per platform provides context, but brands consistently prioritize engagement rate and audience demographics over raw totals.
The Shelf notes directly that audience size is no longer as important to brands as it once was.
Should You Include Pricing in a Media Kit?
Many experienced creators, including Kayleigh June, choose not to include pricing in their media kit. The argument is that rates depend on deliverables, exclusivity, and usage rights, all of which vary by campaign. Leaving pricing out keeps the conversation open.
Can You Include Gifted Collaborations in a Media Kit?
Yes. Sidewalker Daily is explicit on this point, gifted collaborations and trade partnerships belong in the past work section alongside paid partnerships.
What brands are assessing is whether you can produce credible branded content; how the collaboration was structured matters less than how the content looks and performed.
Do You Need a Different Media Kit for Different Brands?
According to Sidewalker Daily’s 2025 video, the one-size-fits-all media kit is no longer the standard. Tailoring emphasis based on the brand category, beauty versus travel versus tech, for instance, makes a kit more relevant to each specific pitch.
What Platforms Should You Include in a Media Kit?
Include every platform where you have an engaged, active audience. Dormant accounts with inflated historical follower counts do not help your case, brands can usually spot them.
Focus on the platforms where you produce consistent content and where your audience data is cleanest.
Where Can You Find Good Media Kit Templates?
Canva’s media kit template library has over 440 options, covering single-page influencer kits through to multi-slide brand guides. Picsart offers a drag-and-drop design interface that Kayleigh June uses in her 2024 tutorial.
Both are free to start with paid tiers for premium assets.
Build It Around Their Questions, Not Your Highlights
The most common revision a creator needs to make when reworking a media kit is a shift in perspective. A kit built around “here is what I am proud of” rarely converts as well as one built around “here is everything you need to say yes.”
Pick one strong value proposition headline and lead with it. Back it up with verified audience data. Show past brand work, paid or gifted. Keep the format tight enough that the brand reaches your contact information before they lose interest.
The template is less important than the logic behind it.