So you’ve just signed up to Sparkle. What now?
- Add your company’s details.
- Add a client, a brand, a collection, and some samples.
- Add a publication or freelancer.
- There is no step 4.
You’re now ready to check samples out. Nice!
Let’s walk through these steps now so you can see how easy it is. I’ll pretend to be James Brown of the fashion PR company Brown Associates. I also dabble in jazz.
Add your company’s details
When you sign up to Sparkle you get taken to the Staff page. This shows everybody in your PR company along with your company’s details. Here’s what my Staff page looks like.
Your company’s contact information is shown on all your delivery notes, so you should edit your company’s details and fill in as much as you can. Otherwise your press contacts won’t know where to return your samples!
Add your samples
Next we want to add your samples. In Sparkle every sample is part of a collection, every collection sits under a brand, and every brand is owned by a client. So we have to set those things up before we can add any samples.
Go to the Clients tab and add a client. Then add a brand looked after by that client. Here I’ve added Betty Jackson as a client, and Mainline as one of Betty Jackson’s brands.
Now under the Mainline brand, click add collection and fill in the form. Here’s what I put.
You’re now on the Collections tab where you should see your first client, brand, and collection.
Click on Manage samples for your collection, then Add sample or add one here on the next page.
Fill in the form that comes up with as much or as little information about your sample as you like, save it, and you’ll be taken back to the samples page for your collection. Here’s mine.
You can see the sample’s code (BJML-01-W10-001), that it’s available to be checked out, its client reference (ABC123), and its description.
Add a publication or freelancer
The final step is to add somebody to send your samples to. You can have any number of publications and freelancers. Here we’ll add our first publication.
Go to the Media tab and click add a publication.
Fill in the form with as much information as you can. The postal address is important when you come to send samples out because it goes on the delivery note for the courier.
Once you’ve add a publication, you can — if you like — add contact details for people at that company.
There is no step 4
That’s it! You’re all set to check out your samples. Enjoy using Sparkle!