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Design templates are predetermined designs that are easily editable for any usage. They provide guidance, so think of them like a graphic design stepping stone for your every need. Additionally, keeping with a consistent look and feel for your brand makes your brand seem more professional and helps you build trust and familiarity with your customers.
However, keeping content relevant, branded and well-designed is time consuming. When things get too hectic, templates will catch your fall and give you some fun, creative play. With the boom of templates integrated into design software, it’s not a challenge to find a template that works with your content and matches your brand.
We created this tip list on how we use templates and what we recommend for streamlining cohesive content for your brand.
Perks of Design Templates
If you have a specific content theme that you’d like to regularly share, utilizing a recurring design template (multiple times in a month/week) can be a great move for your brand.
Design Templates Are a Shortcut
Organically designing, pulling in assets like logos, colors, and more can be a major time-suck. As a business owner, your time is precious. Having templates on-hand that you can easily go back to and edit is quick, efficient, and gives you time to focus on more projects throughout the day.
Running behind on content? Maybe you need to post an impromptu post on your busiest day of the week? Slap together a beautiful design in an instant with the templates you already have saved!
Templates Measure for You
Whether in need of a new Facebook banner, YouTube video thumbnail, or email signatures, there’s a guaranteed design template for you out there. Instead of needing to figure out sizes and resolutions for each platform (there’s simply too many to memorize), there are templates ready to download in the exact length and width you need.
💡Pro-tip: Templates take the guesswork out of designing.
Design Templates Uphold Brand Guidelines
As we’ve already said, keeping your logos, brand colors, typefaces and any other assets inside of your templates is a great way to keep a hold of brand standards. If you manage more than one brand, or if your company has sub-brands, templates can be invaluable!
Keep in mind when setting up templates: What logos, fonts, colors, images, and textures do I need to stay consistent with your brand’s look and feel?
One you gather each of these, keep them in an easy-to-access folder, or on your artboard, to easily drag and drop them in at any time.
How to Maximize Design Templates
Maximizing what you can create with design templates, so you get the most out of your design efforts is easily obtainable with templates. Below are two template tips that work best for my workflow.
Templates for Each Platform
When clients have socials across platforms with various heights and widths, such as Instagram’s square size compared to Pinterests tall rectangle size, it’s best to create the same template in each size you need. I recommend having individually Pinterest, Instagram Stories/IGTV, and Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram jointly. Additionally, having a YouTube/Vimeo thumbnail template is always helpful for clients with video needs.
Logo/Name/Website Banner
At the bottom of posts, including a banner consisting of client name, their website, and/or logo can help to blend together content and help your pages look cohesive. Using one or two colorways of this banner, it’ll be easy to drag and drop over any content. These banners are especially helpful for posts that are photo heavy, instead of slapping your logo on the picture, try utilizing the banner technique.
Tools We Recommend
These editing and design tools will help you quickly create templates for your brand and won’t break the bank.
Canva
If you aren’t already utilizing Canva for your business, you are missing out! At The Social Ginger, this is one of our favorite tools for creating, saving and managing templates. Canva’s library of over 250,000 free templates is vast.
If you’re stuck on a design, browsing elements and templates can often spark a new idea. We especially like it for creating templates for content that requires a lot of text, making it more visually appealing for social pages.
If you’re able to splurge, Canva Pro is well worth the cost. Canva’s Pro plan is $9.99 a month if you prepay for the year. We highly recommend this option because you will gain access to a plethora of pro-only assets, templates, graphics, features and more. It’s worth the investment if you are serious about utilizing templates to help build out a content creation strategy!
💡Pro-tip: For more recommendations, check out 6 Incredible Digital Tools To Manage Your Small Business’s Social Media
Tailwind
Canva may be our top choice, but another great option is also Tailwind. Design is just a sub-feature offered with this scheduling platform, but the advantage of this site is the ability to easily create customized posts from available templates and immediately schedule them for publishing.
Need to share your latest blog post to Pinterest? Seamlessly paste your article link into their design tool. It will automatically pull in any images from within the blog to use in your new graphic, or select an image from a stock library.
After plugging in a few details, you will see it auto-populate across hundreds of pre-designed templates. Making the content journey from creation to schedule a seamless process.
💲 Starts at $9.99 (with a discount for an annual subscription). Includes a free trial.
Create Your Own Templates with Canva
Feeling inspired to make your own template? Here’s a mini guide on how to create your own templates & organize your assets utilizing Canva!
Step 1: Select Your Size
Create a custom size design for your template, this can be any size you desire.
Step 2: Create the Design
Design your heart out, make your template look however you’d like! Keep in mind to stick to your brand’s color scheme, fonts, and other assets. Play around with funky shapes, frames, and typography until you’re happy with your design.
Canva automatically saves each design to your homepage, no need to worry about losing your designs if you click away!
Step 3: Organizing the Assets
Canva Pro has the Brand Kit feature, allowing you to upload your brand’s logo, color palette, fonts, and images all in one place for you to refer back to at any time. Additionally, you can create a folder so that any designs made for the brand will be located in one place! This feature works great in a team setting as well, as each person who joins your team’s Canva will be able to access them as easily as you are!
Step 4: Refer Back As Needed
Now, each time you need to quickly design a social media post, your template and assets will be waiting for you in Canva! 🧡
Start Creating
Now that you’re a design template pro, get out there and make some amazing content!
Looking for help with your templates? The Social Ginger is here to be your partner as you continue to dive into and learn more about social media. Set up a FREE discovery call today.
