If you have your own business or are working on a major project you must have a media kit. If you don’t have a media kit available to give members of the media, your business or project looks very amateur and hardly worth promoting in the news.

So what is a media kit? This is something usually put together by your PR person/firm working for you. It includes press releases, a backgrounder, a fact sheet, a bio, an image bank and more. And it’s getting to the point to where media kits are best done digitally. Make a kit and put it all on a CD, make sure you package it creatively and send it to media outlets.

I created a media kit a while ago for Leechon – and more specifically for Tufaan. The “Press Section” on Tufaan’s website is composed of a couple of things I included in the media kit, including the image bank. I plan to update the media kit and create a creative, graphically appealing digital version of it soon.

Also, it’s pretty important you get someone in public relations do to this for you. Why? Because if you want to send press releases to print media (like newspapers), then you have to write in AP style (associated press style) it was a pain to learn most of the AP Style book by heart. For example:

Wrong: Leechon gave 20% of their profits to charity.

Right: Leechon gave 20 percent of their profits to charity.

—

Wrong: She lived on Burbank Dr.

Right: She lived on Burbank Drive.

BUT

Wrong: She lived on 123 Burbank Drive

Right: She lived on 123 Burbank Dr.

There are a lot of subtle differences. If you don’t write it the correct way in your press releases, they will most likely be thrown in the garbage by the editor. Your job is to provide everything for them and make their lives easier so they willingly give you free publicity by writing about your business or project. Also, if your writing – particularly news writing- isn’t strong, make sure you hire a PR person.

If you want to know exactly what goes into a media kit, I’ll go into detail on my blog since it might get pretty lengthy. I also would like to do a series about each element in a media kit including how to write a good press release, fact sheet and backgrounder. And hopefully at the end you’ll be able to do your own PR work (well, some of it at least).

Finally, I plan in the near future to run my own PR firm for Muslims. Alhamdulillah it’s something I can do at the comfort of my own home and alhamdulillah it’s something I can do quite well, bi’fadhlillahi ta’ala. I’m currently compiling a Muslim Media Database (MMD) with the information of all media outlets and the preferred way they’d like to be reached.

If you are looking for someone to do PR for your business or project go ahead and send me an email @ media (at) leechon.com . I plan now – and in the future – to only accept a few clients at a time. And most of all, it has to be something halal and something worth promoting.

To learn more about how to make a media kit, check out my post.

~Shirien

*apparently I’m going to have to go back and talk about what exactly a press release is and why we send them out. What PR people do is still something a lot of people aren’t aware of. But until then, know that half the stuff you see on the news are things covered due to someone sending a press release. Reporters aren’t always just at the right place at the right time (or know what’s going on everywhere). PR has a lot to do with that.

MashaAllah, La Qowwita illa Billah.

Seeru fil Ard… “Travel in the earth”

Again, any project you want to produce- feel passionately about. And do it for the sake of Allah ‘az wa jal. A long time ago I make a rinky dink video called “Jannah How Badly Do You Want It?”

Not only was it done with windows movie maker, but the grammar! Anyway, the point is that this was something that I wasn’t doing for the sake of making a video but rather, I did it because at a time when my iman was high and I wanted to express that. Little did I realize later, that people were actually sending the video around. Ironically, my brother-in-law sent it to my sister when they were engaged and my sister was like “Hey wait a minute… my sister made that…”

Anyway, I decided to demonstrate the video that was tripod-less and shaky that I mentioned in my previous post. Be creative… This is accompanied by recitation from Salman Al ‘ataybi from my favorite surah in the Quran- Surat Ghaafir.

Bismillah,

If you want to produce films, Islamic commericals, make stories or even just be a photographer you should always carry your camera around with you. I can’t tell you the number of times I regretted not having a camera with me to catch a priceless moment.

During my trip to Egypt last summer, I took my video camera with me everywhere. I usually go to Masr every year and always regretted not bring my video camera. I know it looks “touristy” but, I didn’t care… because I wanted to show all my friends what I do over there and the places I go.

My problem? I didn’t have a tripod with me. I shot some great footage (really funny moments and all of which I will never put up here to bring shame to myself) but it wasn’t professional; It was shaky. So what do you do when your footage doesn’t turn out the way you want it to be? Turn it into a photo journalism project by freeze framing the footage at the right time. And i’ll demonstrate this with some of the footage I took this past summer. The key to a photo journal are the captions. If you take 3 photos and you put a caption, those pictures should represent everything that story is telling. So I want to share some of my favorite moments from my trip to masr… and remember with every project you do, feel passionately about it. And do it for the sake of Allah ‘az wa jal:

Click the pictures to view the captions and the slideshow, inshaAllah. 

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